Podcasts about Eliza Doolittle

In this impactful and inspiring episode of Unstoppable Mindset, host Michael Hingson sits down with Ronald Cocking—performer, educator, and co-founder of the Looking Glass Studio of Performing Arts—to reflect on a remarkable life shaped by rhythm, resilience, and love. Ron's journey into the performing arts began at just five years old, when his passion for tap dance ignited a lifelong commitment to dance and musical theater. From his first professional role at age 15 in My Fair Lady to founding one of Southern California's most impactful arts schools, Ron's story is one of dedication, creativity, and community.   But perhaps the most moving part of Ron's story is his 49-year partnership—both personal and professional—with the late Gloria McMillan, best known as Harriet Conklin from Our Miss Brooks. Together, they created a legacy of mentorship through the Looking Glass Studio, where they taught thousands of students across generations—not just how to act, sing, or dance, but how to live with confidence and integrity.   Ron also reflects on the legacy Gloria left behind, his continued involvement in the arts, and the words of wisdom that guide his life:   “Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” “To find happiness, take the gifts God has given you and give them away.”   This is more than a story of a career in the arts—it's a touching tribute to passion, partnership, and purpose that will leave you inspired.   Highlights:   00:48 – Hear how early radio at home shaped a lifetime love for performance. 03:00 – Discover why drumming and tap both trained his ear for rhythm. 06:12 – Learn how a tough studio change led to ballet, jazz, and tumbling basics. 08:21 – See the “sing with your feet” method that makes tap click for students. 10:44 – Find out how a teen chorus role in My Fair Lady opened pro doors. 13:19 – Explore the drum-and-tap crossover he performed with Leslie Uggams. 15:39 – Learn how meeting Gloria led to a studio launched for $800. 18:58 – Get the long view on running a school for 44 years with family involved. 23:46 – Understand how Our Miss Brooks moved from radio to TV with its cast intact. 32:36 – See how 42nd Street proves the chorus can be the star. 41:51 – Hear why impact matters more than fame when students build careers. 43:16 – Learn what it takes to blend art and business without losing heart. 45:47 – Compare notes on marriage, teamwork, and communication that lasts. 48:20 – Enjoy a rare soft-shoe moment Ron and Gloria performed together. 56:38 – Take away the “teach to fish” approach that builds lifelong confidence.   About the Guest:   My father was a trumpet player, thus I heard music at home often in the early 50's and was always impressed and entertained by the rhythms and beats of Big Band music… especially the drummers.  Each time I would see Tap dancers on TV, I was glued to the screen.  It fascinated me the way Tap dancers could create such music with their feet!   In 1954, at age 5, after begging my Mom and Dad to enroll me in a Tap class, my Dad walked in from work and said “Well, you're all signed up, and your first Tap class is next Tuesday.  I was thrilled and continued studying tap and many other dance forms and performing and teaching dance for all of my life.     In my mid teens, I became serious about dancing as a possible career.  After seeing my first musical, “The Pajama Game” starring Ruth Lee, I new I wanted to do musical theatre.  I got my first professional opportunity at age 15 in “My Fair Lady” for the San Bernardino Civic Light Opera Association and loved every minute of it… and would continue performing for this organization well into my 30's   I met Gloria McMillan in the late 60's while choreographing a summer musical for children.  Gloria's daughter was doing the role of Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”.  Then, about 3 or 4 years later I would meet Gloria again and the sparks flew.  And, yes, she was Gloria McMillan of “Our Miss Brooks” fame on both radio and television.  Wow, was I blessed to have crossed paths with her.  We shared our lives together for 49 years.   On November 4, 1974, Gloria and I opened a performing arts school together named “The Looking Glass Studio of Performing Arts”.  We would teach and manage the school together for 44 years until we retired on June 30, 2018.  We moved to Huntington Beach, California and spent 3 beautiful years together until she left to meet our Lord in heaven on January 19, 2022.   Ways to connect with Ron:   Lgsparon@aol.com     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi there, wherever you are and wherever you happen to be today. Welcome to unstoppable mindset. I'm your host, Mike hingson, and today we get to chat with Ron Cocking, who is Ron. Well, we're going to find out over the next hour. And Ron was married for many years to another person who is very famous, and we'll get to that, probably not as well known to what I would probably describe as the younger generation, but you're going to get to learn a lot about Ron and his late wife before we're done, and I am sure we're going to have a lot of fun doing it. So let's get to it. Ron, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.   Ron Cocking ** 01:59 Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. Michael, this. I've been looking forward to this.   Michael Hingson ** 02:04 I have been as well, and we're going to have a lot of fun doing it.   Ron Cocking ** 02:08 Do you one note on that last name? It is cocking. Cocking, he comes right? Comes from a little townlet in the coal mining country of England called Cockington.   Michael Hingson ** 02:20 I don't know why I keep saying that, but yeah, cocky, no   02:23 problem.   Michael Hingson ** 02:24 Well, do you go up to the reps recreations at all?   Ron Cocking ** 02:28 Oh my gosh, Gloria. And I know you and Gloria, did do you still do it? I've it's on my schedule for September.   Michael Hingson ** 02:35 I'm gonna miss it this year. I've got a speech to give. So I was going to be playing Richard diamond at recreation. Well, I'll have to be Dick Powell another time, but I thought that you you were still doing   02:50 it. I'm planning on it cool.   Michael Hingson ** 02:53 Well, tell us about the early Ron cocking and kind of growing up in some of that stuff. Let's start with that.   Ron Cocking ** 02:59 Well, the early part of my story was when I was born just a little before television came in, before everyone had a TV in their home. How old are you now? If I maybe, you know, I am now 76   Michael Hingson ** 03:12 Okay, that's what I thought. Yeah, you're one year ahead of me. I'm 75   Ron Cocking ** 03:16 I was born in 49 and so my earliest remembrances my mom and dad and my brother and I lived with our grandfather, and we had no television, but we had this big it must have been about three to four foot tall, this big box on the floor in a very prominent spot in the living room. And that was the Sunday afternoon entertainment. I remember my family sitting around, and I listened and I laughed when they did, but I had no idea what was going on, but that was the family gathering. And just, I know we'll talk about it later, but I I just have this notion that at that time I was laughing, not knowing what I was laughing at, but I bet I was laughing at my future   Michael Hingson ** 04:02 wife, yes, yes, but other things as well. I mean, you probably laughed at Jack Benny and Amos and Andy and   Ron Cocking ** 04:09 yeah, I remember listening to all those folks, and it was just amazing. Then when television came about and my father was a trumpet player, and I loved his trumpet playing, and he practiced often at home. He would sit in his easy chair and play some tunes and scales and that sort of thing. But what captured my ear and my eyes when I went to on rare occasions when I could go to his engagements, it was always the drummer that just stuck out to me. I was mesmerized by the rhythms that they could produce. And when TV came about, I remember the old variety shows, and they often would have tap dancers like. Had a stair gene, Kelly, Peg Leg Bates and the Nicholas brothers, and I just, I was just taken back by the rhythms. It sounded like music to me. The rhythms just made me want to do it. And so I started putting that bug in my parents ears. And I waited and waited. I wanted to take tap dance lessons. And one day, my dad walks in the back door, and I said, Dad, have you signed me up yet? And he said, Yep, you start next Tuesday at 330 in the afternoon. So I was overjoyed, and I went in for my first lesson. And mind you, this was a private tap class. Total Cost of $1.25 and we had a pianist for music, no record player, live piano, wow. And so I, I rapidly fell in love with tap dance.   Michael Hingson ** 05:56 And so you did that when you weren't in school. Presumably, you did go to school.   Ron Cocking ** 06:00 Oh, yeah, I did go to school. Yeah, I did well in school, and I enjoyed school. I did all the athletics. I played little league, and eventually would be a tennis player and water polo and all that stuff. But all through the years, after school was on the way to the dance classes.   Michael Hingson ** 06:16 So you graduated, or I suppose I don't want to insult drumming, but you graduated from drumming to tap dancing, huh?   Ron Cocking ** 06:24 Well, I kept doing them both together. I would dance, and then when my dad would practice, I would beg him to just play a tune like the St Louis Blues, yeah, and so that I could keep time, so I pulled a little stool up in front of an easy chair, and one of the arms of the chair was the ride cymbal, and the other one was the crash cymbal, and the seat of the chair was my snare drum. I would play along with him. And eventually he got tired of that and bought a Hi Fi for my brother and I, and in the bedroom I had a Hi Fi, and I started to put together a set of drums, and I spent hours next to that, Hi Fi, banging on the drums, and I remember it made me feel good. One day, my mom finally said to me, you know, you're starting to sound pretty good, and that that was a landmark for me. I thought, wow, somebody is enjoying my drumming,   Michael Hingson ** 07:18 but you couldn't do drumming and tap dancing at the same time. That would have been a little bit of a challenge. A challenge.   Ron Cocking ** 07:23 No, I would practice that the drums in the afternoon and then head for the dance studio later. And in this case, I was a local boy. I grew up in Riverside California, and my first tap teacher was literally maybe two miles from our house. But that didn't last long. She got married and became pregnant and closed her studio, and then I she recommended that I go see this teacher in San Bernardino by the name of Vera Lynn. And which I did, I remember walking into this gigantic classroom with a bunch of really tall kids, and I was maybe seven or eight years old, and I guess it was kind of an audition class, but after that evening, I she put me in the most appropriate classes, one of which was ballet, which I wasn't too excited about, but they all told me, If you're going to be a serious dancer, even a tap dancer, you need to get the basic body placement from ballet classes. And I said, Well, I am not going to put any tights and a T shirt on. But they finally got me to do that because they told me that the Rams football team took ballet class twice a week at that time. Ah. Said, no kidding. So they got me, they they got you. They got me into ballet class, and then it was jazz, and then it was tumbling, and so I did it all.   Michael Hingson ** 08:43 I remember when we moved to California when I was five, and probably when I was about eight or nine, my brother and I were enrolled by my mother. I guess my parents enrolled us in a dance class. So I took dance class for a few years. I learned something about dancing. I did have a pair of tap shoes, although I didn't do a lot of it, but I, but I did dance and never, never really pursued it enough to become a Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire. Well, few of us do. I didn't dislike it. It just didn't happen. But that was okay, but it was fun to, you know, to do it and to learn something about that. And so I even today, I I remember it, and I appreciate it. So that's pretty cool.   Ron Cocking ** 09:32 Well, you would understand what I always told my students, that tap dancing is like singing a song with your feet. Yeah. And I would sing, I would say, you all know, happy birthday, right? So I would sing it, and they would sing it along, and then I'd said, then I would sing it again, and I would sing it totally out of rhythm. And they would wrinkle their nose and look at me and say, okay, so what are you doing? And I'd say, Well, you don't recognize it because the rhythm is not correct. So then I would. Would tap dance Happy birthday, and I'd say, you sing along in your mind and I'm going to tap dance it. And that would always ring a bell in their mind, like, Oh, I get it. The rhythm has to be right on the button, or the people aren't going to recognize   Michael Hingson ** 10:16 that was very clever to do.   Ron Cocking ** 10:18 Yeah, thank you. And they got it, yeah, they got it, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 10:22 which is even, even more important. That's pretty clever. Well, so you did that, and did you do it all the way through high school,   Ron Cocking ** 10:30 all the way through high school? And I think when I was 15, I was, I think I was in the eighth grade, maybe ninth, but I was 15 and got my first chance to I was cast in a professional show for San Bernardino civic light opera Association. And the show was My Fair Lady, and it was my English and journalism teacher at the junior high who had been cast. He was a performer also, but something came up and he couldn't follow through, so he had given the association my name, and I was out in the backyard. My mom came out. Said, Hey, San Bernardino clo just called and they want, they want to see it tonight at seven o'clock. So I put on my dance clothes and went over, and the director, by the name of Gosh, Gene Bayless, came out, and he showed me a couple of steps. And he said, Yeah, let's do it together. And he said, Boy, you unscramble your feet pretty well there kid. And he he looked over into the costumers and said, measure this guy. Let's put him in the show. So I was beside myself. And long story short, I Gosh, I'm over the over the years, I my first show was at age 15 with them, and I participated, did shows with them, until I think my last show, I was about 38 years old, and that last show was anything goes with Leslie uggums, wow.   Michael Hingson ** 11:52 So what part did you play on my fair lady?   Ron Cocking ** 11:55 I was just a chorus kid. I remember in the opening when Eliza sings, that wouldn't it be lovely? Wouldn't it be lovely? I was a street sweeper. I remember I had a broom, and there were three of us, and we were sweeping up that street and working in and around. Eliza Doolittle, of   Michael Hingson ** 12:11 course, being really spiteful. You just said a little while ago, you were beside yourself. And the thing that I got to say to that, quoting the Muppets, is, how do the two of you stand each other? But anyway, that's okay, good in the original Muppet Movie, that line is in there. And I it just came out so fast, but I heard it. I was going, Oh my gosh. I couldn't believe they did that. But anyway, it was so cute, very funny. That's great. So and then you were, you eventually were opposite Leslie UB,   Ron Cocking ** 12:39 yes, that was one of the high points talking about dancing and drumming at the same time. In fact, I used to give a drum a basic drum summer camp where I would teach tappers the basics of music notation, quarter notes, eighth notes, 16th notes. And then we would put a tap orchestra together. Everybody had their own music stand and their own drum pad. I would conduct, and we would play little pieces, and they would they would drum a rhythm, tap, a rhythm, drum, a rhythm, tap, a rhythm. And so anyway, it came full circle. One of the highlights of my dance slash drumming career was this show I did with Leslie uggums, the director had done this prior, and he knew it would work, and so so did the conductor in the entre Act. The top of the second act, the pit orchestra starts and plays like eight measures. And then there were six of us on stage, behind the main curtain, and we would play the next 16 bars, and then we would toss it back to the pit, and then toss it back to us, and the curtain would begin to rise, and we were right into the first song that Leslie uggums sang to get into the second act. Then she wanted to add a couple of songs that she liked, and she was very popular in with the audiences in San Bernardino, so she added a couple of songs, and I got to play those songs with her and and that was just so thrilling. And I with the scene finished, I had to have my tap shoes on, on the drum set. I had to hop down from the riser, and came out, brought one of my Toms with me, and played along with another featured tap dancer that kind of took over the scene at that point. So it was, it was really cool.   Michael Hingson ** 14:31 So with all this drumming, did you ever meet anyone like buddy rip?   Ron Cocking ** 14:35 No, I never met any famous drummers except a man by the name of Jack Sperling, which was one of my drumming idols,   Michael Hingson ** 14:44 Donnie Carson was quite the drummer, as I recall,   Ron Cocking ** 14:48 yeah, he did play yeah and boy, his his drummer, Ed Shaughnessy on his on The Tonight Show was phenomenal. Yeah, he's another of my favorites, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 14:57 well, and I remember. I guess Johnny Carson and Buddy Rich played together, which was kind of fun. They   Ron Cocking ** 15:07 played together, and so did Ed Shaughnessy and Buddy Rich did a little competition on the show one time I realized, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 15:15 right, yeah. Well, and it's interesting to see some of the performers do that. I remember once trying to remember whether what show it was on, maybe it was also a Tonight Show where Steve Martin substituted for Johnny, but he and the steel Canyon, the Steve Canyon band, came out. Of course, he was great on the band, and then flat and Scruggs or flat came out. Or which one? Yeah, which one did the banjo flat, I think, but they, but they banjo together, which was fun?   Ron Cocking ** 15:51 Oh, wow, yeah, yeah. Steve Martin is a tremendous band. He is, Whoa, yeah. I,   Michael Hingson ** 15:56 I have a hard time imagining fingers moving that fast, but that's okay, me too. I saved my fingers for Braille, so it's okay. So where did you go to college?   Ron Cocking ** 16:07 I went to for two years to Riverside City College, Riverside Community College, and then I went for two years to San Bernardino Cal State, San Bernardino, and I was majoring in English because I thought I may want to do some writing. But in the meantime, I became married, I became a father, and so I was trying to work and study and maintain a family life, and I just couldn't do it all. So I didn't quite finish a major at Cal State San Bernardino. I continued actually a nightclub drumming career. And now, now we're getting up to where this our performing arts studio began between Gloria and I.   Michael Hingson ** 16:50 So was it? GLORIA? You married first?   Ron Cocking ** 16:53 No, okay, no, Gloria was married. Gloria was a prior, prior marriage for 20 some years, or 20 years, I guess. And I had been married only two years, I think. And when we first, well, we actually met while we were both. I'll tell you the story in a minute, if you want to hear it. Sure, the first time I ever met Gloria Macmillan, I had no idea who she was, because she her name was Gloria Allen at the time that was, that was her married name that she took after the arm is Brooks TV show. Well, she took that the new name before the TV show even ended. But I was choreographing a children's summer musical, and the director came up said, hey, I want you to meet this young lady's mom. So the young lady was Gloria's daughter, her oldest daughter, Janet. And I said, Sure. So he said, This is Gloria. Allen, Gloria, this is Ron. And we shook hands, and I said, Nice to meet you. And that was it. And so the show happened. It ran for a couple of weeks, and Gloria was a wonderful stage mom. She she never bothered anyone. She watched the show. She was very supportive of her daughter. Didn't, didn't stage manage   Michael Hingson ** 18:09 whatsoever, which wasn't a helicopter mom, which is good,   Ron Cocking ** 18:12 definitely that, which was just really cool. So and so I was maybe three, four years later, so Gloria obviously knew that I could dance, because she had seen me choreographed. So I got a phone call from Gloria Allen, and I said, Okay, I remember her. She wanted to meet because she was thinking about starting an acting school and wanted someone to teach actors some dance movement. So I went over for a interview and took my little at that time, about two and a half year old, daughter, three year old, and we chatted, and oh my gosh, I just this, this beautiful woman swept me off my feet. And of course, I by the end of the conversation, I said, Gosh, you know, we talked about how we would integrate the acting and the dance, and I said, Can I have your phone number? Nope, I got the old well, we'll call you. Don't call us. And so I had to wait for a few days before I got a call back, but I got a call back, and I don't remember a lot of details, but the sparks flew really, really quickly, and we started planning our school. And if you can believe that this was 1973 when we started planning, maybe it was early 74 and we invested a whole total of $800 to get ourselves into business. We bought a record player, some mirrors, some paint, and a business license and a little shingle to hang out front. We had a little one room studio, and we. Opened on November 4, 1974 and we would close the studio on June 30, 2018 Wow.   Michael Hingson ** 20:08 Yeah. So you, you had it going for quite a while, almost, well, actually, more than 40 years. 44 years. 44 years, yes. And you got married along the way.   Ron Cocking ** 20:20 Well along the way, my my wife always said she fell in love with my daughter, and then she had to take me along with her. Yeah. Well, there you go. So we were together constantly, just running the school together. And then eventually I moved over to San Bernardino, and it was, gosh, some 1213, years later, we got married in on June 28 1987 and but nothing really changed, because we had already been living together and raising five children. GLORIA had four from a private prior marriage, and I had my little girl. So we we got all these five kids through elementary and junior high in high school, and they all went to college. And they're all beautiful kids and productive citizens, two of them still in show biz. Her son, my stepson, Christopher Allen, is a successful producer now and of Broadway shows. And our daughter, Barbara Bermudez, the baby that Gloria fell in love with. She's now a producer slash stage manager director. She does really well at big events with keynote speakers. And she'll, if they want her to, she will hire in everything from lighting and sound to extra performers and that sort of thing. And she's, she's just busy constantly all over the world, wow.   Michael Hingson ** 21:43 Well, that's pretty cool. And what are the other three doing?   Ron Cocking ** 21:47 One is a VP of Sales for it's a tub and shower company, jacuzzi, and the other one is a married housewife, but now she is a grandmother and has two little grandkids, and they that's Janet, the one that I originally had worked with in that children's show. And she and her husband live in Chino Hills, California, which is about 40 minutes from here. I live in Huntington Beach, California now,   Michael Hingson ** 22:14 well, and I'm not all that far away from you. We're in Victorville. Oh, Victorville, okay, yeah, the high desert. So the next time you go to Vegas, stop by on your way, I'll do that, since that's mainly what Victorville is probably most known for. I remember when I was growing I grew up in Palmdale, and Palmdale wasn't very large. It only had like about 20 703,000 people. But as I described it to people, Victorville wasn't even a speck on a radar scope compared to Palmdale at that time. Yeah, my gosh, are over 120,000 people in this town?   Ron Cocking ** 22:51 Oh, I remember the drive in the early days from here to Vegas in that you really felt like you could get out on the road all alone and relax and take it all in, and now it can be trafficking all all the   Speaker 1 ** 23:04 way. Yeah, it's crazy. I don't know. I still think they need to do something to put some sort of additional infrastructure, and there's got to be another way to get people to Vegas and back without going on i 15, because it is so crowded, especially around holidays, that one of these days, somebody will get creative. Maybe they'll get one of Tesla's tunnel boring tools, and they'll make a tunnel, and you can go underground the whole way, I don't know,   Ron Cocking ** 23:32 but that would be, that would be great. Something like that would happen.   Michael Hingson ** 23:38 Well, so you you started the school and and that did, pretty cool. Did, did Gloria do any more acting after our Miss Brooks? And then we should explain our Miss Brooks is a show that started on radio. Yes, it went on to television, and it was an arm is Brooks. Miss Brooks played by e vardin. Was a teacher at Madison High, and the principal was Osgood Conklin, played by Gail Gordon, who was absolutely perfect for the part. He was a crotchety old curmudgeon by any standards. And Gloria played his daughter, Harriet correct. And so when it went from radio to television, one of the things that strikes me about armas Brooks and a couple of those shows, burns and Allen, I think, is sort of the same. Jack Benny was a little different. But especially armas Brooks, it just seems to me like they they took the radio shows and all they did was, did the same shows. They weren't always the same plots, but it was, it was radio on television. So you, you had the same dialog. It was really easy for me to follow, and it was, was fascinating, because it was just like the radio shows, except they were on television.   Ron Cocking ** 24:56 Yeah, pretty much. In fact, there were a lot, there's lots of episodes. Episodes that are even named the same name as they had on the radio, and they're just have to be reworked for for the television screen,   Michael Hingson ** 25:08 yeah, but the the dialog was the same, which was so great,   Ron Cocking ** 25:13 yeah, yeah. And to see what was I going to add, it was our Miss Brooks was one of the very few radio shows that made the transition to television with the cast with the same intact. Yeah, everybody looked like they sounded. So it worked when they were in front of the camera. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 25:33 it sort of worked with Jack Benny, because most of the well, all the characters were in it, Don Wilson, Mary, Livingston, Dennis day, Rochester, world, yeah. And of course, Mel Blanc, yeah, oh.   Ron Cocking ** 25:49 GLORIA tells a story. She she and her mom, Hazel, were walking down the street on the way to do a radio show in the old days in Hollywood, and here comes Mel blank, he says, he pulls over. Says, Hey, where are you girls headed because I know that he probably recognized them from being at at CBS all the time, and they said, We're headed to CBS. He said, hop in. Oh, that's where I'm going. So Mel Brooks gave her a ride to the Mel Blanc, yeah, would have been   Michael Hingson ** 26:15 fun if Mel Brooks had but that's okay, Young Frankenstein, but that's another story. It is. But that's that's cool. So did they ever? Did she ever see him any other times? Or was that it?   Ron Cocking ** 26:30 No, I think that was it. That's the one story that she has where Mel Blanc is involved.   Michael Hingson ** 26:36 What a character, though. And of course, he was the man of a million voices, and it was just incredible doing I actually saw a couple Jack Benny shows this morning and yesterday. One yesterday, he was Professor LeBlanc teaching Jack Benny how to play the violin, which was a lost cause.   Ron Cocking ** 26:59 Actually, Jack Benny was not a bad view. No,   Michael Hingson ** 27:01 he wasn't violent. No, he wasn't. He had a lot of fun with it, and that stick went straight in from radio to television, and worked really well, and people loved it, and you knew what was going to happen, but it didn't matter. But it was still   Ron Cocking ** 27:16 funny, and I'm sure during the transition they there was a little bit of panic in the writers department, like, okay, what are we going to do? We got to come up with a few shows. We got to get ahead a little bit. So the writing being just a little different, I'm sure that's part of the reason why they went back and kind of leaned on the old, old script somewhat, until they kind of cut their teeth on the new this new thing called television   Michael Hingson ** 27:39 well, but they still kept a lot of the same routines in one way or another.   Ron Cocking ** 27:45 Yeah, when they work, they work, whether you're just listening or whether you're watching,   Michael Hingson ** 27:48 right, exactly what other shows made it from radio to television with the cast   Ron Cocking ** 27:53 intact? You know, I am not up on that number. I   Michael Hingson ** 27:57 know there were a couple that did. RMS, Brooks was, well, oh no, I was gonna say Abbott and Costello, but that was different, but our Miss Brooks certainly did. If   Ron Cocking ** 28:09 the Bickersons did, I forget the two actors that did that show, but that was a really, Francis   Michael Hingson ** 28:13 Langford and Donna Michi could be, but I think burns and Allen, I think, kept the same people as much as there were. Harry bonzell was still with them, and so on. But it was interesting to see those. And I'm awake early enough in the morning, just because it's a good time to get up, and I get and be real lazy and go slowly to breakfast and all that. But I watched the Benny show, and occasionally before it, I'll watch the burns and Allen show. And I think that the plots weren't as similar from radio to television on the burns and Allen show as they weren't necessarily in the Benny show, but, but it all worked.   Ron Cocking ** 28:58 Yeah, yeah. That's why they were on the air for so long?   