off the leash

Whatever Happened To? Ronnie Spector

Posted on December 17, 2023 by Ken Dowell

You might not recognize the name Veronica Yvette Bennett. But maybe you recognize this?

Veronica Yvette Bennett was the beautiful and talented founder and lead vocalist of the Ronettes, one of the most popular of the “girl groups” that dominated pop music for a brief period in the early to mid-sixties before the British Invasion took hold. They had a number of hits in 1963 and 1964 in addition to “Be My Baby” including “Baby, I Love You,” “(The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up,” “Do I Love You?,” and “Walking in the Rain.”

The Ronettes music was produced by superstar producer Phil Spector. In 1968, one year after the Ronettes broke up, she married him. Ronnie Spector, as she has been called ever since, would later comment that Phil was a “brilliant producer” but a “lousy husband.” By all accounts, including the one in Ronnie’s 1990 memoir Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness, Or, My Life as a Fabulous Ronette, “lousy” was an understatement. “The intensely jealous producer kept her a virtual prisoner in their California mansion, subjecting her to years of psychological torment.” (People Magazine, May 2, 2022) While she was held in Spector’s mansion she was not permitted to sing, perform or record. Ronnie ended it in 1972 when she fled Phil’s grasp broke and barefooted (Phil kept her shoes under lock and key).

In 1972, Ronnie Spector is not yet 30. Her career is in tatters, her marriage is over and she has no money, having not received a royalty check for her music since she got $14,000 in 1964. What she did have was a little help from her friends.

Writing in The Record (Hackensack, N.J., Dec. 30, 1980) Jerry DeMarco mentions some of those friends: “she was helped by a former acquaintance, John Lennon. (‘I dated John before I was married, before the Beatles became really popular. In fact, on some of the tours we did, they were our opening act. Can you believe that!’) Thanks to a few contacts Lennon made for her, Spector went on to appear with Bruce Springsteen, tour with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, and record a duet with Southside on the Jukes’ first LP, a song called ‘You Mean So Much to Me, Baby,’ written by Springsteen.

“She then recorded “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” in 1977 with Springsteen’s E Street Band (guitarist Steve Van Zandt produced the record)…”

Talking about Springsteen, she told the Asbury Park Press (Dec. 15, 2010): “Bruce is such a gentleman. He just makes you feel good. He told me that he learned to sing, ‘Oh, oh, oh’ after listening to me.”

He wasn’t the only musician inspired by Ronnie. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys wrote “Don’t Worry Baby” a response to “Be My Baby” in 1964. “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” was penned by Billy Joel in 1976 as a tribute to Ronnie. Joey Ramone covered “Baby, I Love You” in 1980. Ramone would later produce one of Ronnie’s records. In 1986, she sang on Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight.”

By that time she had resuscitated her career, playing oldies shows as well as solo gigs. Tom Long of the Santa Cruz Sentinel had this to say in reviewing one of her shows there (July 7, 1984). “Ronnie Spector showed a Catalyst crowd Saturday night that she still has all the energy and talent that made Ronnie and the Ronnetes the penultimate girl group of the early ’60s and has kept her an underground cult figure for the past two decades.

“Fairly oozing sexuality while letting go with her amazingly strong voice, Spector more than lived up to her legendary status; she actually improved upon it.”

Next on the agenda was to settle up with Phil. When she got her divorce in 1974, all she received from the settlement was $25,000, a used car, and a monthly provision of $2,500 for five years. (Who was her lawyer!) He retained the rights to all of her music.

In 1988, the Ronettes sued Phil Spector for non-payment of royalties and for the income he made from licensing their music. Ronnie had still not received a royalty check since 1964. It took until 2001 before a New York court ruled in favor of the Ronettes and ordered Spector to pay $2.6 million. At the time of the verdict Ronnie had this to say:

“What’s great about my court victory is that it will help all the other artists get what’s due them. Long after I’m gone people will say Ronnie Spector did that we can do it I’ve seen so many acts who gave their names away, gave their royalties away. Now those people don’t have anything today. I was determined to win my lawsuit because I knew I deserved it.” (York Sunday News, Oct. 15, 2000.)

The settlement was overturned by an appeals court but Ronnie eventually go more than $1 million from Phil.

The Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Phil, as a member of the nominating committee, had tried to stop that. But being as he was on trial for murder, his influence was waning fast. (Phil Spector was convicted of murdering the actress Lana Clarkson in 2003. He died in prison in 2021.) The Hall of Fame induction speech was delivered by Ronnie’s long-time friend and neighbor Keith Richards.

Just as Ronnie rebuilt her career, she did the same with her personal life. At age 57 she told AP reporter Mary Campbell (Oct. 2, 2000): “ I went out with Jonathan Greenfield for three years before we married. He manages me. Our boys, Jason and Austin, are 16 and 17. 1 have wonderful in-laws, sister-in-law, two brothers-in-law. I wanted to be a regular wife and mom. I have everything now I wanted 30 years ago. It’s never too late; I guess that saying is true.”

Shortly after Ronnie died in 2022, Greenfield told Jordan Runtagh of People Magazine: “We did everything together for close to 42 years. There’s a lot of little things about our relationship that just balanced each of us. It’s sort of like two trees next to each other; throughout the years, they grow and the branches start to intertwine.”

Ronnie was both a rock star and a suburban mom in Connecticut. Greenfield says, “She never thought she was anything special. She had been on the top and then she knew what it felt like when she couldn’t get in at Studio 54 because she wasn’t cool enough. Wherever she went, whether it was onstage or just to the ShopRite, she put a smile on every person she came in contact with. That’s just what she did. I’m so convinced that she was put here to spread joy, love and kindness. She had this gift of making people feel really good.”

Ronnie Spector died at home in Connecticut in 2022 after short bout with cancer. Eulogies came in from all over. I like this one I found in the UK publication Far Out Magazine:
“Sometimes referred to as the ‘bad girl of rock and roll,’ Ronnie Spector’s life is one characterized by triumph over evil, and in addition to her iconic influence on music, she will continue to be hailed as a bonafide legend.”

