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AboutEnnis grew up in Cincinnati, the sixth of ten children. In his first life he was an actor and singer; embarking on his second, he completed his BA at Empire State College, where he was a Richard Porter Leach Fellow.
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Both were members of song writing teams that shifted the landscape of American popular music. The titles say it all: try to imagine a world without the Leiber-Stoller penned Jailhouse Rock, Hound Dog, Stand by Me, Yakety Yak, Kansas City, Is that All There Is? Everyone from Peggy Lee to Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen (check…
Continue reading“Who is that?” I recalled thinking as a child when I first saw Jane White in a television version of Once Upon a Mattress. As the imperious Queen Aggravain, her performance was a lesson in comedy and drop-dead stylishness; she was something special, and I looked forward to seeing her again. But sightings were rare—hers…
Continue readingSomething to Look Forward to Dept: Lucille Ball’s birthday is today; had she lived, that madcap comedienne would’ve been 100. But another redhead’s stealing her thunder this week. The season of Lauren Ambrose is upon us; I was elated to see she’s appearing as a rabid press agent on the new season of my favorite…
Continue readingYou could almost call him the voice of America. Dan Peek‘s dry, wary baritone is the one you heard fronting such songs as A Horse with No Name, Tin Man, Ventura Highway and Lonely People. Some would say that America was at the forefront of the California sound that pervaded FM Radio back in the seventies;…
Continue readingUnless you are a fan of television’s Damages (guilty), most people are unfamiliar with the work of the great Tom Aldredge. On that show he played Glenn Close’s protector, the circumspect Uncle Pete in a subtle character portrayal that was typical of a man whose career made more of a mark on the Broadway stage,…
Continue readingToo sad for words. A real talent, gone too soon. RIP, miss…
Continue readingWhen Alexander Steinweiss pitched the idea of using original art on covers used to house vinyl records back in 1937, it revolutionized Columbia Records. Sales soared, and other companies followed suit. Album covers are all but dead now, miniaturized into jewel cases for CDs (whose death knell peals with the advent of MP3s), but some…
Continue readingCancer bulletin: nothing relives the doldrums of my birth month like a good laugh. Good luck finding anything resembling that at the movies; sure, it’s air-conditioned but “rom com” beware. The term alone guarantees the absence of wit, or for that matter, anything resembling human behavior. Which means us humor-mongers must reach back to the…
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