Michael Hingson ** 29:02 Yeah, so what other kind of acting did Gloria do once? So you guys started the school   Ron Cocking ** 29:10 well after she well, when we started the school, we found ourselves, you know, raising five children. And so I continued playing nightclub gigs. I had one, one nightclub job for like, five years in a row with two wonderful, wonderful musicians that were like fathers to me. And Gloria actually went to work for her brother in law, and she became a salesperson, and eventually the VP of Sales for a fiberglass tub and shower business down here in Santa Ana. So she drove that 91 freeway from San Bernardino, Santa Ana, all the time. But in,   Michael Hingson ** 29:47 yeah, you could do it back then, much more than now. It was a little better   Ron Cocking ** 29:51 and but in, but twist in between, she managed. Her mom still did a little bit of agency. And she would call Gloria and say. Want you to go see so and so. She did an episode of perfect strangers. She did an episode with Elliot of the guy that played Elliot Ness, stack the show Robert Stack the show was called Help Wanted no see. I guess that was an in but wanted, anyway, she did that. She did a movie with Bruce Dern and Melanie Griffith called Smile. And so she kept, she kept her foot in the door, but, but not, not all that much she she really enjoyed when John Wilder, one of her childhood acting buddies, who she called her brother, and he still calls her sis, or he would call her sis, still. His name was Johnny McGovern when he was a child actor, and when he decided to try some movie work, he there was another Johnny McGovern in Screen Actors Guild, so he had to change his name to John Wyler, but he did that mini series called centennial, and he wanted Gloria for a specific role, to play a German lady opposite the football player Alex Karras. And they had a couple of really nice scenes together. I think she was in three, maybe four of the segments. And there were many segments, it was like a who's who in Hollywood, the cast of that show   Michael Hingson ** 31:28 does that was pretty cool.   Ron Cocking ** 31:32 But anyway, yeah, after Gloria finished armas Brooks, she became married to Gilbert Allen, who, who then became a Presbyterian minister. So Gloria, when you said, Did she continue acting? There's a lot of acting that goes on being a minister and being a minister's wife, and she would put together weddings for people, and that sort of thing. And she did that for 20 years. Wow. So she Gloria was a phenomenon. She did so many things. And she did them all so very well, in my   Speaker 1 ** 32:04 opinion. And so did you? Yeah, which is, which is really cool. So you, but you, you both started the school, and that really became your life's passion for 44 years. Yes,   Ron Cocking ** 32:16 we would get up in the mornings, go do a little business, come home, have a little lunch, go back about 132 o'clock, and we would normally crank up about four after the kids get out of school, and we would teach from four to nine, sometimes to 10. Go out, have some dinner. So yeah, we pretty much 24/7 and we had had such similar backgrounds. Hers on a national radio and television scale, and mine on a much more local, civic light opera scale. But we both had similar relations with our our moms after after the radio tapings and the TV things. GLORIA And her mom. They lived in Beverly Hills, right at Wilshire and Doheny, and they had their favorite chocolate and ice cream stops. And same thing for me, my mom would take me there, two doors down from the little studio where I was taking my tap classes. There was an ice cream parlor, haywoods ice cream. And that was, that was the the lure, if you go in and if you do your practicing, Ronnie, you can, I'll take it for an ice cream so that I did my practicing, had plenty of little treats on the way, so we had that in common, and we both just had very supportive moms that stayed out of the way, not, not what I would call a pushy parent, or, I think you mentioned the helicopter, helicopter, but it   Michael Hingson ** 33:37 but it sounds like you didn't necessarily need the bribes to convince you to tap dance, as you know, anyway, but they didn't hurt.   Ron Cocking ** 33:46 No, it didn't hurt at all, and it was something to look forward to, but I I just enjoyed it all along. Anyway, I finally got to to really showcase what I could do when I was cast as the dance director in the show 42nd street. Oh, wow. And I was lucky. We were lucky. San Bernardino clo was able to hire John Engstrom, who had done the show on Broadway. The earlier version that came, I think it was on Broadway in the mid or to late 70s. He had worked side by side with Gower Champion putting the show together. He told us all sorts of stories about how long it took Gower to put together that opening dance. Because everything in the opening number you you see those steps later in the show done by the chorus, because the opening number is an audition for dancers who want to be in this new Julian Marsh show. So the music starts, the audience hears, I know there must have been 20 of us tapping our feet off. And then a few seconds later, the curtain rises about two and a half feet. And then they see all these tapping feet. And then the main curtain goes out, and there we all are. And. I my part. I was facing upstage with my back to the audience, and then at some point, turned around and we did it was the most athletic, difficult, two and a half minute tap number I had ever done, I'll bet. But it was cool. There were five or six kids that had done it on Broadway and the national tour. And then during that audition, one more high point, if we have the time, we I was auditioning just like everybody else. The director had called and asked if I would audition, but he wasn't going to be choreographing. John Engstrom was so with there was probably 50 or 60 kids of all ages, some adults auditioning, and at one point, John pulled out one of the auditioners, and he happened to be one of my male tap dance students. And he said, Now I want everybody to watch Paul do this step. Paul did the step. He said, Now he said, Paul, someone is really teaching you well. He said, everybody that's the way to do a traveling timestamp so and that, you know, I'll remember that forever. And it ended up he hired. There were seven myself and seven other of my students were cast in that show. And some of them, some of them later, did the show in Las Vegas, different directors. But yeah, that, that was a high point for me.   Speaker 1 ** 36:19 I'm trying to remember the first time I saw 42nd street. I think I've seen it twice on Broadway. I know once, but we also saw it once at the Lawrence Welk Resorts condo there, and they did 42nd street. And that was a lot of that show was just a lot of fun. Anyway,   Ron Cocking ** 36:39 it's a fun show. And as John said in that show, The chorus is the star of the show.   Speaker 1 ** 36:45 Yeah, it's all about dancing by any by any definition, any standard. It's a wonderful show. And anybody who is listening or watching, if you ever get a chance to go see 42nd street do it, it is, it is. Well, absolutely, well worth it.   Ron Cocking ** 37:00 Yeah, good. Good show. Fantastic music, too. Well.   Michael Hingson ** 37:03 How did you and Gloria get along so well for so long, basically, 24 hours a day, doing everything together that that I would think you would even be a little bit amazed, not that you guys couldn't do it, but that you did it so well, and so many people don't do it well,   Ron Cocking ** 37:21 yeah, I don't know I from, from the the first time we met, we just seemed to be on the same wavelength. And by the way, I found out as time went by, Gloria was like Mrs. Humble. She wasn't a bragger, very humble. And it took me a while to find out what an excellent tap dancer she was. But when we went to the studio in the early days, we had, we just had one room. So she would teach actors for an hour, take a break. I would go in teach a tap class or a movement class or a ballet class. I in the early days, I taught, I taught it all. I taught ballet and jazz and and and and   Michael Hingson ** 38:01 tap. Well, let's let's be honest, she had to be able to tap dance around to keep ahead of Osgoode Conklin, but that's another story.   Ron Cocking ** 38:09 Yeah. So yeah, that. And as our studio grew, we would walk every day from our first studio down to the corner to a little wind chills donut shop wind chills donuts to get some coffee and come back. And about a year and a half later, after walking by this, this retail vacant spot that was two doors from our studio, we said, I wonder if that might be, you know, something for us, it had a four lease sign. So, long story short, we released it. The owner of the property loved knowing that Gloria Macmillan was that space. And so luckily, you know when things are supposed to happen. They happen as people would move out next to us, we would move in. So we ended up at that particular studio with five different studio rooms. Wow. And so then we can accommodate all of the above, acting, singing classes, all the dance disciplines, all at the same time, and we can, like, quadruple our student body. So then we made another move, because the neighborhood was kind of collapsing around us, we made another room and purchased a building that had been built as a racquetball club. It had six racquetball courts, all 20 by 40, beautiful hardwood. We made four of them, five of them into studios, and then there was a double racquetball racquetball court in the front of the building which they had tournaments in it was 40 by 40 we moved. We made that into a black box theater for Gloria. And the back wall of the theater was one inch glass outside of which the audiences for the racquetball tournaments used to sit. But outside the glass for us, we had to put curtains there, and out front for us was our. Gigantic lobby. The building was 32,000 square feet. Wow, we could it just made our heart, hearts sing when we could walk down that hallway and see a ballet class over here, a tap class over there, singers, singing actors in the acting room. It was beautiful. And again, it was just meant for us because it was our beautiful daughter, Kelly, who passed away just nine months after Gloria did. She's the one that said, you guys ought to look into that. And I said, Well, it's a racquetball court. But again, the first moment we walked in the front door, you start. We started thinking like, whoa. I think we could make this work. And it worked for another 20 years for us and broke our hearts to basically rip it apart, tear the theater down, and everything when we were moving out, because we we couldn't find another studio that was interested in in coming in, because they would have had to purchase the building. We wanted to sell the building. Yeah. So anyway, of all things, they now sell car mufflers out of there.   Michael Hingson ** 41:02 That's a little different way, way. Yeah, social shock, did any of your students become pretty well known in the in the entertainment world?   Ron Cocking ** 41:11 I wouldn't say well known, but a lot of them have worked a lot and made careers. Some of our former students are now in their 50s, middle 50s, pushing 60, and have done everything from cruise ship to Las Vegas to regional some national tours, even our son, Christopher, he did the national tour of meet me in St Louis with Debbie Boone, okay, and he's the one that is Now a successful producer. He's his latest hit. Well, his first, what can be considered legitimately a Broadway hit show was the show called shucked, and it opened about two years ago, I think, and I finally got to go back to New York and see it just a month before it closed. Very hilarious. Takes place in Iowa. The whole show is built around a county in which everybody that lives there makes their living off of corn, making whiskey. And it is a laugh, way more than a laugh a minute. But anyway, we had one of Gloria's acting students who was hired on with a Jonathan Winters TV sitcom called Davis rules. It ran for two seasons, and here he was like 16 or 17 years old, making, I think it was. He was making $8,000 a week, and he was in heaven. He looked like the Son he played, the grandson of Jonathan Winters and the son of Randy Quaid and so he, yeah, he was in heaven. And then after that, he did a very popular commercial, the 711 brain freeze commercial for Slurpee. The Slurpee, yeah, and he made the so much money from that, but then he kind of disappeared from showbiz. I don't know what he's doing nowadays,   Speaker 1 ** 43:00 but it's, it's, it's interesting to, you know, to hear the stories. And, yeah, I can understand that, that not everybody gets to be so famous. Everybody knows them, but it's neat that you had so many people who decided to make entertainment a career. So clearly, you had a pretty good influence on a lot of, a lot of kids.   Ron Cocking ** 43:20 Yes, I over the years, Gloria and I felt like we had 1000s of children of our own, that they that we had raised together. It's really a good feeling. And I still get phone calls. We got a phone call once a few years back from from one of our students who had been trying to crack the nut in New York, and she called us like 530 in the morning, because, of course, it was Yeah, but she had just signed her first national tour contract and was going to go out with the show cabaret. So fortunately, we were able to drive up to Santa not let's see, it's just below San San Jose. The show came through San Jose, and we got to see her up there. But those kinds of things are what made us keep teaching, year after year, all these success stories. Of course, we have former students that are now lawyers. Those are actors. Well, we   Michael Hingson ** 44:17 won't hold it and we understand, yeah and they are actors, by all means. How many teachers did you have in the studio when you had the big building?   Ron Cocking ** 44:26 Gosh, at one time, we had 10 or 12 teachers, teaching vocal teachers, two or three ballet teachers, jazz teachers, and you both taught as well. And we both continued teaching all through that time. We never just became managers, although that's that was part of it, and mixing business with art is a challenge, and it takes kind of a different mindset, and then what an unstoppable mindset you have to have in order to mix business with performing, because it's too. Different sides of your brain and a lot of patience and a lot of patience. And guess who taught me patience? Uh huh, Gloria Macmillan.   Michael Hingson ** 45:09 I would Conklin's daughter, yes, and I'll bet that's where she learned patience. No, I'm just teasing, but yeah, I hear you, yeah. Well, I know Karen and I were married for 40 years, until she passed in November of 2022 and there's so many similarities in what you're talking about, because we we could do everything together. We had challenges. Probably the biggest challenge that we ever had was we were living in Vista California, and I was working in Carlsbad, and the president of our company decided that we should open an office, because I was being very successful at selling to the government, we should open an office in the DC area. And so we both got excited about that. But then one day he came in and he had this epiphany. He said, No, not Virginia. I want you to open an office in New York. And Karen absolutely hated that she was ready to go to Virginia and all that.   Speaker 1 ** 46:15 But the problem for me was it was either move to New York or take a sales territory that didn't sell very much anymore. The owner wasn't really willing to discuss it, so we had some challenges over that, but the marriage was strong enough that it that it worked out, and we moved to New Jersey, and Karen made a lot of friends back there, but, you know, we always did most everything together. And then when the pandemic occurred, being locked down, it just proved all the more we just did everything together. We were together. We talked a lot, which is, I think one of the keys to any good marriages, and you talk and communicate.   Ron Cocking ** 46:56 Yes, in fact, when after we closed the studio in 2018 it took us a few more months to sell our home, and then when we moved down here, it was only about, I don't know, I don't know if it was a full year or not, but the pandemic hit and but it really didn't bother us, because we had, we had been working the teaching scene for so many years that we basically Were done. We basically walked out of the studio. We did. Neither of us have the desire to, well, let's continue in at some level, no, we cherished our time together. We have a little porch out in front of our home here, and it gets the ocean breeze, and we would sit for hours and chat. And oddly enough, not oddly, one of our favorite things to do, we have a website that we went to that had, I think, every radio show of armas Brooks ever made. And we would sit listen to those and just laugh. And, in fact, Gloria, there are some. She said, You know what? I don't even remember that episode at all. So yeah, that that was an interesting part. But yeah, Gloria and I, like your wife and you really enjoyed time together. We never talked about needing separate vacations or anything if we wanted to do something. We did it   Speaker 1 ** 48:16 together, yeah, and we did too. And you know, for us it was, it was out of desire, but also was easier for us, because she was in a wheelchair her whole life. I was I'm blind. I've been blind my whole life. And as I tell people, the marriage worked out well. She read, I pushed, and in reality, that really is the way it worked, yeah, yeah. Until she started using a power chair. Then I didn't push. I kept my toes out of the way. But still, it was, it was really did meld and mesh together very well and did everything   Ron Cocking ** 48:49 together. That's fantastic. I'm proud of you, Michael, and it really   Michael Hingson ** 48:53 it's the only way to go. So I miss her, but like, I keep telling people she's somewhere monitoring me, and if I misbehave, I'm going to hear about it. So I got to be a good kid,   Ron Cocking ** 49:04 and I'll hear I'll get some notes tonight from the spirit of Gloria McMillan too. I prayed to her before I went on. I said, please let the words flow and please not let me say anything that's inappropriate. And I think she's guided me through okay so far.   Michael Hingson ** 49:20 Well, if, if you do something you're not supposed to, she's gonna probably hit you upside the head. You know, did you two ever actually get to perform together?   Ron Cocking ** 49:30 Oh, I'm glad you asked that, because, well, it had been years since I knew that she was a darn good tap dancer. In fact, I had a tap dancing ensemble of of my more advanced kids, and if they wanted to dedicate the extra time that it took, we rehearsed them and let them perform at free of charge once they made it to that group, they they did not pay to come in and rehearse with me, because I would spend a lot of time standing there creating so. So we were doing a performance, and we wanted to spotlight, I forget the exact reason why we wanted to spotlight some of Gloria's career. Talk about radio a little bit. And I said, Gloria, would you do a little soft shoe routine? And because we had invited a mutual friend of ours, Walden Hughes, from the reps organization, and he was going to be the guest of honor, so I talked her into it. At first she wasn't going to go for it, but we had so much fun rehearsing it together. And it wasn't a long routine, it was relatively short, beautiful music, little soft shoe, and it was so much fun to say that we actually tap danced together. But the other times that we actually got to work together was at the old time radio conventions, mostly with reps, and that's really when I got to sit on stage. I was kind of typecast as an announcer, and I got to do some commercials. I got to sing once with Lucy arnazza. Oh, life, a life boy soap commercial. But when Gloria, Well, Gloria did the lead parts, and oh my gosh, that's when I realized what a superb actress she was. And if I don't know if you've heard of Greg Oppenheimer, his father, Jess Oppenheimer created the I Love Lucy shows, and so Gloria loved Jess Oppenheimer. And so Greg Oppenheimer, Jess Son, did a lot of directing, and oh my gosh, I would see he came in very well prepared and knew how the lines should be delivered. And if Gloria was not right on it, he would say, No, wait a minute, Gloria, I want you to emphasize the word decided, and that's going to get the laugh. And when he gave her a reading like that man, the next time she went through that dialog, just what he had asked for. And I thought, Oh my gosh. And her timing, after watching so many armist Brooks TV and listening to radio shows. GLORIA learned her comedic timing from one of the princesses of comedy timing is Eve Arden, right? They were so well for obvious reasons. They were so very similar. And if you have time to story for another story, do you know have you heard of Bob Hastings? He was the lieutenant on McHale's navy. McHale's Navy, right? Yeah. Well, he also did a lot of old time radio. So we went up to Seattle,   Michael Hingson ** 52:32 our two grandkids, Troy Amber, he played, not Archie. Was it Henry Aldridge? He was on,   Ron Cocking ** 52:40 I think you're right. I'm not too up on the cast of the old time radio show. Yeah, I think you're right. But anyway, he was there, and there was an actress that had to bow out. I don't know who that was, but our grandsons and Gloria and I, we walked in, and as usual, we say hi to everybody. We're given a big packet of six or eight scripts each, and we go to our room and say, Oh my gosh. Get out the pencils, and we start marking our scripts. So we get a phone call from Walden, and he said, hey, Ron Bob. Bob Hastings wants to see Gloria in his room. He wants to read through he's not sure if he wants to do the Bickersons script, because he you know, the gal bowed out and right, you know, so Gloria went down   Michael Hingson ** 53:23 couple of doors, coming   Ron Cocking ** 53:26 Yes, and she so she came back out of half an hour, 40 minutes later, and she said, well, that little stinker, he was auditioning me. He went in and she went in and he said, Well, you know, I don't know if I want to do this. It doesn't seem that funny to me. Let's read a few lines. Well, long story short, they read the whole thing through, and they were both, they were both rolling around the floor. I'll bet they laughing and so and then jump to the following afternoon, they did it live, and I was able to watch. I had some pre time, and I watched, and they were just fantastic together. I left after the show, I went to the green room, had a little snack, and I was coming back to our room, walking down the hall, and here comes Bob Hastings, and he says, oh, Ron. He said, Your wife was just fantastic. So much better than the other girl would have been. So when I told GLORIA That story that made her her day, her week. She felt so good about that. So that's my Bob Hastings story. Bob Hastings and Gloria Macmillan were great as the Bickersons.   Speaker 1 ** 54:29 Yeah, that was a very clever show. It started on the Danny Thomas show, and then they they ended up going off and having their own show, Francis Langford and Donna Michi, but they were very clever.   Ron Cocking ** 54:42 Now, did you realize when now that you mentioned Danny Thomas? Did you realize that Gloria's mom, Hazel McMillan, was the first female agent, talent agent in Hollywood? No, and that's how you know when the. They moved from from Portland, Oregon, a little city outside of Portland. They moved because Gloria's mom thought she had talent enough to do radio, and it wasn't a year after they got here to LA that she did her first national show for Lux radio at the age of five. That was in 1937 with with Edward G Robinson. I've got a recording of that show. What's what show was it? It was a Christmas show. And I don't remember the name of the of it, but it was a Christmas show. It was Walden that sent us. Sent   Michael Hingson ** 55:33 it to us. I'll find it. I've got it, I'm sure.   Ron Cocking ** 55:35 And so, yeah, so, so Gloria was a member of what they called the 500 club. There was a group of, I don't know, nine or 10 kids that by the time the photograph that I have of this club, it looks like Gloria is around 12 to 14 years old, and they had all done 500 or more radio shows. Wow, that's a lot of radio show. There's a lot of radio So Gloria did, I mean, I got a short my point was, her mom was an agent, and when Gloria was working so consistently at armas Brooks, she said, Well, I'm kind of out of a job. I don't need to take you. GLORIA could drive then. And so she came back from the grocery store, Ralph's market near Wilshire and Doheny, and she came back said, Well, I know what I'm going to do. I ran into this cute little boy at the grocery store. I'm going to represent him for television. And she that's, she started the Hazel McMillan agency, and she ran that agency until she just couldn't anymore. I think she ran it until early 1980s but she, my god, she represented people like Angela Cartwright on the Danny Thomas show and Kathy Garver on, all in the family a family affair. Family Affair. Yeah. Jane north. Jane North went in for Dennis the Menace. He didn't get the role. He came back said, Hazel, I don't think they liked me, and they didn't. They didn't call me back or anything. Hazel got on that phone, said, Look, I know this kid can do what you're asking for. I want you to see him again. He went back and they read him again. He got the part, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 57:21 and he was perfect for it.   Ron Cocking ** 57:22 He was perfect for that part was, I'm sorry.   Michael Hingson ** 57:27 It's sad that he passed earlier this year.   Ron Cocking ** 57:29 Yeah, he passed and he had, he had a tough life, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 57:36 well, you know, tell me you, you have what you you have some favorite words of wisdom. Tell me about those.   Ron Cocking ** 57:45 Oh, this goes back to the reason why I came across this when I was looking for something significant to say on the opening of one of our big concert programs. We used to do all of our shows at the California theater of Performing Arts in San Bernardino, it's a really, a real gem of a theater. It's where Will Rogers gave his last performance. And so I came across this, and it's, I don't know if this is biblical, you might, you might know, but it's, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. And that's what I felt like Gloria and I were trying to do. We wanted to teach these kids as as professionally. We treated our students as they were, as if they were little professionals. We we expected quality, we expected them to work hard, but again, Gloria taught me patience, unending patience. But we knew that we wanted them to feel confident when the time came, that they would go out and audition. We didn't want them to be embarrassed. We want we wanted them to be able to come back to us and say, Boy, I felt so good at that audition. I knew all the steps I was and I and I read so well it was. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And so that aspect of it, we felt that we were feeding them for a lifetime, but we also were creating all of these arts patrons, all these lovers of the arts, 1000s of kids now love to go to musicals and movies and plays because they've kind of been there and done that at our studio. And so anyway, that's and whether, whether or not it was their confidence in show business or whether it was their confidence we've had so many calls from and visits from parents and former students saying, Boy, I just was awarded a job. And they said my my communication skills were excellent, and I owe that to Gloria. I was on the beach the other day, and I looked over and there was this young man and his wife. I assumed it was his wife. It was they were setting. Up their beach chairs, and I looked and I say, Excuse me, is your name Brandon? And he said, No, but he said, Is your name Ron? And I said, Yes. He said, No, my name is Eric. And I said, Eric puentes. And so we reminisced for a while. He took tap from me. He took acting from Gloria, and he said, you know, he was sad to hear of Gloria's passing. And he said, You know, I owe so much to Gloria. I learned so much about speaking in front of groups. And he is now a minister. He has his own church in Redlands, California, and he's a minister. And of all the billion people on the beach, he sits next to me. So that's one of those things when it's supposed to   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:41 happen. It happens. It does. Yeah, well, and as we talked about earlier, you and Gloria did lots of stuff with reps, and I'm going to miss it this time, but I've done a few, and I'm going to do some more. What I really enjoy about people who come from the radio era, and who have paid attention to the radio era is that the acting and the way they project is so much different and so much better than people who have no experience with radio. And I know Walden and I have talked about the fact that we are looking to get a grant at some point so that we can train actors or people who want to be involved in these shows, to be real actors, and who will actually go back and listen to the shows, listen to what people did, and really try to bring that forward into the recreations, because so many people who haven't really had the experience, or who haven't really listened to radio programs sound so forced, as opposed to natural.   Ron Cocking ** 1:01:46 I agree, and I know exactly what you're saying. In fact, Walden on a couple of at least two or three occasions, he allowed us to take some of Gloria's acting students all the way to Seattle, and we did some in for the spurred vac organization Los Angeles, we did a beautiful rendition of a script that we adapted of the Velveteen Rabbit. And of all people, Janet Waldo agreed to do the fairy at the end, and she was exquisite. And it's only like, I don't know, four or five lines, and, oh my gosh, it just wrapped it up with a satin bow. And, but, but in some of our kids, yeah, they, they, they were very impressed by the radio, uh, recreations that they were exposed to at that convention.   Speaker 1 ** 1:02:37 Yeah, yeah. Well, and it's, it is so wonderful to hear some of these actors who do it so well, and to really see how they they are able to pull some of these things together and make the shows a lot better. And I hope that we'll see more of that. I hope that we can actually work to teach more people how to really deal with acting from a standpoint of radio,   Ron Cocking ** 1:03:04 that's a great idea. And I know Walden is really sensitive to that. He Yeah, he would really be a proponent of that.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:10 Oh, he and I have talked about it. We're working on it. We're hoping we can get some things. Well, I want to thank you for being here. We've been doing this an hour already.  