-0-

Whatever Happened To?

Posted in History | Tagged 1960's, history, music, Phil Spector, rock and roll, Ronnie Spector, The Ronettes | 4 Comments

Whatever Happened To? Jerry Rubin

Posted on December 10, 2023 by Ken Dowell

The photo above is a Richard Avedon mural of the Chicago Seven (on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York). Third from right, in the striped shirt, is Jerry Rubin. He was one of the most recognizable faces of the antiwar and counterculture movements of the 1960’s. As early as 1965 Rubin founded the Vietnam Day Committee which led some of the first large-scale protests of the Vietnam War. In 1967 he was one of the organizers of the March on Washington. Rubin and Abbie Hoffman (third from left in the Avedon mural) created the Youth International Party, heretofore to be known as the Yippies.

Jerry Rubin at Chicago Seven trial — Rubin at Chicago Seven trial

The Yippies merged theater and politics. Hoffman and Rubin staged increasingly more audacious events that seemed primarily aimed at attracting TV cameras. And they did. Rubin, who was called to testify several times by the House Un-American Activities Committee, showed up at various times dressed as a bare-chested guerilla in Viet Cong PJ’s, as one of the founding fathers, and as Santa Claus. At the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Yippies nominated a pig for president. It was the tumult at that convention that led to the Chicago Seven trial. In the courtroom, Rubin paraded in front of the judge shouting ‘Heil Hitler’ and at another session showed up dressed in judge’s robes.

One of Rubin and Hoffman’s stunts brought them to the balcony of the New York Stock Exchange, from which they threw money down onto the trading floor. The mayhem that ensued, as traders scrambled for the bills, temporarily shut down the exchange.

Fast forward to 1980 and Jerry Rubin is back on Wall Street, donning a suit and tie, and sitting at one of the desks of his new employer, John Muir and Company. A 60’s Yippie becomes an 80’s Yuppie. What path led from the chaos outside the DNC in Chicago to the epicenter of American capitalism? It wasn’t a straight line. Here’s some of the stops along the way.

In 1976 Rubin published a book titled “Growing Up at 37.” In reviewing that book, Paul Wagman, in the St. Louis Post Dispatch (April 4, 1976), comments “His attention and prodigious energy, once concentrated mainly on society, are now focused chiefly on himself.”

“The book traces Rubin’s journey through the multitude of psychological ‘therapies’ that comprise today’s human potential movement. Zen, health foods, jogging, est (Erhard Seminars Training), acupuncture, bioenergetics Rubin tries them all.

“Sometimes he tries them all in the same day. ‘I’d be up at 7 a.m. to jog two miles,’ Rubin writes near the beginning of the book, ‘then run from modern dance class to tai chi practice to yoga to swimming to an organic meal to a massage class to a sauna bath to a night therapy or growth group, with weekends filled with more growth and spiritual experiences.’ If this sort of approach sounds to you a bit shallow, if it sounds like the kind of crash course approach you would take to learning German or gourmet cooking but not to your soul, if it sounds as it it would inevitably sabotage any possible benefits of the therapies, then you won’t be surprised by the rest of the book.

“Rubin spends 208 pages baring his soul to us, telling us the most embarrassing, personal kinds of details, without conveying any clear sense of his character. After reading the entire book, you have less idea about what he is like than you do after reading one page of a character sketch by any good novelist.”

In 1979 there’s another new book “The Zen of Erections.” Rick Nichols of the Philadelphia Inquirer writes (Feb. 15, 1979) “He came to Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre Sunday to talk about sex. ‘Not just sex,’ he said, his hands jerking back to his shoulders. ‘I’m not interested in sex. I’m interested in fear among men, in intimacy, sex without performance, sex without conquest, sex without power. I’m interested in (demythologizing) erections.’”

Nichols caught up with Rubin “on the 10:20 p.m. Betsy Ross Amtrak express. He’s bound for New York and the 21st-floor East Side apartment overlooking Second Avenue that he shares with his wife, Mimi Leonard.

“Ms. Leonard is in furs, honey hair tumbling. ‘Are we happy?’ she whispers to Jerry Rubin. He has just pocketed $250 for telling maybe 300 folks in Philadelphia about his thoughts on erections, but somehow he does not look particularly happy. He looks beat.”

Rubin moved into Wall Street in 1980 and apparently had some early success. Leonard Sloane of the New York Times reported on Jan. 15, 1981:

“Jerry Rubin, the former Yippie and Chicago Seven defendant who surprised many who knew him by taking a job on Wall Street six months ago with John Muir & Company, has been promoted to director of business development of the brokerage firm. Sounding like a born and bred capitalist, he spoke yesterday about his plans in his new post.

”’I hope to actively communicate the opportunities that John Muir presents to the economy, to the entrepreneur and to the investor,’ Mr. Rubin asserted. ‘Using my knowledge of the media and my communications abilities, I hope to effectively communicate.’”

Rubin’s time at Muir and Company proved to be short-lived as the firm closed its doors in August of 1981. But Rubin wasn’t done with the Wall Street set. Myra MacPherson of the Washington Post (Oct. 18 1981) describes another Rubin initiative:

“It is Manhattan, 1981, and Rubin is waiting for his guests in his East Side apartment. Done in early sterile modern (the clearest impressions are of oatmeal wall-to-wall carpeting and a blowup of Deborah Harry in the john), it is set up for circulating, with coffee table pushed against the wall; a stage waiting for arrivals. A carpet-covered platform divides the bedroom area from the rest of the room. Outside the apartment are two young women, eager imitations of high-fashion gloss, presiding over the guest book. (Name, address, home phone and, of course, business phone.)

“Inside, lest you think there is anything at all casual about this gathering, are two piles of literature on a table set smack in your line of vision. One pile contains photocopies of a New York magazine article on Rubin’s latest venture. The other pile explains it all. JERRY RUBIN SALON PARTY AND CATERING SERVICE INC. headlines the announcement: ‘For the past 26 weeks, Jerry Rubin’s networking salon has received recognition as a unique and fascinating concept in entertaining.’”