Die derbe Blumenverkäuferin Eliza Doolittle, die nur Cockney spricht und aus der der Phonetiker Professor Higgins eine Dame machen will: Der Hollywoodfilm nach dem gleichnamigen Bühnenmusical von Alan Jay Lerner und Frederick Loewe wurde 1964 mit Oscars überhäuft und spielte an den Kinokassen 72 Millionen Dollar ein.

Tony winner Laura Benanti is In The Frame! You know Laura for her astounding Broadway career, which includes roles such as Maria in The Sound of Music, Cinderella in Into The Woods, Claudia in Nine, Julia in The Wedding Singer, Louise in Gypsy (which won her the Tony), Candela in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Amalia in She Loves Me and Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. Beyond Broadway, Laura's career spans concerts, television, film and comedy - she has been seen on everything from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to Younger, Gossip Girl and HBO's The Gilded Age.Laura has spent the last month in the UK, performing her solo show Nobody Cares to sold out audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Before heading back to the US, Laura is bringing the show to London for two performances at Underbelly Boulevard Soho.In this episode, Laura discusses her path to Edinburgh, how she has changed as a person and performer throughout her career… and why she's proudly unapologetic about who she is and what she's got to say! Laura performs Nobody Cares at Underbelly Boulevard Soho on Tuesday 2nd September. Visit www.underbellyboulevard.com for info and tickets. This podcast is hosted by Andrew Tomlins @AndrewTomlins32 Thanks for listening! Email: andrew@westendframe.co.uk Visit westendframe.co.uk for more info about our podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hannah Eakin, Eliza Doolittle role in "My Fair Lady" at the Barn Theatre gives us a preview of the production.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Amara Okereke is In The Frame!Amara is playing She in Echo by Susan Eve Haar at the King's Head Theatre. Following runs in Edinburgh and New York, Echo has opened in London directed by Abigail Zealey Bess. The psychological thriller delves into the ethics of reproductive technology, the performance of intimacy and the terrifying beauty of being made.Amara made her West End debut as Cassie in 13 The Musical. She went on to train at Arts Ed and then won Best Actress in a Musical at the 2018 Stage Debut Awards for her adult West End debut as Cosette in Les Misérables.Amara's other theatre credits include Laurie in Oklahoma! (Chichester Festival Theatre), Polly in The Boyfriend (Menier Chocolate Factory) and Wendla in Spring Awakening (Almeida). Amara starred as Eliza Dootlittle in the West End revival of My Fair Lady (London Colesium). She has made West End history twice as the first black actress to play both Cosette and Eliza Doolittle.More recently Amara played Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire (Sheffield Crucible). Her film and television credits include The Morning After (Amazon), Red Rose (BBC/Netflix), The Choral (Sony) and In The Lost Lands (Constantin Films).In this episode Amara speaks about the whirlwind process of Echo and why she's loving "weirding people out"! She also delves into her incredible career, discussing some of the major roles she has played, life as a soprano and making history as the first black Cosette and Eliza Dootlittle.Echo runs at the Kings Head Theatre until Sunday 17th August. Visit www.kingsheadtheatre.com for info and tickets. This podcast is hosted by Andrew Tomlins @AndrewTomlins32 Thanks for listening! Email: andrew@westendframe.co.uk Visit westendframe.co.uk for more info about our podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Princess of Wales just reminded us all that polka dots are, in fact, a power move.At Westminster Abbey for the 80th anniversary of VE Day, Kate stepped out in a very familiar—and very fabulous—outfit: the same black-and-white polka-dot Alessandra Rich dress she wore to the Order of the Garter in 2023. Yes, the dress that had people comparing her to Eliza Doolittle in *My Fair Lady*Kate is once again proving her title as the Queen of Rewears. As British Vogue's Emily Chan put it, she's turned outfit recycling into something of a royal superpower.Also, A new rose has been named in honour of the Princess of Wales, celebrating both her advocacy for the healing power of nature and her ongoing support for cancer care. *Catherine's Rose*, a coral-pink floribunda with a rich fragrance reminiscent of Turkish Delight and mango, was unveiled by the Royal Horticultural Society on Thursday.The flower, bred by Harkness Roses, will be available to the public by pre-order. Each sale will include a £5 donation to The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, aiding the hospital where Her Royal Highness underwent chemotherapy treatment last year.The funds raised will contribute to the creation of a national training programme in prehabilitation and rehabilitation for clinical teams, aiming to help cancer patients live well both during and after treatment.The RHS explained that the naming of *Catherine's Rose* was not only to honour her public service, but also to raise awareness of the vital role nature plays in physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing.Only 15,000 *Catherine's Rose* plants will be made available in 2025, with bare root roses priced at £29.99 and potted plants at £34.99. Orders may be placed now for delivery in autumn next year, with additional availability planned for spring and autumn 2026.The rose, which is said to thrive in borders, large containers, or as part of a hedge, has also been specially cultivated to attract pollinators.Get the show without ads. Five bucks.  For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app which says UNINTERRUPTED LISTENING. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus.   

Your weekly dose of beats is here. Siddhartha Says takes over Bonzai Basik Beats, delivering an unmissable mix featuring top-notch grooves from the talents of Adam Port, Amtrac, Matt Fax, Jaytech, Sian Evans, Art Block, Oliver Smith, Tinlicker, Ryan Boyland & Dan Jones, Disclosure, Eliza Doolittle and more. Siddhartha Says, Ryan Boyland & Dan Jone - Alpine Swifts (Original Mix) [Dear Deer White] Adam Port, Stryv featuring Malachiii - Move (Original Mix) [Keinemusik] Siddhartha Says - Lucid (Original Mix) [Jendex Records] Amtrac - Piano Boy (Original Mix) [OPENERS] Siddhartha Says, Kel Duckhouse - With Words I Am Seen (Extended Mix) [Purple Sun Records] Matt Fax - The Accord (Extended Mix) [Colorize (Enhanced)] Jaytech - Limbo (Extended Mix) [Anjunabeats] Siddhartha Says, Ryan Boyland - Open Up (Original Mix) [Dear Deer White] Sian Evans - Hide U (Tinlicker Extended Remix) [Armada Music] Art Block - The Basement (Siddhartha Says Remix) [Art Block] Worakls - Adagio for Square (Alpine Swifts Edit) [ITH] Siddhartha Says - Snow Footsteps (Original Mix) [Feel Hype] Oliver Smith - Be Alone (Extended Mix) [Anjunabeats] Siddhartha Says - Savanna (Original Mix) [Bonzai Progressive] Disclosure, Eliza Doolittle - You & Me (Rivo Extended Mix) [UMC] This show is syndicated & distributed exclusively by Syndicast. If you are a radio station interested in airing the show or would like to distribute your podcast / radio show please register here: https://syndicast.co.uk/distribution/registration

How many people are having relationships with artificial neural networks? Should we think of AI lovers as traps, mirrors, or sandboxes? Is there a clear line between relationship bots and therapist bots? And what does this have to do with Eliza Doolittle, a doll cabinet in your head, loneliness epidemics, or suicide mitigation? Join Eagleman with guest researcher Bethanie Maples to discover where we are and where we're going.

Not only are we covering a musical we are covering a Best Picture winner. Based on the Broadway play, Billy and Raul embark on the journey of Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney accented flower girl who is trained by Professor Henry Higgins(Rex Harrison reprising the role he established on Broadway) to speak “proper” English. We get loads of thick accents, talk-singing, and gorgeous Warner Brothers sets. Follow Billy and Raul on Bluesky @masterofpuns196 and @raulvaderrdz as well as the main show @synspod