MacPherson concludes: “The flamboyant costumes are long gone, leaving a man with thinning hair, indistinguishable from any other Madison Avenue consultant. There is something painfully pathetic in the eager smile of New York’s newest caterer-and-party-giver, greeting freeloader after freeloader.”

The New York Times reported this story on April 18, 1986.

“Jerry Rubin, the former political activist who is currently the head of Network America Inc., has filed an initial public offering of 1.65 million units with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The estimated proceeds of the offering is $2.97 million.

“Each unit consists of one share of common stock and a warrant to purchase an additional share of common stock.

“Mr. Rubin told the S.E.C. that the proceeds from the offering, which contains a warning of a high degree of risk, would be used to complete a prototype of a future nationwide chain of networking restaurants. The prototype would be located in midtown Manhattan. Mr. Rubin currently runs ‘networking’ parties at a nightclub in New York, at which professional men and women socialize. Mr. Rubin is the president of Network America; his wife, Mimi L. Rubin, is executive vice president. They control 97.5 percent of Network America’s shares. At the completion of the proposed offering, they would hold 68.8 percent.”

Syndicated columnist Bob Green found Rubin’s next money-making scheme in 1990, as he once more planted himself in front of TV cameras. (Detroit Free Press, May 31, 1990.)

“…the other night, I was flipping through TV channels when I saw Jerry Rubin. It was that Jerry Rubin, all right; he was wearing a business suit, and he was being interviewed on a national cable channel devoted to financial news. ‘What I really want to do is to bring capitalism back to America,’ Jerry Rubin was saying. He was waving a white plastic jug.

“I watched the show. It seemed that Rubin was promoting a drink that allegedly contains vitamins and nutrients. From what I could tell, he was in the business not only of selling the drink inside the plastic jugs, but of signing up other people to sell the drink, too.

“Still waving the plastic jug, Rubin looked away from the interviewer and into the camera and said to the viewers at home: ‘This is a way for you to make money.’ The interviewer, looking uncomfortable, said, ‘You sound like a huckster, Jerry.’ Rubin replied: ‘What’s a huckster?’”

Jerry Rubin died on Nov. 14, 1994. He died as a result of an illegal act. No, it wasn’t drugs, no riots or political violence, and no defrauding anyone with his business ventures. He was hit by a car as he jaywalked across Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles where he had a penthouse apartment.

-0-

(Newspaper quotes are sourced from and available at newspapers.com and the New York Times archive.)

Whatever Happened To?

Posted in History, Whatever Happened To? | Tagged 60's, Abbie Hoffman, Chicago Seven, Jerry Rubin, Vietnam War, Yippies | 22 Comments

Whatever Happened To? Lorena Bobbitt

Posted on December 3, 2023 by Ken Dowell

Lorena Gallo, a 19-year old immigrant from Venezuela, met John Bobbitt, a bar bouncer and former U.S. Marine, in a bar in 1988. Within a year they were married. Were it not for the events of the night of June 23, 1993, few would have heard of this couple.

According to Lorena, she was mentally and physically abused during their marriage. On the fateful night, Lorena was sleeping when John came home drunk. He raped her, then fell asleep himself. John denies it. Nobody denies what followed. Lorena went into the kitchen, came back with a knife, pulled the covers down and cut off his penis.

The aftermath. Lorena took off, not with John, but with his now separated member. At one point she chucked it out the car window. Lorena reported to authorities what she had done and where she threw it. Incredibly, a search party went out and found John’s missing part. Even more incredibly, it was successfully surgically reattached.

John was brought up on charges of marital sexual assault. He was found not guilty by a jury. Lorena was charged with assault and was found not guilty by reason of insanity though she was required to submit to a 45-day psychiatric evaluation. They divorced. Lorena resumed using her maiden name, Lorena Gallo.

Gallo would have one other day in court. In 1998, she was charged with assault and battery after a fight with her mother, who she was living with after her divorce. A Washington Post story (April 3, 1998) describes the result:

“After listening to two hours of conflicting testimony about a fight involving shoving, hair-pulling and biting, a Prince William County judge ruled yesterday that the woman formerly known as Lorena Bobbitt did not assault her mother.

“‘If you asked me if I think she’s guilty, I’d say yes,’ Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court Judge James Robeson said of the defendant, who could have faced up to a year in jail for the alleged assault. But, he said, ‘I have reasonable doubt, so I’ll find her not guilty.’”

What do you do after being tagged as the women who cut off her husband’s penis? In Gallo’s case, she has devoted herself to supporting and helping victims of domestic abuse. She volunteers at a shelter for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence and does speaking engagements.

In a 2018 interview with Time Magazine she explained:

“One of my missions is to educate the public and young women about the red flags in dating an abuser. I go to colleges and talk to sororities. I recently went to Tennessee to do a symposium at a law school; the law needs to be tightened a lot more to protect women, to protect the victim. There needs to be more convictions for abusers. We have to have a background check on who can own guns. There are still a lot of loopholes that need to be closed. I don’t want to see another 25 years pass by and not be able to protect women more.”

In 2007, she founded Lorena’s Red Wagon which later became the Lorena Gallo Foundation. Its mission is to “expand domestic violence and sexual assault prevention education, emergency response resources and community engagement activities that will improve outcomes for survivors and their children.”

The agency that books her speaking engagements lists the topics she can speak about as:

— Domestic Violence Doesn’t Discriminate: It Can Happen To Me.

— Overcoming Adversity through Resiliency. The strength you don’t know you have.

— The Lorena Bobbitt Story

Gallo still lives in Manassas, Va. She lives with her partner of 20+ years, David Bellinger, and their teenage daughter, Olivia. She has continued to work as a manicurist and hair stylist.

In a New York Times story in 2019, author Amy Chozick describes Gallo: “For a woman who has been a punch line for most of her adult life, Lorena ‘Bobbitt’ Gallo is a surprisingly sincere person. That is the first thing I noticed about her when we met. She hugged me hello, coming up to my neck in heels, and I was struck at how warm and maternal she was. We talked about being moms and our naturally curly hair.”

And as for Bobbitt, Gallo told Oprah Daily:

“He tried to reach out to me through my foundation, and often posts rude comments and bad reviews on my foundation’s Facebook page—which is a sign of being controlling and mentally abusive, 20 years later. Basically, this man needs help.”

-0-

Whatever Happened To?

Posted in Uncategorized, Whatever Happened To? | Tagged domestic violence, John Bobbitt, Lorena Bobbitt, Lorena Gallo, spousal abuse | 29 Comments

The Artists of Newark

Posted on November 26, 2023 by Ken Dowell

Cross Cultural Perspectives, part of the Newark Arts Festival, at the Newark Museum of Art

Pricilla, Anabal Padilla — Pricilla, Anibal Padilla

Call Tyrone, Cathleen McCoy Bristol — Pricilla, Anibal Padilla

Lyric's Wonderland, Martryce Roach — Lyric’s Wonderland, Martryce Roach

50/50 (Hip Hop is Elemental), Suliman Onque — Lyric’s Wonderland, Martryce Roach

New Day Series 2, No. 10, Simone Bailey Campbell

Chance Encounter, Sue Eldridge Ward — Within Reach, Fatou Ridgird

Let My Power Wedge Into Your Lives, Jazlyne Wooden

Moi Renee II, Beau McCall — Let My Power Wedge Into Your Lives, Jazlyne Wooden

From the Heart II, France Garrido — All Tucked In, Ziui Chen Vance

This is Where I'm From, Sandra Charlap — Birth Marked, M-nard Derosena

Posted in Art | Tagged art, museums, Newark, Newark Arts Festival, Newark Museum of Art | 4 Comments

Whatever Happened To? Elian Gonzalez

Posted on November 19, 2023 by Ken Dowell

On Friday, Nov. 26, 1999, newspapers throughout Florida published this Associated Press dispatch;

“A 5-year-old boy was found clinging to an inner tube off the Florida coast Thursday, one of three survivors from a boat carrying 14 Cubans that sank two days earlier in the Atlantic. Seven people were presumed drowned and three others were missing, the Coast Guard said. The body of one woman was found floating about three miles from the boy, and authorities believe she had been tied to the same inner tube, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Scott Carr. The boy was spotted by a fisherman Thursday morning about two miles off Fort Lauderdale.”

The boy was Elian Gonzalez. His mother, Elisabeth Broton Rodriguez and her boyfriend had taken Elian on the boat headed for Florida. It proved to have a faulty engine that failed during a storm. His mom did not survive. He did. Elian, who already had family in Miami, was rescued, treated and released in the custody of his great uncle Lazaro Rodriguez.

There followed the second major storm of the young boy’s life. That was the custody battle between the boy’s father in Cuba, Juan Miguel Gonzalez Quintana, backed by Fidel Castro, and his relatives in Miami, backed by the Little Havana exile community there. The decision ended up in the hands of Attorney General Janet Reno. She determined that the boy should be returned to his father. The Miami relatives refused to let him go. He was then, dramatically and controversially, seized by INS agents and returned to Cuba with his father.

Today, Elian Gonzalez has an engineering degree and a job in the tourist industry. He is married and has a two-year-old daughter. Earlier this year he was seated as a representative of his hometown of Cardenas in the Cuban national assembly.

What happened in the interviewing years? We only really have occasional glimpses as he has been largely sheltered from international media during his childhood and youth. He returned to Cardenas, the town where he had lived before his mother’s attempt to bring him to Florida. He lived with his father, who came back to the same job of bartending at a tourist park. And he returned to the same school he had attended. It seemed like something of a normal life for a boy in Cuba. That is except when he was paraded about as the cause celebre that he had become in Cuba.

Vanessa Bauza of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel put together this picture of 11-year-od Gonzalez’ life in Cuba, based on interviews with family and associates who had traveled there, in 2005.

“Today, Elian and his family live in a roomy blue home with red trim on Cardenas’s main street, 130 kilometres east of Havana. It has a tidy fenced front yard, a porch swing and a menagerie of pets, including parakeets, fish, dogs and a rabbit…

“Today, Elian is a model student, favouring math and Spanish classes. He has been chosen leader of his sixth-grade class and will begin middle school this fall. He takes karate lessons and plays table tennis. Despite having lots of toys at home, one of his favourite games is fishing for tadpoles in the gutter in front of his grandparents’ home on Cossio St., near the rocky beach.

“Still, for a boy known around the world by his first name, ‘normal’ is a relative term. Several plainclothes security officers are stationed in front of Elian’s home to keep strangers from getting too close, and a museum in his hometown is partly dedicated to Cuba’s campaign to ‘save’ him.”

Elian Gonzalez reunion with his father. Photo was taken at Andrews Air Force base by one of the federal agents who accompanied the boy from Miami.

One of those not so normal moments occurred on April 22, 2005, when Gonzalez, still 11, read a prepared speech to a gathering celebrating the anniversary of the INS raid that seized the boy and set him on the road back to Cubs. Vanessa Arrington of the Associated Press filed a story on April 24 that quoted part of Gonzalez’ speech:

“Five years ago, I returned to my dad. When I saw him, I became very happy. I could hug him, I could see my little brother. That was the happiest day of my life.” The story went on to quote Gonzalez thanking both Cubans and Americans who fought for his return to his father in Cuba.

The AP reported another sighting five years later on April 6, 2010:

“Cuba has released photos of one time exile cause celebre Elian Gonzalez wearing an olive-green military school uniform and attending a Young Communist Union congress. Gonzalez, now 16, with closely cropped black hair, is shown serious-faced with fellow youth delegates during last weekend’s congress at a convention center in western Havana. The images were posted Monday on Cuban government Web sites, then widely picked up by electronic state-controlled media.”

In 2015, he did an interview with ABC News and talked about his memories of his mother and her attempt to get to Florida:

“I remember when the boat capsized, when we fell on the sea. I remember when I was put on the raft and my mom was covering me and I was raising my head, looking around… and at some point I raised my head and I didn’t see her again. There was no-one else. I was alone in the middle of the sea … and that’s the last thing I remember.”