Atlas Shrugged seems to be everywhere today. Randian villains are in the news. Rand remains influential on the right, from the Reagan era to the modern libertarian movement. Perhaps most significantly, entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen who are moving into government with DOGE, have been influenced by Rand, and, fascinatingly, Andreessen only read the novel four years ago. Hollis Robbins (@Anecdotal) and I talked about how Atlas Shrugged is in conversation with the great novels of the past, Rand's greats skills of plotting, drama, and character, and what makes Atlas Shrugged a serious novel, not just a vehicle for ideology. Love it or loathe it, Atlas Shrugged is having a moment. Everyone brings a preconception of Ayn Rand, but she has been opposed by the right and the left ever since she first published. Other than Jennifer Burns' biography, academic study has largely declined to notice Rand. But Rand deserves our serious attention, both as a novelist, and as an influence on the modern world. Here are a couple of excerpts.We talk a lot these days about, “how can I be my best self?” That's what Rand is saying. She's saying, actually, it's not about earning money, it's not about being rich. It is about the perfection of the moral life. It's about the pursuit of excellence. It's about the cultivation of virtue. These are the important things. This is what Dagny is doing. When all the entrepreneurs at the end, they're in the happy valley, actually, between them, they have not that much money, right?Also this.What would Ayn Rand think about the influencer economy? Oh, she'd despise it. She would despise it… all these little girls wanting to grow up to be influencers, they're caught in some algorithm, which is awful. Why would you want to spend your life influencing others? Go create something. It's a hard medicine.And.Her aesthetic is very classical, draped. She doesn't wear flowery patterns. She wears draped, clearly close-fitting gowns and gray tailored suits and a minimum of jewelry, though she does have this bracelet chain made of Rearden metal. You don't know when she possibly has time to go shopping, but she's perfectly dressed all the time in the fashion that we would understand as feminist. She wears trousers, she wears suits, but when she goes out, this black velvet cape. I think it's important to see her as that, even though nobody talks about that in terms of this novel, what a heroine she is. I know that when I was reading her as a teenage girl, that's it.TranscriptHenry: Today, I am talking with Hollis Robbins, former dean of the humanities at Utah University and special advisor on the humanities and AI. We are talking about Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Hollis, hello.Hollis Robbins: Hello. I'm really glad to have this conversation with you. We've known each other for some years and follow each other's work. I was trained as a scholar of 19th-century American, Victorian, and African-American literature, mostly novels, and love having conversations with you about big, deep novels. When I suggested that we read this book, I was hoping you would be enthusiastic about it, so I'm really happy to be having this conversation. It's hard to know who's interviewing you or what conversation this is, but for you coming at this middle-aged. Not quite middle-aged, what are you?Henry: I'm middle enough. No. This is not going to be an interview as such. We are going to have a conversation about Atlas Shrugged, and we're going to, as you say, talk about it as a novel. It always gets talked about as an ideology. We are very interested in it as a novel and as two people who love the great novels of the 19th century. I've been excited to do this as well. I think that's why it's going to be good. Why don't we start with, why are we doing this?Hollis: I wanted to gesture to that. You are one of the leading public voices on the importance of reading literature and the importance of reading novels particularly, though I saw today, Matt Yglesias had a blog post about Middlemarch, which I think he just recently read. I can credit you with that, or us, or those of us who are telling people read the big novels.My life trajectory was that I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead before I read Dickens, before I read Jane Austen, before I read Harriet Beecher Stowe or Melville or the Brontës. For me, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead were foundational novels as novels. I wondered what it would be like to talk to somebody whose experience was flipped.Henry: Right, I'm 38 and I'd never read this book. I was coming at it partly having read all those other books, but partly for my whole life, people have said, "Oh, that's really a bad book. That's so badly written. That book is no good." The number one thing I can say to people is this book is fun.Hollis: It's really fun. I was going to say usually what I forget to do in talking about books is give the summary. I'm going to hold up my copy, which is my dog-eared copy from high school, which is hilarious. It's got the tiniest print, which I couldn't possibly read now. No underlining, which is interesting. I read this book before I understood that you were supposed to underline when you liked passages in the book.It was interesting to me. I'd probably read it five or six times in my youth and didn't underline anything. The story is--- You can help me fill in the blanks. For readers who haven't read it, there's this young woman, Dagny Taggart, who's the heiress of the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad fortune. She's a woman. This takes place in about, I think, the '40s, '50s. Her older brother, Jim Taggart, is CEO. She's COO, so she's the operations person. It is in some ways the story of her-- It's not quite a bildungsroman. This is the way I tell the story. It's the story of her coming to the realization of how the world works. There's many ways to come at this story. She has multiple boyfriends, which is excellent. Her first boyfriend, his name is Francisco d'Anconia. He's the head of d'Anconia Copper. He too is an heir of this longstanding copper fortune. Her second is a metals magnate, Hank Rearden, who invents this great metal, Rearden metal.Really, it's also the story of the decline of America, and the ways that, in this Randian universe, these villainous group of people who run the country are always taking and extracting from producers. As she's creating and building this great railroad and doing wonderful things and using Rearden metal to do it, something is pulling all the producers out of society, and she's like, "What is going on?"It turns out there's this person, John Galt, who is saying, "I don't like the way the country is run. I don't like this extractive philosophy. I am going to take all the producers and lure them voluntarily to a--" It's a hero's lair. It's not like a James Bond villain lair. It's a hero lair in Colorado called Galt's Gulch. He is John Galt. It ends up being a battle between who is right in a wrong world. Is it the ethical person, Dagny Taggart, who continues to strive and try to be a producer and hold on to her ethics in this corrupt world, or is it somebody saying, "To hell with this. I am going on strike. You guys come with me and let the world collapse." How's that for summary?Henry: No, I think that's great. I couldn't have done a better job. One thing that we can say is that the role of reason, of being a rational person, of making reason the sole arbiter of how you make choices, be they practical, ethical, financial, whatever, that's at the heart of the book, right?Hollis: That's the philosophy. We could go there in a second. I think the plot of the book is that she demonstrates this.Henry: What she has to learn, like what is the big lesson for Dagny, is at the beginning, she hasn't fully understood that the good guys use reason and the bad guys do not, as it were.Hollis: Right. I think that's right. I like thinking about this as a bildungsroman. You said that the book is fun. Her part of the book is fun, but not really fun. The fun part of the book, and you can tell me because every time you kept texting me, "Oh my God, Jim Taggart. Oh my God, Jim Taggart. Oh my God, Jim Taggart."--Henry: These guys are so awful. [laughs]Hollis: They're so awful. The fun parts of the book, the Rand villains are the government entities and the cabals of business leaders who she calls looters and second-handers who run the country and all they do is extract value. Marc Andreessen was on a podcast recently and was all about these Rand villains and these looters. I think, again, to get back to why are we doing this and why are we doing this now, Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged is in the air with the second Trump administration.Henry: Yes. In a way, we're doing this because the question is, is this the novel of the future? Right? What we're seeing is it's very influential on the right. Rand's ideas have long been a libertarian inspiration. Elon Musk's read her. You mentioned Andreessen, Peter Thiel, all these people. It goes back to the Reagan days. People in the Republican Party have been quoting Ayn Rand. Then more broadly, we see all these worries about social collapse today. What happens in the plot of Atlas Shrugged is that society does slowly collapse.Dagny has to realize it's because of these people who are not using their reason and they're nationalizing things and taking resource away from proficient entrepreneurs and stuff. It's all about infrastructure, energy, people doing exploitation in the name of the common good, ineffective political leaders, people covering up lies and misdemeanors, people being accepting of what is obviously criminal behavior because it's in the cause of the greater good. We have free speech, all these topics, energy production. We're seeing this in the headlines. When I was reading this book, I was like, "Oh my God, how did she know?"Hollis: How did she know?Henry: How did she know.Hollis: I think the bildungsroman aspect of this as a novel. It's hard to read it as a novel. I think it's hard. By the way, I have to really I applaud you for not, until you got almost to the end of the book, texting me about this person or that person, or how it's political. I admire you for looking at the book and coming to the book as an expert in novels.What she comes to terms with, and it's a real slowly-- It's not even scales falling from her eyes. She doesn't sit and say, "Oh my God, the world is corrupt." She just is like, "That person's corrupt. I'm not going to deal with them. That person's corrupt. I'm not going to deal with them." She just keeps going, but she doesn't ever accept with a fatalism that she's living in this world where every single person who's in charge is going to let her down.Henry: It's also interesting to me that she doesn't complain.Hollis: No.Henry: Now, that reminded me of I wrote about Margaret Thatcher in my book. She was another big one for however hard it was, however difficult it was, why would you complain? Let's just go to work. A lot of people found her difficult for that reason. When I was reading this, I was like, "Ayn Rand clearly has the same idea. You can nationalize every last inch of the economy. I'm going to get up and go to work and try and beat you. I'm not going to sit around and complain." It's a very stern attitude in a way. She's very strict with herself. I found the book to be-- I know Rand is very atheist, but a very Protestant book.Hollis: Yes, it really is.Henry: Intensely Protestant, yes.Hollis: That's a nice way to think about it. A certain kind of Protestant, a Weberian Protestant.Henry: Sure.Hollis: Not a Southern Baptist Protestant who believes in the absence of reason. I was thinking I was teaching in Mississippi years ago. I was teaching a course on Wordsworth and had to do a unit on Voltaire because you can't really understand Wordsworth unless you understand Voltaire. There was a woman in my class. She was a version of Presbyterian who doesn't believe in reason, believes that in the fall, man lost their reason.Therefore, she asked if she could be excused from class because I was talking about Voltaire and the importance of reason. She said, "This is against my religion. If you believe that man has reason, you are actually going about it wrong, so may I be excused?" Which in all the years I've had people ask for excuses to miss class, that was a memorable one.Henry: That's unique. [laughs]Hollis: It's interesting because, again, I should get back to the novel, the opposition from Rand is as strong on the religious right as it is on the left. In fact, very strong. When Atlas Shrugged came out, William F. Buckley famously had Whittaker Chambers write the review. He hated her. He despised her. He despised the fact that she put reason first.Henry: Yes. I think that's worth emphasizing that some people listening will think, "I'm Rand. These nasty ideas, she's on the right." She's been ideologically described in that way so many times. Deirdre McCloskey in the Literary Review has just in the most recent edition written an absolutely scathing article about Rand. That's libertarian opposition to Rand.McCloskey is saying Hayek is the real thing here and Rand would have hated everything that Hayek did. She got everything wrong. I think the opposition to her, as you say, it's on both sides. One thing that's interesting about this novel is that because she created her own philosophy, which people will have different views on how well that went, but there isn't anyone else like this. All the other people like this are her followers.Hollis: Exactly.Henry: She's outside of the other systems of thought in a way.Hollis: We should talk about Rand. I'm going to quote a little bit from this book on feminist interpretation of Ayn Rand. Let's talk a little bit, if we can, about Dagny as the heroine of a novel, or a hero, because one of the really interesting things about reading Rand at this moment is that she's got one pronoun, he, him, man. She is in this era where man means man and women. That there isn't men and women, he and she, and now it's he, she, and them. She is like, "There's one pronoun." Even she talks about the rights of man or man believes. She means everybody, but she only means man too. It's interesting.I was very much part of the first pronoun wars in the 1980s when women scholars were like, "He and she." Now we're thrown out the window with that binary. Again, we don't need to talk about pronouns, but it's really important to understanding Rand and reading this novel, how much she embraces men and the male pronoun, even while she is using it both ways, and even while her story is led by this woman. She's beautiful. She's beautiful in a very specific way. She's tall, she's slender, she's got great cheekbones, she's got great shoulders, she's got long legs.Her aesthetic is very classical, draped. She doesn't wear flowery patterns. She wears draped, clearly close-fitting gowns and gray tailored suits and a minimum of jewelry, though she does have this bracelet chain made of Rearden metal. You don't know when she possibly has time to go shopping, but she's perfectly dressed all the time in the fashion that we would understand as feminist. She wears trousers, she wears suits, but when she goes out, this black velvet cape. I think it's important to see her as that, even though nobody talks about that in terms of this novel, what a heroine she is. I know that when I was reading her as a teenage girl, that's it.Henry: I want to be Dagny.Hollis: I want to be Dagny. I want to have capes, right?Henry: There's a very important scene, it's not too much of a plot spoiler, where Hank Rearden has invented this new metal. It's very exciting because it's much more efficient and it's much stronger and you can build new bridges for the trains and everything. He makes a bracelet of his new metal. It's a new steel alloy, I think, and gives it to his wife. His wife basically doesn't care.She's not really interested in what it takes to earn the money, she just wants to have the money. You get the strong impression throughout the book that some of the people that Rand is most scathingly disapproving of are wives who don't work. None of those people come out well. When Dagny goes to a party at the Rearden house and she is romantically involved with Hank Rearden, she sees the bracelet.Hollis: She isn't then, right? Isn't she not then?Henry: No, but they have feelings for each otherHollis: Right. Reasonable feelings for each other.Henry: That's right, reasonable feelings, but they're not currently acting on those feelings. She sees the bracelet and she exchanges her, I think, diamonds-Hollis: Diamond bracelet.Henry: -for the Rearden metal bracelet with the wife. It's this wonderful moment where these two opposite ideals of womanhood that Rand is presenting. It's a great moment of heroism for Dagny because she is saying, "Who cares about glittering diamonds when you have a new steel alloy that can make this incredible bridge?" It sounds crazy, but this is 1957. Dagny is very much what you might call one of the new women.Hollis: Right.Henry: I think in some ways, Rand-- I don't like the phrase she's ahead of her time. I've read a lot of 1950s fiction. This is not the typical woman.Hollis: No, this is not Cheever. This is not a bored suburban housewife at a time when the way the '50s are taught, certainly in America, it's like women could work during the war, then they were suburban housewives, there was bored, there were key parties and all sorts of Cheever sorts of things. This is not that. I read this first. I was only 15 years after it was published, I think, in the '60s, early '70s reading it.This, to me, seemed perfectly normal and everything else seemed regressive and strange and whiny. There's a lot to be said for reading this novel first. I think if we can talk a little bit about these set pieces because I think for me reading it as a novel and hearing you talk about it as a novel, that novels, whether we're thinking about-- I want to see if you want to compare her to Dorothea or just to any other Victorian women novel that you can think of. That's the closest, right? Is there anybody that's closest to Dorothea from Middlemarch? Is that there are these set pieces. People think that Rand-- the idea is that she's not a great writer. She is a great writer. She started in Hollywood. Her first book, The Fountainhead, was made into a movie. She understands plotting and keeping the reader's attention. We go forward, we go backwards. There's her relationship with Francisco d'Anconia that we see her now, years after, then we have flashbacks to growing up and how they became lovers.There are big meeting set pieces where everybody's in the room, and we have all the backstories of the people in the room, what is going to happen. There are these big party scenes, as you say. For example, this big, glorious, glamorous party at the Rearden house, Francisco is there. Francisco and Hank Rearden get in a conversation, and she's like, "I want to go see what my old boyfriend is talking to the guy I like about."There are these moments where you're not supposed to come at the book that way in this serious philosophical way. Then later on when there's this wonderful scene where Francisco comes to see Dagny. This is much later. Hank and Dagny are lovers, so he has a key to her apartment. He walks in and everybody sees immediately what's going on. It's as good as any other farce moment of somebody hiding behind a curtain, right?Henry: Yes.Hollis: Everything is revealed all at once. She's very good at scenes like that.Henry: Yes, very good. She's very good at high drama. One of the phrases that kept coming back to me was that this book is a melodrama of ideas.Hollis: Yes.Henry: Right? It's not a novel of ideas as such, it's a melodrama of ideas. I think one thing that people who think she's a bad writer will say is it's melodrama, the characters are flat, the prose is not lyrical, all these different things. Whereas when I read it, I was like, "She's so good at melodrama." I feel like, in some ways, it does not feel like a 1950s novel because there's so much excitement about technology, so much feminism, just so many things that I do not associate--Maybe I'm being too English, but I don't read John Cheever, for example, and think, "Oh, he loves the train." Whereas this book is very, very exciting as a story about inventing a new kind of train that goes really fast," which sounds silly, but that's a really Dickensian theme, that's in Middlemarch. Actually, that's what Matt Yglesias was talking about in his excellent piece today. What does feel very 1950s is you've got the Hollywood influence. The dialogue, I think, is not always great, but it is often great.I often would read pages and think, "This would actually be really good in, not an A++ movie, but in a decent crime movie or something. This would be quite good dialogue." There's a comic book aesthetic to it in the way that the scenes play out. Just a lot of these '50s aesthetics actually are present in the book. I'm going to read one paragraph. It's from part one. I think we should read out loud a few bits to give people a sense.Hollis: Yes.Henry: This is when Dagny has built a new train line using grid and metal to make the bridge so that it can go over a valley. I think that's right. The train can do 100 miles an hour. It's this very, very exciting new development. It means that energy can be supplied to factories, and so it's a huge, big deal. This is when she's on the train going at 100 miles an hour and she just can't believe it's happening."Things streaked past a water tank, a tree, a shanty, a grain silo. They had a windshield wiper motion. They were rising, describing a curve, and dropping back. The telegraph wires ran a race with the train, rising and falling from pole to pole, in an even rhythm like the cardiograph record of a steady heartbeat written across the sky. She looked ahead at the haze that melted rail and distance, a haze that could rip apart at any moment to some shape of disaster.""She wondered why she felt safer than she had ever felt in a car behind the engine. Safer here where it seemed as if should an obstacle rise, her breast and the glass shield would be the first to smash against it. She smiled, grasping the answer. It was the security of being first with full sight and full knowledge of one's own course, not the blind sense of being pulled into the unknown by some unknown power ahead."That's not MFA prose or whatever, but it turns the pages. I think she's very good at relating we're on the train and it's going very fast to how Dagny is thinking through the philosophical conundrum that is basically going to drive the whole plot forwards. I was reminded again and again of what Virginia Woolf said about Walter Scott, where she compared Scott to Robert Louis Stevenson. She said that Stevenson had beautiful sentences and dapper little adjectives. It was all jeweled and carefully done. You could marvel over each sentence.She said, "Whereas Scott, it's just page after page and no sentence is beautiful," but she says, "He writes at the level of the page. He's not like Stevenson. He's not writing at the level of the sentence. You have to step into the world." You can say, 'Oh, that wasn't a very good sentence,' but my goodness, the pages keep turning and you're there in the world, right?Hollis: Exactly.Henry: I think she made a really important point there and we just undervalue that so much when we say, oh, so-and-so is not a good writer. What we mean is they're not a Robert Louis Stevenson, they're a Walter Scott. It's like, sure, but Walter Scott was great at what he did. Ayn Rand is in the Walter Scott inheritance in the sense that it's a romance, it's not strictly realistic novel. You have to step into the world. You can't spend your whole time going, "Was that a great sentence? Do I really agree with what she just--" It's like, no, you have to go into this utopian sci-fi universe and you have to keep turning the pages. You get caught up and you go, "Wow, this is this is working for me."Hollis: Let me push back on that-Henry: Yes, good.Hollis: -because I think that was a beautiful passage, one of my favorite passages in this book, which is hard to say because it's a really, really big book. It's a memorable passage because here she is in a place at this moment. She is questioning herself. Isn't she questioning why? Why do I feel safe? Then it strikes her. In this moment, all interior while all this stuff is happening. This whole Rearden metal train bridge set piece is one of the highlights of at least the first half of the book. You come away, even if we've had our entire life up to her, understanding her as a philosophical this woman. How is that different from Dorothea or from Elizabeth Bennet? Yes, Elizabeth Bennet, right?Henry: Oh, no, I agree. My point was purely about prose style, which was to say if you say, "Oh, she writes like a Walter Scott, not like a Robert Louis Stevenson," you're going to deny yourself seeing what you've just said, which is that actually, yes, she has the ability to write philosophical characters.Hollis: When I first read Pride and Prejudice, I read it through the lens of Rand. Now, clearly, these heroines had fewer choices. Dorothea marries Casaubon, I don't know how you pronounce it, because she thinks he's a Randian expert, somebody who's got this grand idea. She's like, "Whoa, I want to be part of this endeavor, the key to all mythologies." Then she's so let down. In the Randian sense, you can see why she would have wanted him.Henry: That's right. I think George Eliot would have strongly disagreed with Rand philosophically. The heroines, as you say, what they're doing in the novel is having to realize that there are social conventions I have to understand and there are things I have to learn how to do, but actually, the key to working all that out is more at the moral philosophical level. This is what happens to Dagny. I think it's on the next page from what I just read. There's another passage where it says that she's in the train and she's enjoying. It's working and she's thrilled that her train is working. She was trying not to think, but she couldn't help herself.She said, "Who made the train. Is it the brute force of muscle? Who can make all the dials and the levers? How is it possible that this thing has even been put together?" Then she starts thinking to herself, "We've got a government who's saying it's wrong to do this, you're taking resources, you're not doing it for the common good." She says, "How can they regard this as evil? How can they believe that this is ignoble to have created this incredible thing?"She says she wants to be able to toss the subject out of the window and let it get shattered somewhere along the track. She wants the thoughts to go past like the telegraph poles, but obviously, she can't. She has this moment of realization that this can't be wrong. This type of human accomplishment can't be against the common good. It can't be considered to be ignoble. I think that is like the Victorian heroines.To me, it was more like Fanny Price, which is that someone turns up into a relatively closed system of ideas and keeps their own counsel for a long time, and has to admit sometimes when they haven't got it right or whatever. Basically, in the end, they are vindicated on fairly straightforward grounds. Dagny comes to realize that, "I was right. I was using my reason. I was working hard. I was being productive. Yes, I was right about that." Fanny, it's more like a Christian insight into good behavior, but I felt the pattern was the same.Hollis: Sure. I'll also bring up Jane Eyre here, right?Henry: Yes.Hollis: Jane Eyre, her relationship, there's a lot to be said of both Mr. Darcy and Mr. Rochester with Hank Rearden because Hank Rearden has to come to his sense. He's married. He doesn't like his wife. He doesn't like this whole system that he's in. He wants to be with a woman that's a meeting of the mind, but he's got all this social convention he has to deal with. Rochester has to struggle, and of course, Bertha Mason has to die in that book. He ends up leaving his wife, but too late. If we're going to look at this novel as a novel, we can see that there are these moments that I think have some resonance. I know you don't seem to want to go to the Mr. Darcy part of it.Henry: No. I had also thought about Jane Eyre. My thought was that, obviously, other than being secular because Jane Eyre is very Christian, the difference is that Hank Rearden and Dagny basically agree that we can't conduct our relationship in a way that would be morally compromising to her. They go through this very difficult process of reasoning like, "How can we do this in a good way?"They're a little bit self-sacrificing about it because they don't want to upset the moral balance. Whereas Mr. Rochester, at least for the first part of the book, has an attitude that's more like, "Yes, but she's in the attic. Why does it matter if we get married?" He doesn't really see the problem of morally compromising Jane, and so Jane has to run away.Hollis: Right.Henry: One of the interesting things about Rand, what is different from like Austen and the Brontës and whatever, is that Dagny and Hank are not in opposition before they get together. They have actually this unusual thing in romance and literature, which is that they have a meeting of minds. What gets in the way is that the way their minds agree is contra mundum and the world has made this problem for them.Hollis: I think in a way, that's the central relationship in--Henry: Yes. That was how I read it, yes.Hollis: Yes. The fact as we think about what the complications are in reading this novel as a novel is that here is this great central romance and they've got obstacles. She's got an old boyfriend, he's married. They've got all these things that are classic obstacles to a love story. Rand understands that enough to build it, that that will keep a lot of readers' interest, but then it's like, "That's actually not the point of my book," which is how the second half or the last third of the novel just gets really wiggy." Again, spoiler alert, but Hank is blackmailed to be, as the society is collapsing, as things are collapsing--Henry: We should say that the government has taken over in a nationalizing program by this point.Hollis: Right, because as John Galt is pulling all the thought leaders and the industrialists and all the movers of the world into his lair, things are getting harder and harder and harder, things are getting nationalized. Some of these big meetings in Washington where these horrible people are deciding how to redistribute wealth, again, which is part of the reason somebody like Congressman Paul Ryan would give out copies of Atlas Shrugged to all of his staffers. He's like, "You've got to read this book because we can't go to Washington and be like this. The Trumpian idea is we've got to get rid of people who are covering up and not doing the right thing."They've blackmailed Hank Rearden into giving up Rearden Metal by saying, "We know you've been sleeping with Dagny Taggart." It's a very dramatic point. How is this going to go down?Henry: Right. I think that's interesting. What I loved about the way she handled that romance was that romance is clearly part of what she sees as important to a flourishing life. She has to constantly yoke it to this idea that reason is everything, so human passion has to be conducted on the basis that it's logically reasonable, but that it therefore becomes self-sacrificing. There is something really sad and a little bit tragic about Hank being blackmailed like that, right?Hollis: Yes. I have to say their first road trip together, it's like, "Let's just get out of here and go have a road trip and stay in hotels and have sex and it'll be awesome." That their road trip is like, "Let's go also see some abandoned factories and see what treasures we might find there." To turn this love road trip into also the plot twist that gets them closer to John Galt is a magnificent piece of plot.Henry: Yes. I loved that. I know you want to talk about the big John Galt speech later, but I'm going to quote one line because this all relates to what I think is one of the most central lines of the book. "The damned and the guiltiest among you are the men who had the capacity to know yet chose to blank out reality." A lot of the time, like in Brontë or whatever, there are characters like Rochester's like that. The center of their romance is that they will never do that to each other because that's what they believe philosophically, ethically. It's how they conduct themselves at business. It's how they expect other people to conduct themselves. They will never sacrifice that for each other.That for them is a really high form of love and it's what enables huge mutual respect. Again, it's one of those things I'm amazed-- I used to work in Westminster. I knew I was a bit of a libertarian. I knew lots of Rand adjacent or just very, very Randian people. I thought they were all insane, but that's because no one would ever say this. No one would ever say she took an idea like that and turned it into a huge romance across hundreds of pages. Who else has done that in the novel? I think that's great.Hollis: It really is hard. It really is a hard book. The thing that people say about the book, as you say, and the reason you hadn't read it up until now, is it's like, "Oh, yes, I toyed with Rand as a teenager and then I put that aside." I put away my childish things, right? That's what everybody says on the left, on the right. You have to think about it's actually really hard. My theory would be that people put it away because it's really, really hard, what she tried is hard. Whether she succeeded or not is also hard. As we were just, before we jumped on, talking about Rand's appearance on Johnny Carson, a full half hour segment of him taking her very seriously, this is a woman who clearly succeeded. I recently read Jennifer Burn's biography of her, which is great. Shout out to Jennifer.What I came away with is this is a woman who made her living as a writer, which is hard to do. That is a hard thing to do, is to make your living as a writer, as a woman in the time difference between 1942, The Fountainhead, which was huge, and 57, Atlas Shrugged. She was blogging, she had newsletters, she had a media operation that's really, really impressive. This whole package doesn't really get looked at, she as a novelist. Again, let me also say it was later on when I came to Harriet Beecher Stowe, who is another extraordinary woman novelist in America who wrote this groundbreaking book, which is filled--I particularly want to shout out to George Harris, the slave inventor who carried himself like a Rand hero as a minor character and escapes. His wife is Eliza, who famously runs across the ice flows in a brave Randian heroine escape to freedom where nobody's going to tell them what to do. These women who changed literature in many ways who have a really vexed relationship or a vexed place in academia. Certainly Stowe is studied.Some 20 years ago, I was at an event with the great Elaine Showalter, who was coming out with an anthology of American women writers. I was in the audience and I raised my hand, I said, "Where's Ayn Rand?" She was like, "Ha, ha, ha." Of course, what a question is that? There is no good reason that Ayn Rand should not be studied in academia. There is no good reason. These are influential novels that actually, as we've talked about here, can be talked about in the context of other novels.Henry: I think one relevant comparison is let's say you study English 19th-century literature on a course, a state-of-the-nation novel or the novel of ideas would be included as routine, I think very few people would say, "Oh, those novels are aesthetically excellent. We read them because they're beautifully written, and they're as fun as Dickens." No one's saying that. Some of them are good, some of them are not good. They're important because of what they are and the barrier to saying why Rand is important for what she is because, I think, people believe her ideas are evil, basically.One central idea is she thinks selfishness is good, but I think we've slightly dealt with the fact that Dagny and Hank actually aren't selfish some of the time, and that they are forced by their ethical system into not being selfish. The other thing that people say is that it's all free-market billionaire stuff, basically. I'm going to read out a passage from-- It's a speech by Francisco in the second part. It's a long speech, so I'm not going to read all eight pages. I'm going to read this speech because I think this theme that I'm about to read out, it's a motif, it's again and again and again.Hollis: Is this where he's speaking to Hank or to Dagny?Henry: I think when he's speaking to Dagny and he says this."Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he want. Money will not give him a code of values if he has evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose if he has evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent."The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him with his money replacing his judgment ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered, that no man may be smaller than his money."Hollis: That's a good--Henry: Right? It's a great paragraph. I feel like she says that in dozens of ways throughout the book, and she wants you to be very clear when you leave that this book is not a creed in the name of just make money and have free market capitalism so you can be rich. That paragraph and so many others, it's almost biblical in the way she writes it. She's really hammering the rhythms, and the tones, and the parallels. She's also, I think, trying to appropriate some of the way the Bible talks about money and turn it into her own secular pseudo-Aristotelian idea, right?Hollis: Yes.Henry: We talk a lot these days about, how can I be my best self? That's what Rand is saying. She's saying, actually, it's not about earning money, it's not about being rich. It is about the perfection of the moral life. It's about the pursuit of excellence. It's about the cultivation of virtue. These are the important things. This is what Dagny is doing. When all the entrepreneurs at the end, they're in the happy valley, actually, between them, they have not that much money, right?Hollis: Right.Henry: The book does not end in a rich utopia, it's important to say.Hollis: It's interesting. A couple of things. I want to get this back since we're still in the novel. Let me say when we get to Galt's great speech, which is bizarre. He says a similar thing that I'll bring in now. He says, "The mother who buys milk for her baby instead of a hat is not sacrificing because her values are feeding the baby. The woman who sacrifices the hat to feed her baby, but really wants the hat and is only feeding the baby out of duty is sacrificing." That's bad. She's saying get your values in order. Understand what it is you want and do that thing, but don't do it because somebody says you have to. She says this over and over in many ways, or the book says this.Henry: We should say, that example of the mother is incidental. The point she's always making is you must think this through for yourself, you must not do it because you've been told to do it.Hollis: Right, exactly. To get back to the love story aspects of the book because they don't sit and say they love each other, even all the great romances. It's not like, "I love you. I love you." It's straight to sex or looks and meetings of the minds. It's interesting. We should deal with the fact that from The Fountainhead and a little bit in this book, the sex is a little rapey. It's a difficult thing to talk about. It's certainly one of the reasons that feminists, women writers don't approve of her. In the book, it's consensual. Whatever one wants to think about the ways that people have sex, it is consensual in the book. Also in The Fountainhead.I'm sure I'll get hate mail for even saying that, but in her universe, that's where it is. What's interesting, Francisco as a character is so interesting. He's conflicted, he's charming, he's her first lover. He's utterly good in every way. He ends up without her. Hank is good. Hank goes through his struggles and learning curve about women prioritizing. If you don't like your wife, don't be married to your wife. It's like he goes through his own what are my values and how do I live them.I know you think that this is bizarre, but there's a lot of writing about the relationship of Hank and Francisco because they find themselves in the same room a lot. They happen to have both been Dagny's lovers or ex-lovers, and they really, really like each other. There's a way that that bonding-- Homosexuality does not exist in her novels, whatever, but that's a relationship of two people that really are hot for one another. There is a lot of writing. There are queer readings of Rand that make a lot of that relationship.Again, this isn't my particular lens of criticism, but I do see that the energy, which is why I asked you which speech you were reading because some of Francisco's best speeches are for Hank because he's trying to woo Hank to happy valley. Toward the end when they're all hanging out together in Galt's Gulch, there's clearly a relationship there.Henry: Oh, yes. No, once you pointed out to me, I was like, "That makes sense of so many passages." That's clearly there. What I don't understand is why she did that. I feel like, and this is quite an accomplishment because it's a big novel with a lot of moving parts, everything else is resolved both in terms of the plot, but also in terms of how it fits her philosophical idea. That, I think, is pretty much the only thing where you're left wondering, "Why was that in there? She hasn't made a point about it. They haven't done anything about it." This I don't understand. That's my query.Hollis: Getting ready to have this conversation, I spent a lot of time on some Reddit threads. I ran Atlas Shrugged Reddit threads where there's some fantastic conversations.Henry: Yes, there is.Hollis: One of them is about, how come Francisco didn't end up with anybody? That's just too bad. He's such a great character and he ends up alone. I would say he doesn't end up alone, he ends up with his boyfriend Hank, whatever that looks like. Two guys that believe in the same things, they can have whatever life they want. Go on.Henry: Are you saying that now that they're in the valley, they will be more free to pursue that relationship?Hollis: There's a lot of things that she has said about men's and women's bodies. She said in other places, "I don't think there'll ever be a woman president because why would a woman want to be president? What a woman really wants is a great man, and we can't have a president who's looking for a great man. She has to be a president." She's got a lot of lunacy about women. Whatever. I don't understand. Someplace I've read that she understands male homosexuality, but not female homosexuality. Again, I am not a Rand scholar. Having read and seen some of that in the ether, I see it in the