“I believe that if today she is not here with me it is because she fought until the very last minute for me to survive. After giving life to me, I believe she was the one who saved me. She was the one who gave life back to me at a time of danger.”

He also told ABC he would be interested in visiting the U.S., not to stay, but to see a baseball game, to go to the museums in Washington and to talk to people.

“For my family it has always been, we always have the desire to say to the American people, to say to each household our gratitude, appreciation and love that we have. Perhaps one day we could pay a visit to the United States. I could personally thank those people who helped us, who were there by our side. Because we’re so grateful for what they did.”

He also talked about his feelings toward the U.S. in a 2017 interview with CNN:

“I think I would have become the poster boy for that group of Cubans in Miami that tries to destroy the revolution, that try to make Cuba look bad. I would have been used in that way. Maybe I would have become an actor on TV or maybe I would have more money than I have here with more comforts, but I wouldn’t have my family. I wouldn’t have the tranquility I have in Cuba.

“My two feet, my body, my mind are in Cuba. But there are times when I think about the United States. I wouldn’t be who I am had I not been in the United States.”

Another subject oft pursued by reporters following the Gonzalez story is his relationship with Castro. The Cuban leader was front and center in the fight to bring him home. He famously showed up at Gonzalez’ 7th birthday party and has seemed to let no opportunity pass to be seen with Gonzalez at public events.

Here’s what he told ABC News:

“I am his friend but above all I consider him my father, my grandfather. Fidel, he is an incredible person. Everyone has his own opinion. It is somewhat difficult to refer to Fidel, because everyone thinks of Fidel as a god or those who reject him call him the devil. But I’ve known one side of Fidel and what I have left to say is he is a normal person. He is a friend. He’s someone you can share with, you can laugh with.”

Gonzalez became more widely available to the media earlier this year on the occasion of his swearing in as a member of Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power. He sounded very much the politician, conciliatory, hopeful and almost pollyannishly optimistic.

He told Andrea Rodriguez of the Associated Press :

“From Cuba, we can do a lot so that we have a more solid country, and I owe it to Cubans. That is what I’m going to try to do from my position, from this place in congress — to contribute to making Cuba a better country.”

In an interview with CNN:

“What we want one day is Cuban exiles are no longer exiled, that they come home. When the young people that have left are willing to work for Cuba, the well-being of Cubans beyond a political party and beyond ideologies. Our doors are open to build a better country which is what we need.”

The passion that was generated by the Elian Gonzalez story is still felt in parts of the Cuban community in Miami. Some there would tell you not to pay too much attention to what you hear in these interviews, that Gonzalez is not free to speak his mind, is mimicking the message the government wants to hear, or simply that he is “brainwashed.”

Earlier this year The Miami Herald opined “At 29, he is a show pony for Cuba, as many exiles feared.”

-0-

Whatever Happened To?

Posted in History, Whatever Happened To? | Tagged Cuba, Elian Gonzalez, Fidel Castro, Little Havana, Miami | 30 Comments

Whatever Happened To? Jennifer Capriati

Posted on November 12, 2023 by Ken Dowell

Jennifer Capriati’s tennis career was nothing short of stellar. She reached the pinnacle of her sport, winning three grand slam titles, an Olympic gold medal and achieving a number one world ranking. Along the way she had victories over Martina Hingis, Monica Selas, Sheffi Graf, Serena Williams and Martina Navratilova. She beat Navratilova when she was 15.

Monica Seles vs Jennifer Capriati in the match that changed women’s tennis! | US Open 1991 Semifinal

And that last little bit is what complicates her legacy. She is remembered for her achievements on the court but perhaps even more so as “the poster child for the dangers of having too much of everything forced upon someone so young.” (Daily Mail, March 2016 )

The Daily Mail story elaborated “Astonishingly good at 14, she went spectacularly off the rails…

“Suffocated by the attention and demands on her – an endorsement by Oil of Olay coincided with an unfortunate outbreak of adolescent spots – Capriati went into teen rebel mode.

“Desperate for normality, she started to dress in black and seek friends outside of tennis. After taking a break from the sport in 1993 she was caught in possession of marijuana and arrested for shoplifting a ring – she has always insisted it was an act of mere forgetfulness.”

In a 1994 story in the New York Times, she told the writer Robin Finn how she felt after losing a first round match at the U.S. Open, “I started out O.K., but at the end of the match I couldn’t wait to get off the court. Totally, mentally, I just lost it…and obviously it goes deeper than that one match. I really was not happy with myself, my tennis, my life, my parents, my coaches, my friends. . . . I spent a week in bed in darkness after that, just hating everything. When I looked in my mirror, I actually saw this distorted image: I was so ugly and so fat, I just wanted to kill myself, really.” It was after that loss that she took a 14-month hiatus from the sport.

Her widely publicized marijuana arrest occurred during that time.

“Capriati’s arrest occurred on May 16 inside a seedy Coral Gables motel room where she was bankrolling a party attended by an assortment of teen-aged revellers she later described as ‘acquaintances, not real friends.’

“What they had in common was a complete lack of interest in Capriati, the tennis player; her generosity with her car and wallet were enough to award her a high ranking in their pecking order.

“What the police, who made two felony arrests and released two others without charging them, found in Capriati’s backpack was just enough marijuana to charge her with misdemeanor possession and snap a mug shot that turned up on TV screens around the globe. Her sponsors dumped her, she went into a 28-day treatment program at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, and learned another lesson.” (NewYork Times, Sept. 26, 1994)

Jennifer Capriati mugshot — 1994 mugshot

She told the Times reporter, “I thought, ‘Am I that big that they have to make such a big deal out of this?’ And I see now that once you’re considered a celebrity, you kind of have no rights to privacy. After that I kind of forgot about everything and everyone except for my brother; all I cared about was having my music and partying with friends.”

It is Capriati’s experience that gave rise to new rules by the tennis federation limiting the number of tournaments a player can participate in under the age of 18. These rules are widely known as the Jennifer Capriati rules. Not surprisingly they are the subject of protest by the parents of other young ‘phenoms.’

Jennifer Capriati — (Image by Bill Mitchell 2003)

Capriati did come back. Her grand slam titles and number one ranking occurred between 2001-2003. She continued playing until 2004 when a series of injuries, back, hamstring and shoulder, ended her career.

Today, you most likely won’t see her hobnobbing with other tennis celebrities in the posh court side seats at the big tournaments. She won’t be called out onto the court to pass out trophies nor will she be chatting it up with other former players in the TV studio.

“Capriati is largely cut adrift from the sport that made her globally famous. She is so detached that she does not even have an agent or management representative.

“Home for her is Singer Island, a three mile strip of land 60 miles north of Miami, and just across a bridge from mainland Palm Beach, the golf mecca where the likes of Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood have homes.

“She lives in a plush block of apartments attached to a five star hotel, with views over a private beach and the Atlantic…

“Whatever else has happened in her life, Capriati must have looked after her money to live in such a place.” (Daily Mail, March 27, 2016.)

She has emerged in public on occasion. She appeared on one episode of the reality TV show ‘The Superstars’ in 2009. Injuries again prevented her from continuing.

In 2012 she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. In her induction speech she said: “I left the game earlier than I expected, earlier than I wanted to, and because of this, I wasn’t able to leave the game on my terms. I was not able to thank everyone who had such a positive impact on my life.”

“I knew [with this honor] I would be able to pay tribute to the game I love and always think about. I would also be able to acknowledge and embrace what my blood, sweat, tears, determination, and heart have brought me. I would be able to remember who I am again and give me a voice again, my one voice, the true voice.” (wtatennis.com)

Jennifer Capriati: Hall of Fame Induction Speech, 2012

Her life on Singer Island has not been quite private enough to keep her out of the headlines. In June of 2010, an overdose episode landed her in the hospital. Here are two differing interpretations of that incident:

ABC News, June 28, 2010.

“Tennis champ Jennifer Capriati is recovering at a south Florida hospital after an accidental overdose of a prescription drug, her spokeswoman said Monday.

“’Jen is recovering fully and speedily,’ spokeswoman Lacey Wickline told Reuters.

“Wickline said the medication had been prescribed for Capriati by her doctor but did not elaborate.”

The Daily Mail, June 29, 2010.

“Former tennis star Jennifer Capriati is reported to have attempted suicide after becoming depressed over her failed career.

“An ex-boyfriend has also claimed she was upset over his decision to return to the adult film industry.

“The 34-year-old, who was found in a ‘dazed’ state on Sunday, is said to have swallowed a handful of pills in an attempt to end her life.

“A city official told the Palm Beach Post: ‘My understanding is that she had a fight with someone early in the morning and she emptied the pill bottle in her mouth.’”

The ex-boyfriend is a porn actor who goes by the name of Dale DaBone (of course he does). His film credits include such classics as ‘BatmanXXX: A Porn Parody’ (he was Batman) and ‘Naughty Reunion.’

More ex-boyfriend problems emerged in 2013 when she was charged with battery and stalking. The Palm Beach Post (March 22, 2013) described that incident:

“She began screaming at (Ivan) Brannan, then stuck her finger in his chest when he was trying to walk away, according to a police report. A witness reported seeing Capriati punch Brannan’s chest four times with a closed fist. Capriati, who lives in an Ocean Drive condo on Singer Island, left the gym while Brannan, 28, called police. The description for the stalking charge says that between Feb. 16 and 18, Capriati did ‘willfully, maliciously and repeatedly follow, harass or cyberstalk’ Brannan.

“On Feb. 18, a co-worker of Brannan’s told North Palm Beach police that Capriati tried to enter a locked door at their office. She was pacing, yelling and pounding on a window. The co-worker told police she was afraid what Capriati would do. She also told police that Capriati called the business up to 50 times a day.

“That was the ninth incident involving Capriati and Brannan in which police were called to investigate. “

On January 14, 2014, the AP reported that the charges were dropped. “Former tennis star Jennifer Capriati won’t have to face battery and stalking charges stemming from a 2013 confrontation with an ex-boyfriend under an agreement announced Monday. Mike Edmondson, spokesman for the Palm Beach County state attorney’s office, said the charges were dropped in exchange for Capriati’s completion of 30 hours of community service and four hours of anger management counseling. Court documents show Capriati attended the anger management sessions last week and did her community service at Florida Hospital Pepin Heart Institute in Tampa.”

Capriati’s father Stefano, the man who foisted her into this career, died in 2015.

He had made Bleacher Report’s list of the Five Worst Tennis Fathers of All-Time. “Stefano Capriati pushed the ‘pushy parent’ model to a whole new level. Notorious for dragging his daughter onto the professional circuit at age 13, Capriati gained a reputation as a bully. In 2002, Jennifer Capriati was not selected for the Fed Cup team largely because her father refused to follow rules. Former USA Today writer Ian O’Connor once wrote that Stefano Capriati used his daughter as ‘a ponytailed ATM.‘’

Capriati had a different take. This is one of her last entries on the site formerly known as Twitter.

-0-

Whatever Happened To?

Posted in Sports | Tagged Jennifer Capriati, sports, tennis | 8 Comments

Kings and Queens, Statesmen and Poets

Posted on November 5, 2023 by Ken Dowell

Images from the National Portrait Gallery, London

Royals

Two images of Richard III by unknown artists

Jane Seymour — Katherine Parr (unknown artist)

Nell Gwyn (by Simon Verelst), Nell Gwyn was one of the first women to perform on a public stage in England. In the 1660’s she was the mistress of King Charles II and had two children by him.