book, and I can see how her novel would invite that analysis.I do want to say, let's spend a few seconds on some of the minor characters. There are some really wonderful minor characters. One of them is Cherryl Taggart, this shop girl that evil Jim Taggart meets one night in a rainstorm, and she's like, "Oh, you're so awesome," and they get married. It's like he's got all this praise for marrying the shop girl. It's a funny Eliza Doolittle situation because she is brought into this very wealthy society, which we have been told and we have been shown is corrupt, is evil, everybody's lying all the time, it's pretentious, Dagny hates it.Here's the Cherryl Taggart who's brought into this. In the beginning, she hates Dagny because she's told by everybody, "Hate Dagny, she's horrible." Then she comes to her own mini understanding of the corruption that we understand because Dagny's shown it in the novel, has shown it to us this entire time. She comes to it and she's like, "Oh my God," and she goes to Dagny. Dagny's so wonderful to her like, "Yes. You had to come to this on your own, I wasn't going to tell you, but you were 100% right." That's the end of her.Henry: Right. When she meets Taggart, there's this really interesting speech she has where she says, "I want to make something of myself and get somewhere." He's like, "What? What do you want to do?" Red flag. "What? Where?" She says, "I don't know, but people do things in this world. I've seen pictures of New York," and she's pointing at like the skyscrapers, right? Whatever. "I know that someone's built that. They didn't sit around and whine, but like the kitchen was filthy and the roof was leaking." She gets very emotional at this point. She says to him, "We were stinking poor and we didn't give a damn. I've dragged myself here, and I'm going to do something."Her story is very sad because she then gets mired in the corruption of Taggart's. He's basically bit lazy and a bit of a thief, and he will throw anyone under the bus for his own self-advancement. He is revealed to be a really sinister guy. I was absolutely hissing about him most of the time. Then, let's just do the plot spoiler and say what happens to Cherryl, right? Because it's important. When she has this realization and Taggart turns on her and reveals himself as this snake, and he's like, "Well, what did you expect, you idiot? This is the way the world is."Hollis: Oh, it's a horrible fight. It's the worst fight.Henry: Right? This is where the melodrama is so good. She goes running out into the streets, and it's the night and there are shadows. She's in the alleyway. Rand, I don't have the page marked, but it's like a noir film. She's so good at that atmosphere. Then it gets a little bit gothic as well. She's running through the street, and she's like, "I've got to go somewhere, anywhere. I'll work. I'll pick up trash. I'll work in a shop. I'll do anything. I've just got to get out of this."Hollis: Go work at the Panda Express. Henry: Yes. She's like, "I've got to get out of this system," because she's realized how morally corrupting it is. By this time, this is very late. Society is in a-- it's like Great Depression style economic collapse by this point. There really isn't a lot that she could do. She literally runs into a social worker and the social-- Rand makes this leering dramatic moment where the social worker reaches out to grab her and Cherryl thinks, "Oh, my God, I'm going to be taken prisoner in. I'm going back into the system," so she jumps off the bridge.This was the moment when I was like, I've had this lurking feeling about how Russian this novel is. At this point, I was like, "That could be a short story by Gogol," right? The way she set that up. That is very often the trap that a Gogol character or maybe a Dostoevsky character finds themselves in, right? That you suddenly see that the world is against you. Maybe you're crazy and paranoid. Maybe you're not. Depends which story we're reading. You run around trying to get out and you realize, "Oh, my God, I'm more trapped than I thought. Actually, maybe there is no way out." Cherryl does not get a lot of pages. She is, as you say, quite a minor character, but she illustrates the whole story so, so well, so dramatically.Hollis: Oh, wow.Henry: When it happens, you just, "Oh, Cherryl, oh, my goodness."Hollis: Thank you for reading that. Yes, you could tell from the very beginning that the seeds of what could have been a really good person were there. Thank you for reading that.Henry: When she died, I went back and I was like, "Oh, my God, I knew it."Hollis: How can you say Rand is a bad writer, right? That is careful, careful plotting, because she's just a shop girl in the rain. You've got this, the gun on the wall in that act. You know she's going to end up being good. Is she going to be rewarded for it? Let me just say, as an aside, I know we don't have time to talk about it here. My field, as I said, is 19th century African American novels, primarily now.This, usually, a woman, enslaved woman, the character who's like, "I can't deal with this," and jumps off a bridge and drowns herself is a fairly common and character. That is the only thing to do. One also sees Rand heroes. Stowe's Dred, for example, is very much, "I would rather live in the woods with a knife and then, be on the plantation and be a slave." When you think about, even the sort of into the 20th century, the Malcolm X figure, that, "I'm going to throw out all of this and be on my own," is very Randian, which I will also say very Byronic, too, Rand didn't invent this figure, but she put it front and center in these novels, and so when you think about how Atlas Shrugged could be brought into a curriculum in a network of other novels, how many of we've discussed so far, she's there, she's influenced by and continues to influence. Let's talk about your favorite minor character, the Wet Nurse.Henry: This is another great death scene.Hollis: Let's say who he is, so the government sends this young man to work at the Rearden Mills to keep an eye on Hank Rearden.Henry: Once they nationalize him, he's the bureaucrat reporting back, and Rearden calls him the Wet Nurse as an insult.Hollis: Right, and his job, he's the Communist Party person that's in every factory to make sure that everything is--Henry: That's right, he's the petty bureaucrat reporting back and making sure everyone's complying.Hollis: He's a young recent college graduate that, Hank, I think, early on, if it's possible even to find the Wet Nurse early scene, you could tell in the beginning, too, he's bright and sparkly right out of college, and this is, it seems like a good job for him. He's like, "Woohoo, I get to be here, and I get to be--" Yes, go ahead.Henry: What happens to him is, similarly to Cherryl, he has a conversion, but his conversion is not away from the corruption of the system he's been in, he is converted by what he sees in the Rearden plant, the hard work, the dedication, the idealism, the deep focus on making the metal, and he starts to see that if we don't make stuff, then all the other arguments downstream of that about how to appropriate, how to redistribute, whatever, are secondary, and so he becomes, he goes native, as it were. He becomes a Reardenite, and then at the end, when there's a crowd storming the place, and this crowd has been sent by the government, it's a fake thing to sort of--Hollis: Also, a very good scene, very dramatic.Henry: She's very good at mobs, very good at mobs, and they kill, they kill the Wet Nurse, they throw him over. He has a couple of speeches in dialogue with Rearden while he's dying, and he says--Hollis: You have to say, they throw him, they leave him on this pile of slag. He crawls up to the street where Rearden happens to be driving by, and car stops, and so that finding the Wet Nurse there and carrying him in his arms, yes.Henry: That's right, it's very dramatic, and then they have this dialogue, and he says, "I'd like to live, Mr. Rearden, God, how I'd like to, not because I'm dying, but because I've just discovered tonight what it means to be alive, and it's funny, do when I discovered it? In the office, when I stuck my neck out, when I told the bastards to go to hell, there's so many things I wish I'd known sooner, but it's no use crying over spilt milk," and then Rearden, he goes, "Listen, kid, said Rearden sternly, I want you to do me a favor." "Now, Mr. Rearden?" "Yes, now." "Of course, Mr. Rearden, if I can," and Rearden says, "You were willing to die to save my mills, will you try and live for me?"I think this is one of those great moments where, okay, maybe this isn't like George Eliot style dialogue, but you could put that straight in a movie, that would work really well, that would be great, right? I can hear Humphrey Bogart saying these things. It would work, wouldn't it?She knows that, and that's why she's doing that, she's got that technique. He's another minor character, and Rand is saying, the system is eating people up. We are setting people up for a spiritual destruction that then leads to physical destruction. This point, again, about it's not just about the material world. It's about your inner life and your own mind.I find it very moving.Hollis: These minor characters are fantastic. Then let's talk a little bit about Eddie Willers, because I think a lot about Eddie Willers. Eddie Willers, the childhood three, there were three young people, we keep going back to this childhood. We have Dagny, Francisco, because their parents were friends, and then Eddie Willers, who's like a neighborhood kid, right?Henry: He's down the street.Hollis: He lives down the street. He's like the neighborhood kid. I don't know about you. We had a neighborhood kid. There's always neighborhood kids, right? You end up spending time with this-- Eddie's just sort of always there. Then when they turn 15, 16, 17, and when there's clearly something going on between Dagny and Francisco, Eddie does take a step back, and he doesn't want to see.There's the class issues, the status issues aren't really-- they're present but not discussed by Rand. Here we have these two children heirs, and they don't say like, "You're not one of us, Eddie, because you're not an heir or an heiress." He's there, and he's got a pretty good position as Dagny's right-hand man in Taggart Transcontinental. We don't know where he went to college. We don't know what he does, but we know that he's super loyal, right?Then when she goes and takes a break for a bit, he steps in to be COO. James is like, "Eddie Willers, how can Eddie Willers be a COO?" She's like, "It's really going to be me, but he's going to be fine." We're not really supposed to identify with Eddie, but Eddie's there. Eddie has, all through the novel, all through the big old novel, Eddie eats lunch in the cafeteria. There's always this one guy he's having lunch with. This is, I don't know, like a Greek chorus thing, I don't quite know, but there's Eddie's conversations with this unknown person in the cafeteria give us a sense, maybe it's a narrator voice, like, "Meanwhile, this is going on in the world." We have these conversations. This guy he's having lunch with asks a lot of questions and starts asking a lot of personal questions about Dagny. Then we have to talk to-- I know we've gone for over an hour and 15 minutes, we've got to talk about Galt's Speech, right? When John Galt, toward the end, takes over the airwaves and gives this big three-hour speech, the big three-hour podcast as I tweeted the other day, Eddie is with Dagny.Henry: He's in the radio studio.Hollis: He's in the studio along with one of John Galt's former professors. We hear this voice. Rand says, or the narrator says, three people in the room recognize that voice. I don't know about you, did you guess that it was Galt before that moment that Eddie was having lunch with in the cafeteria?Henry: No, no, no, I didn't.Hollis: Okay, so you knew at that moment.Henry: That was when I was like, "Oh, Eddie was talking, right?" It took me a minute.Hollis: Okay, were you excited? Was that like a moment? Was that a big reveal?Henry: It was a reveal, but it made me-- Eddie's whole character puzzles me because, to me, he feels like a Watson.Hollis: Yes, that's nice, that's good.Henry: He's met Galt, who's been under their noses the whole time. He's been going through an almost Socratic method with Galt, right? If only he could have paid a little bit more attention, he would have realized what was going on. He doesn't, why is this guy so interested in Dagny, like all these things. Even after Galt's big speech, I don't think Eddie quite takes the lesson. He also comes to a more ambiguous but a bad end.Hollis: Eddie's been right there, the most loyal person. The Reddit threads on Eddie Willers, if anybody's interested, are really interesting.Henry: Yes, they are, they're so good.Hollis: Clearly, Eddie recognizes greatness, and he recognizes production, and he recognizes that Dagny is better than Jim. He recognizes Galt. They've been having these conversations for 12 years in the cafeteria. Every time he goes to the cafeteria, he's like, "Where's my friend, where's my friend?" When his friend disappears, but he also tells Galt a few things about Dagny that are personal and private. When everybody in the world, all the great people in the world, this is a big spoiler, go to Galt's Gulch at the end.Henry: He's not there.Hollis: He doesn't get to go. Is it because of the compromises he made along the way? Rand had the power to reward everybody. Hank's secretary gets to go, right?Henry: Yes.Hollis: She's gone throughout the whole thing.Henry: Eddie never thinks for himself. I think that's the-- He's a very, I think, maybe one of the more tragic victims of the whole thing because-- sorry. In a way, because, Cherryl and the Wet Nurse, they try and do the right thing and they end up dying. That's like a more normal tragedy in the sense that they made a mistake. At the moment of realization, they got toppled.Eddie, in a way, is more upsetting because he never makes a mistake and he never has a moment of realization. Rand is, I think this is maybe one of the cruelest parts of the book where she's almost saying, "This guy's never going to think for himself, and he hasn't got a hope." In a novel, if this was like a realistic novel, and she was saying, "Such is the cruelty of the world, what can we do for this person?" That would be one thing. In a novel that's like ending in a utopia or in a sort of utopia, it's one of the points where she's really harsh.Hollis: She's really harsh. I'd love to go and look at her notes at some point in time when I have an idle hour, which I won't, to say like, did she sit around? It's like, "What should I do with Eddie?" To have him die, probably, in the desert with a broken down Taggart transcontinental engine, screaming in terror and crying.Henry: Even at that stage, he can't think for himself and see that the system isn't worth supporting.Hollis: Right. He's just going to be a company man to the end.Henry: It's as cruel as those fables we tell children, like the grasshopper and the ants. He will freeze to death in the winter. There's nothing you can do about it. There are times when she gets really, really tough. I think is why people hate her.Hollis: We were talking about this, about Dickens and minor characters and coming to redemption and Dickens, except Jo. Jo and Jo All Alones, there are people who have redemption and die. Again, I don't know.Henry: There's Cherryl and the Wet Nurse are like Jo. They're tragic victims of the system. She's doing it to say, "Look how bad this is. Look how bad things are." To me, Eddie is more like Mr. Micawber. He's hopeless. It's a little bit comic. It's not a bad thing. Whereas Dickens, at the end, will just say, "Oh, screw the integrity of the plot and the morals. Let's just let Mr. Micawber-- let's find a way out for him." Everyone wants this guy to do well. Rand is like, "No, I'm sticking to my principles. He's dead in the desert, man. He's going to he's going to burn to death." He's like, "Wow, that's okay."Hollis: The funny thing is poor John Galt doesn't even care about him. John Galt has been a bad guy. John Galt is a complicated figure. Let's spend a bit on him.Henry: Before we do that, I actually want to do a very short segment contextualizing her in the 50s because then what you say about Galt will be against this background of what are some of the other ideas in the 50s, right?Hollis: Got it.Henry: I think sometimes the Galt stuff is held up as what's wrong with this novel. When you abstract it and just say it, maybe that's an easier case to make. I think once you understand that this is 1957, she's been writing the book for what, 12 years, I think, or 15 years, the Galt speech takes her 3 years to write, I think. This is, I think the most important label we can give the novel is it's a Cold War novel. She's Russian. What she's doing, in some ways, is saying to America, "This is what will happen to us if we adopt the system of our Cold War enemies." It's like, "This is animal farm, but in America with real people with trains and energy plants and industry, no pigs. This is real life." We've had books like that in our own time. The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver said, that book said, "If the 2008 crash had actually gone really badly wrong and society collapsed, how would it go?" I think that's what she's reacting to. The year before it was published, there was a sociology book called The Organization Man.Hollis: Oh, yes. William Whyte.Henry: A great book. Everyone should read that book. He is worrying, the whole book is basically him saying, "I've surveyed all these people in corporate America. They're losing the Protestant work ethic. They're losing the entrepreneurial spirit. They're losing their individual drive. Instead of wanting to make a name for themselves and invent something and do great things," he says, "they've all got this managerial spirit. All the young men coming from college, they're like, 'Everything's been done. We just need to manage it now.'" He's like, "America is collapsing." Yes, he thinks it's this awful. Obviously, that problem got solved.That, I think, that gives some sense of why, at that moment, is Ayn Rand writing the Galt speech? Because this is the background. We're in the Cold War, and there's this looming sense of the cold, dead hand of bureaucracy and managerialism is. Other people are saying, "Actually, this might be a serious problem."Hollis: I think that's right. Thank you for bringing up Whyte. I think there's so much in the background. There's so much that she's in conversation with. There's so much about this speech, so that when you ask somebody on the street-- Again, let me say this, make the comparison again to Uncle Tom's Cabin, people go through life feeling like they know Uncle Tom's Cabin, Simon Legree, Eliza Crossing the Ice, without having ever read it.Not to name drop a bit, but when I did my annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin, this big, huge book, and it got reviewed by John Updike in The New Yorker, and I was like, "This is freaking John Updike." He's like, "I never read it. I never read it." Henry Louis Gates and then whoever this young grad student was, Hollis Robbins, are writing this book, I guess I'll read it. It was interesting to me, when I talk about Uncle Tom's Cabin, "I've never read it," because it's a book you know about without reading. A lot of people know about Atlas Shrugged without having read it. I think Marc Andreessen said-- didn't he say on this podcast that he only recently read it?Henry: I was fascinated by this. He read it four years ago.Hollis: Right, during COVID.Henry: In the bibliography for the Techno-Optimist Manifesto, and I assumed he was one of those people, he was like you, he'd read it as a teenager, it had been informative. No, he came to it very recently. Something's happening with this book, right?Hollis: Huge things are happening, but the people who know about it, there's certain things that you know, you know it's long, you know that the sex is perhaps not what you would have wanted. You know that there's this big, really long thing called John Galt's Speech, and that it's like the whaling chapters in Moby-Dick. People read Moby-Dick, you're like, "Oh, yes, but I skipped all the chapters on cetology." That's the thing that you say, right? The thing that you say is like, "Yes, but I skipped all the John Galt's Speech." I was very interested when we were texting over the last month or so, what you would say when you got to John Galt's Speech. As on cue, one day, I get this text and it's like, "Oh, my God, this speech is really long." I'm like, "Yes, you are the perfect reader."Henry: I was like, "Hollis, this might be where I drop out of the book."Hollis: I'm like, "Yes, you and the world, okay?" This is why you're an excellent reader of this book, because it is a frigging slog. Just because I'm having eye issues these days, I had decided instead of rereading my copy, and I do have a newer copy than this tiny print thing, I decided to listen on audiobook. It was 62 hours or whatever, it was 45 hours, because I listen at 1.4. The speech is awesome listening to it. It, at 1.4, it's not quite 3 hours. It's really good. In the last few days, I was listening to it again, okay? I really wanted to understand somebody who's such a good plotter, and somebody who really understands how to keep people's interest, why are you doing this, Rand? Why are you doing this, Ms. Rand? I love the fact that she's always called Miss. Rand, because Miss., that is a term that we