Men of Letters/Women of Substance

Mary Wollstonecraft (one of the founders of British feminism) (by John Opie)

Thomas Paine — Mary Wollstonecraft (one of the founders of British feminism) (by John Opie)

James Joyce — Neville Chamberlain (by Henrty Lamb)

Reframing Women

Self Portrait with Fried Eggs, Sarah Lucas

Germaine Greer — Self Portrait with Fried Eggs, Sarah Lucas

Amy-Blue (Amy Winehouse by Marlese Dumas)

Malala Yousafzai — Amy-Blue (Amy Winehouse by Marlese Dumas)

Posted in Art, History | Tagged art, history, London, museums, National Portrait Gallery, portraits | 2 Comments

Rating the Festival Films

Posted on October 29, 2023 by Ken Dowell

Selections from the 2023 Montclair Film Festival

Evil Does Not Exist ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A quiet, simple, beautiful movie, at least at first. A small village in a remote land of woods and lakes. A small population living with nature, getting their water from the stream that flows through their land, their heat from the firewood they chop.

So where does the question of evil pop up? A Tokyo company buys land in this village and plans to build a glamping site, seeking to turn the area into a tourist attraction. Greed, pollution, profiteering and insensitivity are now introduced into the story.

Two people, a man and a woman, who work for a talent agency, are hired by the developer to be the liaison with the locals. They don’t connect. They don’t connect with their employers either, nor with each other. They are in fact little connected with the life they lead and the choices they’ve made.

Maybe that reminds you of another Japanese movie, Drive My Car. The director is the same, Ryusuke Hamaguchi. If you saw Drive My Car you’ll recognize the pacing. Deliberate. Evil Does Not Exist is much shorter than Drive My Car. I think most of the audience would have wanted it to go a bit longer.

That’s because the ending is all ambiguity. We don’t find out why things happened the way they did, nor are we even sure what exactly happened. If you like to have all the loose ends tied up before a movie ends, this one may not be for you. I found it crazy captivating.

‘Evil Does Not Exist’: first trailer for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Venice award-winner

Fallen Leaves ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Holappa is a construction worker who gets fired from one job after another for drinking on the job. Ansa gets canned from her job stacking grocery store shelves when she gets caught pinching a packet of something that had an old expiration date and was ticketed for the dumpster. She loses her next job when the owner of the pub where she’s washing dishes get hauled away for dealing drugs .

They first encounter each other in a dive karaoke bar where his friend tries to hit on her friend (and gets dissed). They go on a date, to a zombie movie, then she gives him her number. He folds up the paper, puts it in his pocket and two minutes later when he pulls out his cigarette packet the folded paper goes flying out into the gutter.

The settings for this Finnish movie are grim and somber. There’s alcoholics’ bars and job sites where the work is hard and the treatment harsh. There’s small, sparse bunkers where the workers live and dark, deserted streets.

This is a movie of the common man. Average looking folks who lead hard lives, have little money and no hope for the future. The faces of the people in the bars and the stores look as though the life has been beaten out of them, most blankly staring straight ahead. And for Holappa and Ansa, there’s the loneliness as well.

The lost phone number is only the first in a series of obstacles that keeps these two from getting together. But ultimately in this world where the slightest of smiles has outsized meaning, this is a heart-warming love story. And, despite all the grimness, it’s told with a hearty dose of humor.

Fallen Leaves (2023) | Trailer | Aki Kaurismäki Alma Pöysti | Jussi Vatanen

Wilding ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

If you want to see a feel good movie, go for the one with the animals.

Wilding is about a re-wilding project in the south of England. It is mostly narrated by Isabella Tree, author of the “The Book of Wilding” on which the documentary is based. Her husband Charlie inherited a farm only to find that the land had undergone year after year of plowing, insecticides and fertilizer to the point that the soil was farmed out. Based on a project they’d visited in Holland, they decided to undertake a project to restore the land to its natural state.

Where to start? The animals. They bring in horses, cows and pigs and turn them loose. They live not as farm animals but back in their natural state, running free and finding their food and means of survival. What took years and years happens in 90 minutes when you’re watching this movie. What you see is the land come to life. Birds arrive, so do butterflies and worms and mice. There are some landmark moments. Two storks produce a baby for the first time in England in 400 years. And they bring in beavers, animals that had been hunted to extinction in England.

Of course the stars of the show are the animals. It is fascinating to see how these animals easily transformed to a wild existence. We get to see why they do things like digging and nosing through mud. My favorite are the pigs. I could watch them all day.

There is a serious environmental message here. What have we done to the earth’s skin, the soil, and where do we go from here. Re-wilding has apparently become a bit of a thing. It’s not a fast solution, as the 15 years of pictures in this documentary will attest.

Anselm ⭐️⭐️⭐️

When I saw in the program a 3D movie by Wim Wenders about the artist Anselm Kiefer, my first thought was that this is the kind of movie you make after you’ve done everything else in cinema. Turns out that this is not Wenders first 3D movie and that he is a master at it. This is not the Disney fantastical sort of 3D viewed through paper “glasses” with colored cellophane. This is a hyper-realistic 3D viewed through battery-operated viewers that the festival organizers assured are expensive. And when the subject is an artist who does installations, sculptures and 3D paintings, two-dimensional flat screen pictures would pale by comparison.

We see Kiefer at work in old warehouses and factories where he took space in Germany and later France. At work for Kiefer involves burning, melting, pouring, splattering. There’s a series of headless white dresses with objects on top, numerous ruined landscapes and massive murals, damaged airplanes and bicycles. A theme in his work is recognizing Germany’s Nazi past, a statement aimed at a society that wants to forget.

There are some biographical scenes as well with actors playing a younger Kiefer and the artist as a child. There is little narrative. But there is poetry.

This is more a gallery experience than a cinema one. The attraction of the film is the wonder of Wender’s 3D. A great artist plying his trade by documenting another great artist.

Anselm – Official US Trailer

Rule of Two Walls ⭐️⭐️

A documentary about artists in wartime Ukraine. Sometimes you see people trying to live normal lives in abnormal times. Other times you see the devastation. And be forewarned there are some gruesome images of bodies dead and dismembered by Russian bombs. There is no getting away from what’s happening in Ukraine.

The movie is centered in Lviv in a community arts center. There are musicians, visual artists, cinematographers. They tell their stories. Some came to Lviv from harder hit areas like Mariupol or Kharkiv. Some stayed as their families left, some stayed because their families couldn’t leave. Sometimes the distinction between who is in the movie and who is making the movie is blurry.