Pippa speaks to the cast of My Fair Lady which is on at Artscape until 12 January. She speaks to Professor Henry Higgins, otherwise known as Craig Urbani, as well as the two talented actresses who will share the role of Eliza Doolittle – Brittany Smith and Leah Mari.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the undoubted highlights of the forthcoming festive season is the Pieter Toerien production of My Fair Lady, the musical that for years has been a huge favourite. Craig Urbani will play Professor Henry Higgins and the role of Eliza Doolittle is being shared by Brittany Smith and Leah Mari. Rodney Trudgeon spoke to both Elizas for People of Note this week. My Fair Lady opens on the 18th of December at the Artscape Opera House.

Today in the ArtZany Radio studio Paula Granquist welcomes director Sebastian Lawler and actors Birch Carlson (Eliza Doolittle) and Dan Stephans (Henry Higgins) from the Northfield Arts Guild production of My Fair Lady. My Fair Lady, Lerner & Loew's Musical Comedy, Northfield Arts Guild Theater, 411 Third Street West, October 18 – November 3. Fridays & Saturdays @7:30, Sundays @ 2PM (post-show […]

This episode we are joined by actor Shereen Ahmed!  Shereen made her Broadway debut in My Fair Lady where she became the first woman of color to play the role of Eliza Doolittle on Broadway!  She later would tour with My Fair Lady across the country as Eliza.  She was most recently seen in Nine at The Kennedy Center and her other credits include A Man of No Importance at Class Stage Company, The Light in the Piazza New York City Center Encores! and The Age of Innocence at The Old Globe.We chat with Shereen about her journey to making her Broadway debut, her "master classes" in watching her fellow performers work, finding new ways to use her voice and much more!

Hocus Focus Mix met Icona Pop, Charli XCX, Years&Years, Walk The Moon, Florence & Machine, Disclosure, Flume & Eliza Doolittle

De beha's zijn toch nog aangeschaft en een scala aan vakantiebestemmingen is aangedaan. Daarbij is er door Aaf en Lies geraft en gedoken en dat leidt tot de grote vraag: is het beter om voor eeuwig in de comfort zone te opereren of moet je jezelf en anderen juist pushen?Tip: luister naar wat je lichaam zegt. Of schreeuwt.Een luisteraar vraagt deze week wat ze moet doen als ze zich in haar relatie soms Eliza Doolittle voelt, en de goeroe van de week is een man met een stafkaart die DNA deelt met Aaf.

An Afro-House set @125 BPM! Contact: angel.wings.dj@gmail.com Download for free via: Itunes Google Podcasts Facebook TuneIn Podcast Addict TRACKLIST: 1. Peperuke - Nes Mburu, Alex Wann //  2. Darling - Aloe Blacc, Shimza //  3. Faust - Argy, Son Of Son //  4. Hey Hey (Jack Back Remix) - Dennis Ferrer //  5. Beso (Fruta Fresca) - Carlos Vives, Wakyin //  6. Sudamérica - Victor Alc //  7. You & Me (Rivo Mix) - Disclosure, Eliza Doolittle //  8. Shook Part 3 - Nick Morgan //  9. Povoada (Remix) - Maz (BR), Antdot, Sued Nunes //  10. Famax - RAFFA GUIDO //  11. Agenda (Bontan Remix) - Tom de Neef & Lazarusman //  12. Mwaki - Zerb, Sofiya Nzau //  13. Baiana - Space Motion //  14. Viagem Ao Centro Do Eu (Coragem) - Antdot, Paulo Novaes, Nina Oliveira //  15. TAKA - Contra, Skrillex, Ahadadream, Priya Ragu // 

This episode was originally released on September 19, 2022 Our feature this week is the Audrey Hepburn & Rex Harrison classic musical My Fair Lady. We talk dubbing controversies, feminism, Henry Higgins being a dick, employment opportunities, ambiguous endings, new wave music videos, bigfoot, Spooktember, and more! #FlowerShopForEliza We don't actually talk about bigfoot, but I don't think anyone reads these. Corrections: Audrey Hepburn did do another musical Indy loved, Funny Face!   My Fair Lady is a 1964 American musical drama film adapted from the 1956 Lerner and Loewe stage musical based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 stage play Pygmalion. With a screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner and directed by George Cukor, the film depicts a poor Cockney flower-seller named Eliza Doolittle who overhears an arrogant phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, as he casually wagers that he could teach her to speak "proper" English, thereby making her presentable in the high society of Edwardian London. The film stars Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle and Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins, with Stanley Holloway, Gladys Cooper and Wilfrid Hyde-White in supporting roles. A critical and commercial success, it became the second highest-grossing film of 1964 and won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.[4] In 1998, the American Film Institute named it the 91st greatest American film of all time. In 2006 it was ranked eighth in the AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals list. My Fair Lady Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJBM6qs22sE&ab_channel=ParamountMovies   Rex Harrison Wins Best Actor: 1965 Oscars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aL5W0dxoQY&ab_channel=Oscars

'Review everything we do'Electronic, Richard Rorty, Ludovico Einaudi, Rob Auton, Eliza Doolittle, Rufus Hound, Vince.Guaraldi, The Gravity Drive, Fryars, The Teen Teens, Roddy Doyle, Robert Franks, The Secret Sisters, Mathilde Santing, Saint Etienne, Rita Dove, Philip Glass, Daniel Dennett, Debbie Reynolds, Malcolm McLaren, The Boswell Sisters, Lucinda Williams, Gregory Isaacs, David Byrne, Sheldon Allman, Sarah Jones.

This season on my podcast, Baring It All with Call Me Adam, I am highlighting My Entertainment Idols.Today, I am going back in time and Behind-The-Curtain to bring you this blast from the past, my 2010 interview with then 3-time Tony nominated Broadway Actress Kelli O'Hara.Now, here's a little Behind-The-Curtain Story….In 2010, I got to attend the opening night of Kelli O'Hara's one-woman show Beyond The Ingenue at Michael Feinstein's cabaret club, Feinstein's at the Regency on the Upper East Side in NYC.In addition to seeing the concert, I got to interview Kelli live, at the VIP after party. When you listen to this episode, I hope you feel all the excitement that I felt, and was swirling around me, while talking to Kelli at that opening night party.When this interview took place, I did not have a podcast, so I had to transcribe the interview into print format. Now I do have a podcast, and I am so excited to share this interview with you.In this interview, Kelli is Baring It All with Call Me Adam about:Who inspired her to become a performerThe Best Advice she has receivedA Strange or Unusual Talent she hasFavorite way to stay in shapeSo much moreTo read the interview, and see a photo of me & Kelli, click here!Special Thanks:Dan Fortune, Fortune CreativeTheme Song by Bobby CroninPodcast Logo by Liam O'DonnellEdited by Adam RothenbergUnderscore Intro Music by CutiqueConnect with Me:Website: www.callmeadam.comFacebook: @CallMeAdamNYCInstagram: @CallMeAdamNYCMore on Kelli O'Hara:Kelli O'Hara has unequivocally established herself as one of Broadway's great leading ladies. She recently starred in the Tony Award-winning revival of South Pacific at Lincoln Center, enrapturing audiences and critics alike with her soulful and complex interpretation of Nellie Forbush, and garnering a third Tony nomination.A native of Oklahoma, Kelli received a degree in opera, and, after winning the State Metropolitan Opera Competition, moved to New York and enrolled in the Lee Strasberg Institute.She made her Broadway debut in Jekyll & Hyde and followed it with Sondheim's Follies, Sweet Smell of Success opposite John Lithgow, and Dracula. In 2003 Kelli committed to a production of The Light in the Piazza at Seattle's Intiman Theatre. The show landed on Broadway in 2005 and earned Kelli her first Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations. She moved from one huge critical and commercial success to another when she joined Harry Connick on Broadway in the 2006 Tony award-winning production of The Pajama Game, for which Kelli received Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Award nominations. Kelli has worked regionally and Off Broadway in Sunday in the Park with George at Reprise, My Life With Albertine at Playwright's Horizons, and Beauty at the La Jolla Playhouse.In addition to her critically acclaimed performance as Eliza Doolittle in the New York Philharmonic production of My Fair Lady, Kelli has performed a solo concert at Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops conducted by Rob Fisher. She has sung at Carnegie Hall with Barbara...