The “rule of two walls” apparently is an expression that suggests the safest place is the corridor (as opposed to say the bomb shelter).

Putin wants you to think Ukraine is not a nation with a language and a culture. These artists are the embodiment of that culture. And that, folks, is the moral of this story.

If I were to use one word to describe this film it would be uneven. Not sure the translation didn’t leave something to be desired. There were times I felt that I was listening to smart people say profound things, but the words that came up in the subtitles didn’t match those expectations. In the end I don’t feel I got to know these people or their art.

rule of two walls trailer 1080p

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Anselm, Fallen Leaves, film, Montclair Film Festival, movie reviews, movies, Rule of Two Walls, Wilding | 6 Comments

Whatever Happened To? Dave Clark

Posted on October 22, 2023 by Ken Dowell

When the Beatles led music’s so-called British Invasion in the 1960’s, it was not the Rolling Stones who were their chief rival for the attention of teenage girls. Nor was it the Kinks or the Hollies, the Who or the Yardbirds, nor any of the other bands whose music has lived on for decades. It was the Dave Clark Five.

When the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was displaced as number one on the UK singles chart in January 1964, it was by Dave Clark Five’s “Glad All Over.” The Beatles arrived on these shores for a two-month tour in August of 1964. The Dave Clark Five beat them to it, starting a U.S. tour in the spring of that year. There was a much ballyhooed appearance by the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show that same year. The Dave Clark Five graced the Ed Sullivan stage 18 times. The Beatles first movie, “A Hard Day’s Night” debuted in the UK in July 1964 and in the US one month later. Within a year the Dave Clark Five were in theaters with “Catch Us If You Can” (it was released in the US as “Having a Wild Weekend”).

The Beatles popularity never seems to wane. The three surviving band members make occasional appearances and are involved in different music projects. The Rolling Stones just released a new album, their 26th studio album. It’s not unusual to turn on rock radio and hear the Kinks. The Dave Clark Five? They were done and dusted by 1970 at the age of six, rarely to be heard from again.

Dave Clark was the drummer. But he was also manager, producer and co-writer of most of the group’s songs.

Clark would later say of the 1970 break up: “‘People never understood why I did that, but I wanted to get back to being an ordinary person. I enjoyed every moment, but we’d been everywhere, done everything. I wanted to get back to being just Dave Clark, not Dave Clark Celebrity. The only thing I missed was going out on stage and performing.’ (Daily Mail, Feb. 13, 2015)

His drumming is not what led to the group’s success. In fact, it was later learned that he was not always doing the drumming on the Dave Clark Five’s records. This came out in a story by Spencer Leigh in The (London) Independent (Sept. 23, 2009) about studio session drummer Bobby Graham.

“Even at the time, it was suggested that Dave Clark was not playing on his records. Clark has never acknowledged this but Graham told me, ‘Dave wanted to produce and he couldn’t be up in the box and down in the Studio at the same time. Mike Smith had written Glad All Over with him and they weren’t too sure what they wanted from the drums. I was playing how I would normally play with the hi-hat, snare and bass and Dave asked, Bobby, can you make that simpler please? He didn’t want complicated fill-ins he couldn’t play himself on live dates as that would have given the game away.’”

What Clark did do on his own was the numbers. Jeff Tamarkin, writing for the web site Best Classic Bands, says “Clark…was an astute businessman, who, from the start of the group’s recording career, shaped their image, planned their tours and recording sessions and shrewdly negotiated to retain ownership of the band’s master recordings, a smart move that has allowed him to license out the catalog as he’s seen fit ever since.”

Clark also owns the U.S. rights to the Dave Clark Five’s music as well as the recordings of their TV appearances. His deal with EMI Records gave him a much more favorable royalty agreement than was common at the time. “We had a ‘live’ reputation, big enough where I could actually go in and see somebody at E.M.I. Records. I found out what the top rate was for an independent and asked for three times that, thinking that it left you room for maneuver, and to my amazement, they agreed.” (www.classicbands.com) Apparently, if you were a record company in the 60’s that had not signed the Beatles, you were caught in a seller’s market and Clark was savvy enough to take advantage.

It was those agreements signed while managing the band that would start Clark down the path to becoming a multimillionaire and owner of a home in West London valued at 12 million pounds.

Since then Clark has managed Spurs Music Publishing Ltd., the entity that published the Dave Clark Five’s songs. He was also involved in TV production and in the 1980’s acquired the rights to a popular British music TV show from the 60’s “Ready Steady Go!”. In 1986 he wrote a science fiction musical Time that had a two-year run on a London West End Stage. There was a follow-up album, also called Time, that featured Queen’s Freddie Mercury, among others. Clark and Mercury became life-long friends. Clark was at Mercury’s bedside when he died at home in 1991.

What he has not done, and likely never will, is a reunion tour. “I don’t think you can go back, but that’s me. You can’t go back to being a teenager or in your 20s or whatever. The people that carry on, from Elton and McCartney, Rod Stewart, they’ve never stopped. I can understand that, and good luck to them.” (bestclassicbands.com)

In 2008, the Dave Clark Five was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Tom Hanks.

Clark is now 83. He and guitarist Lenny Davidson are the only two living members of the band.

If you want to hear some Dave Clark Five, you might catch some if you tune in the English football games on Saturday morning. Manchester City fans have been known to sing a verse or two of Glad All Over with an altered lyric “cause we’ve got Guardiola” (a tribute to their manager). And Crystal Palace fans offer a hardy rendition of the song before each of their home matches at Selhurst Park in London.

Clark himself is a Tottenham Hotspur supporter. ““My one disappointment in my career is that it didn’t go to Spurs, because my company’s called Spurs Music Publishing. I tried to buy Spurs in the ‘60s and the family who owned it wouldn’t sell it. Going back to the past, the whole reason I formed the band was to raise funds so our youth team could travel to Holland. We got sick on the boat going over, won the match, came back and the rest is history. I’m flattered Crystal Palace use it [as their anthem], but I’m Spurs through and through.” (nme.com Jan. 20, 2020)

-0-

Whatever Happened To?