On todays show James, Doc and Chris talk about the transformative power of love and forgiveness in Christianity, with Speaker James expressing concerns about the portrayal of Eliza Doolittle's transformation in My Fair Lady. Speaker Chris emphasized the importance of understanding and empathy in helping those in need, while Doc highlighted the negative impact of pornography on individuals and society. Everyone agreed that love and forgiveness have the capacity to inspire change and improve one's life, but also acknowledged the limitations of these forces in the context of societal expectations and power dynamics. 

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 1175, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: The Original 31 Flavors 1: Sour item that precedes Crisp, Custard and Sherbet in 3 of Baskin-Robbins' original 31 flavors. Lemon. 2: Varieties of this flavor included French and Burnt Almond. Vanilla. 3: This traditional Christmas drink was available. Egg Nog. 4: Flavors included this type of "Stick" (but not this type of "Patty"). Peppermint. 5: Nuts to you! and marshmallows, too, with this alliterative original flavor. Rocky Road. Round 2. Category: Wintry Reading 1: In a kids' book, on a snowy day Nicki loses this item of clothing, just like the 3 little kittens. mittens. 2: Dostoyevsky's autobiographical novel "The House of the Dead" has been published with the subtitle "or, Prison Life" here--brrr!. Siberia. 3: The 2019 book "The Enchanted Forest" is a tie-in with this long-awaited animated sequel. Frozen 2. 4: Set in Iceland, the sixth novel in the Detective Erlendur series is titled not "Frostbite" but this condition. hypothermia. 5: It's 1954 and tensions are high on an island with a lot of Japanese Americans in David Guterson's novel "Snow Falling on" these. Cedars. Round 3. Category: Ancient Science 1: The ancient Sumerian number system, based on 60, is still used today to measure this. time. 2: Around 400 B.C. Democritus proposed that all matter is composed of these tiny units. atoms. 3: Considered 1st universal genius, this student of Plato believed goats breathed through their ears. Aristotle. 4: Chinese general Huang-ti used a lodestone as one of these around 300 B.C., perhaps by floating it in a bowl. a compass. 5: Delta city with automatic door openers, washing machines, and a world-famous library. Alexandria. Round 4. Category: London On Film 1: Guinness says this current resident of 10 Downing Street was 1st portrayed on film in "For Your Eyes Only". Margaret Thatcher. 2: R. Chandler's novel was set in L.A., but this '77 remake was "curiously and ineffectively set in London". The Big Sleep. 3: In "My Fair Lady", Eliza Doolittle peddled her posies here, in front of the opera house. Covent Garden. 4: The bird woman in "Mary Poppins" sells feed for birds in front of this church build by Wren. St. Paul's. 5: 1973 film in which George Segal trysts with Glenda Jackson in a Garrard St. flat. A Touch of Class. Round 5. Category: He Was Senator And President 1: Though he served Penn. in the Senate from 1834 to 1845, he supported pro-slavery Southern positions; he didn't get better as pres.. Buchanan. 2: His nickname "Tricky Dick" dates back to the 1950s California campaign that put him in the Senate. Nixon. 3: Though the Senate failed by one vote to de-president him, his later return to the body was met with flowers and applause. (Andrew) Johnson. 4: This Ohioan found the Senate "far more to my liking than" being pres. could be; scandal and death in office followed. Warren G. Harding. 5: This New Yorker and future president joined the Senate in 1821 and soon led the fight against imprisonment for debt. Martin Van Buren. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/ AI Voices used

How do we navigate the heartache of loss while cherishing the beauty of memories shared with our cherished pets? Join me for an intimate reflection on the enduring impact of my cat, Eliza Doolittle, whose passing after nearly 19 years left a profound mark on my heart. Let's delve into the love and responsibilities that come with being a pet parenting, finding solace and support within our community during times of grief, and ten life lessons learned from our furry companions.  Plus, a chance to share your pet story on an upcoming episode.⁣   ⁣ FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTS AVAILABLE ⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast⁣ ⁣ CHAPTERS:  ⁣ 00:00 Intro: The Rainbow Bridge ⁣ 05:31 The Story of Eliza: The Cat Who Saved Me ⁣ 09:44 The Grief and Guilt of Euthanasia  ⁣ 12:54  Finding Gratitude Through Grief  ⁣ 17:33  Connection With Pets Beyond the Veil  ⁣ 20:00 Ten Things I Learned from the Life of a Pet⁣ 23:21 The Power of Community and Rest ⁣ 26:30 Share Your Pet Story⁣ 27:55 Honoring Unconditional Love ⁣ ⁣ Share your voice and pet story on an upcoming episode:⁣ https://www.speakpipe.com/hilisticallyspeaking⁣ ⁣ Join the HUG it Out Collective on Facebook⁣ https://www.facebook.com/groups/hugitoutcollective⁣ Episodes mentioned on this podcast  Ep 17 Chris Palmore Finding Gratitude After Loss Ep 128 Are You a Human Being or a Human Doing?   Eliza and Hilary's Blue Buffalo Cat Food Commercials  youtube.com/hilaryrusso⁣ Connect with Hilary:⁣ https://www.instagram.com/hilaryrusso⁣ ⁣https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso⁣ https://www.facebook.com/hilisticallyspeaking⁣ https://twitter.com/HilaryRusso⁣ https://www.tiktok.com/@hilisticallyspeaking⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast⁣ ⁣ Music by Lipbone: https://lipbone.com/⁣ ⁣ ⁣⁣ FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTS AVAILABLE ⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast⁣ ⁣ ⁣ 00:00 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ 19 years Seems like a moment in time, but for close to 19 years I was blessed to have a pure shadow of sunshine by my side. On my birthday, however, my sweet Eliza Doolittle decided it was time to take a journey without me, and a light in me dimmed. April 1st, just two days after my birthday and two months shy of 19 years, my five pound sassy calico found her way over the rainbow bridge and something changed in me, which is why I'm sharing this with you, because I have a feeling, if you've ever loved and lost a pet, you're going to resonate with what I'm about to share with you. It took me some time to sit down and record this episode. I have to be honest, I needed some time to step away. To be honest, I needed some time to step away. I needed to process this loss and I really needed to allow myself to see where this was going to hit me, because, while I have had pets my entire life since I was a little girl in fact, I don't really know that many years without having a pet in my home, nothing was quite like Eliza. She was mine and I was hers, and for close to two decades, I made this commitment to protect her, to love her, to care for her, and that came with some responsibilities Responsibilities I have never known before. Responsibilities, responsibilities I have never known before. It was level up, it was different, and the feelings that go along with that kind of responsibility, that kind of love, were different too. So, after sharing with those who are closest with me about her passing my family, my friends, my Hug it Out Collective, even colleagues and clients I realized that community is where we really find our healing, and it's a reminder that we were never alone in this battle. Right, even if the responsibilities are different, even if there are hours and hours alone, even if they were just for us to bear, we're really never doing it all by ourselves, because someone you know or yourself has been through it, and I want to share with you just how common it is. ⁣ ⁣ 02:40⁣ It's estimated that more than half of the global population has a pet at home. That's over half a billion dogs and cats, and in the US, 70% of households in 2021 were pet owners, and since the pandemic, the amount of pet adoptions is on the rise, thankfully. So I know I'm not alone when I share that these numbers, no matter what type of pet you have, be it fur, feathers, fins or scales. You likely have, or you have, faced pet loss. And isn't that the rub To know that you will love an animal so much, knowing that it's likely they will leave this world before you and we know that, going into it too right. I know I did, and yet I still loved. And when the time is right, somewhere down the road, I will again, because that's what we do as pet parents. We open our hearts again and again, just not now, not yet. Just not now, not yet. ⁣ ⁣ 03:50⁣ So with that in mind, I thought I would share my story about Miss Eliza Doolittle and some thoughts I have about grief, what I've learned from my time with Lizzy Girl, and some possibilities for us as we go forward on this journey, plus a chance for you to share your story on an upcoming episode. And if this episode resonates with you or any of the guests that I've had here on HIListically Speaking, or any of the episodes we've done, I would love for you to do yourself a favor and do me a favor and subscribe wherever you're tuning in and take it one step further Download those episodes that you listen to, because that's going to make it more possible for others to find this show, this episode and these stories that we tell so beautifully on, HIListically Speaking. Of course, I always appreciate your kind words and your thoughtful responses in your comments, wherever you're tuning in, wherever you're listening or watching, whether it's on a podcast platform or on YouTube, and, honestly, now more than ever, I can really use those words and I know others will too. So how did Miss Eliza Doolittle come into my life? It's quite a sweet story. Actually. ⁣ ⁣ 04:59⁣ It was Thanksgiving Day, 2005. And I was coming home from Thanksgiving dinner at a friend's house and I was driving along in my old Jeep, grand Cherokee. Louise and I pass a hotel and I noticed something moving as I'm about to pass a storm drain and I noticed it was like a little calico puff and I saw its little mouth opening and closing. And let me tell you, I wasn't going that fast, but it was enough for me to know that there was a kitten that was sitting there by that storm drain and I instantly called my friend who was in the car in front of me and I said I gotta turn around. There is a kitten and I don't think it's going to last the winter if it stays out here. Within 30 seconds to a minute. I had turned around, went into the parking lot because I didn't see the kitten at the storm drain. But I heard her and fortunately I had leftovers in my car and I looked under every car in that hotel parking lot right near the storm drain and there she was, hiding underneath the truck. And somehow, with love and care, I was able to force her to come out from underneath the truck because, well, I imagined she was hungry and I had plenty of turkey. And then I put a towel around her, grabbed her and put her in my car. ⁣ ⁣ 06:28⁣ What in the world am I going to do with a kitten? I was not in any kind of a situation to have a cat. I was in a relationship with someone who was highly allergic to cats. So I knew that I had a job to do, and hopefully it would be to find this sweet little kitten a home. But in the two weeks that I had her, nobody came forward. I went to every vet in the area and somehow in those two weeks, those 14 days, I fell in love with this cat and I have a feeling she did the same. So in a way I would say she saved me as much as I saved her, because during that time of my life it was quite difficult what I was going through. ⁣ ⁣ 07:12⁣ I guess things just show up for you at just the right time and I always joke that she's the longest relationship I've ever had. She has gone well beyond both of my long-term relationships. She has traveled more miles with me, crossed more states with me and I wouldn't trade it for anything else. She has had books written about her and chapters, artwork, poems, commercials that she's done. Have you ever seen the Blue Buffalo commercial? That's her. She's been on numerous podcasts, including sitting right behind me and sometimes in my lap. She's joined me in private sessions and even showed up while I was professing with my college students. And, yes, she's been the subject of many social media posts. So it's kind of hard to know life with Hilary without Eliza Doolittle. ⁣ ⁣ 08:07⁣ But as we know, with the years come slowing down and this past year I started seeing signs of her decline. It was happening slowly. I kind of knew over the last year or two that time with her would be even more precious than it was before. And the past few months things started to accelerate. The cancer in my sweet little Calico was starting to show in her face and I found myself feeling the stress, feeling the sickness. It was a fight or flight for me, much like when you're around a sick family member you feel it, you absorb it and you're constantly on alert. And that was a difficult place to be and it absorbed a lot of my headspace, my mental space and my bandwidth was not where it used to be because so much of my intention was on Eliza. ⁣ ⁣ 09:14⁣ So the time came when things really took a turn. On my birthday, March 30th, Eliza told me it was time and my boyfriend, Chris, just happened to be here because we were getting ready to celebrate my birthday that morning. She really made her presence known, that things were really getting difficult. I remember thinking that I don't have this right. You know, I went through a lot of grief before the grief actually set in and grief turned into guilt Because I thought who am I to take away a life? You know, in the perfect world you want your animal, your pet, your fur baby to just kind of curl up in your arms and take its last breath. Naturally right, but that's not the way it always happens and cats are notoriously strong to where they don't really even let you know that they're sick or they have signs of illness. ⁣ ⁣ 10:17⁣ That day it was a turning point for me because I saw that she was beginning to suffer and I wasn't really sure how long it would be. And I remember making an agreement in a way with my vet some months prior that this would be a decision that I would need help with, because I really struggled with the guilt of taking that life, still hoping somewhere in the back of my mind that she would just pass on her own. And I said, when it comes to the time where you think that this could be consuming her or taking away her quality of life, I really just need the honesty. And I got that. I got that that day and I had a moment with Eliza that was almost like an approval, you know, I don't really know how to explain it, but I had the weekend with her. The decision was made and lots of emotions were shared. ⁣ ⁣ 11:30⁣ The night before, Eliza shared a beautiful salmon dinner with Chris and myself. It was really a beautiful evening, a little candlelight dinner, and she got so many treats and so much love and attention. I don't even know if she can get more than she normally gets, but that night was really special and the morning came and we took her to the vet and she was in my arms and surrounded by her little babies and flowers, and I had my hand on her paws the whole time. Chris was caressing her little face and then, at some point, when I knew that time was close, I had my hand on her heart and there's something really powerful about being witness but also feeling that last heartbeat. It was spiritual, it was beautiful and I don't think I'll ever forget that. But in that moment I felt like I was truly connected to her in a different way as she crossed, and I'm really thankful for that. ⁣ ⁣ 12:54⁣ So after all was said and done, I realized I needed to step away a little bit and I was fortunate to spend some time with my boyfriend, chris, and I went to his home in Virginia and just decided to do a little grieving there. It was really a wonderful opportunity for me to go through these stages of grief, and I'm sure there's still more go through these stages of grief and I'm sure there's still more. But I went from the grief to the guilt and then somewhere in there there was a shift to gratitude which took me back a few years, to the time I first wrote about Eliza in a book that was published and it was part of my friend Chris Palmore's book called Dear Gratitude, an anthology, a book that holds space for so many beautiful gratitude stories. And you might remember Chris because he was on episode 17, if , sharing his own grief journey, and it about the loss of his mother and it's interesting how we should circle back to that right. But I was fortunate to share, on page 21 7 of Dear Gratitude, the story of Eliza Doolittle and how she got her name and basically the story you heard here. But I called it Gratitude is Loverly because loverly and my fair lady, if you get the reference, and that's basically how Eliza got her name, because I pretty much found her in a gutter, just like in my Fair Lady, and I thought it was a really beautiful story to share. But I'm so grateful to Chris for giving me that opportunity to share the story of Eliza in his book Dear Gratitude. ⁣ ⁣ 14:40⁣ And again, if you are interested in that episode, it is 17. And I'll put that in the podcast notes for you and when it comes down to it, you really have to think about it. It really is all about gratitude, isn't it? In some way or another, gratitude, after all, is part of the Hug it Out way. Right, if you want to join the Hug it Out collective that I have the Facebook group you'll find weekly themes and challenges in a safe place that supports the traumas to triumphs. And let me tell you, this week that group really showed their colors and showed up for me by supporting my grief, my trauma showed their colors and showed up for me by supporting my grief, my trauma. So you can check the notes of this episode to join us in that group and just see for yourself. ⁣ ⁣ 15:26⁣ But I do have so much gratitude, so much gratitude for all of you who have been part of her life in one way or another, even those who just saw her on camera for the first time or in a podcast episode maybe her Blue Buffalo commercials, whatever, wherever. I'm just grateful that you connected to her in some way through me. And then, of course, those that I shared this with those closest to me, like my mom. She loved that cat and she used to say, oh, kitty's coming to grandma's house, whenever she would watch her, she would call it the country home and it was really sweet to see the connection they had, because she too loved and lost pets my entire life. So that was something my mom and I shared, you know, and even recently, you know, she became a pet parent again after some time without a pet and I'm really glad she has that. Of course, my boyfriend, chris, for having some bond that I still haven't quite figured out In such a short amount of time on this planet, knowing Eliza. They had a bond like no other. And let me tell you, if you have a calico they're very temperamental, they're very territorial and they're very spicy, but somehow that cat got to his heart and he got to hers and it was really beautiful to see. And I have really good friends, really good friends who have been there for me along the way, and I hope you have that in your life too. If you have loved and lost a pet or lost anything that you've loved in your life to have, that support can be very helpful. I know my vet and everyone who got to know this spicy little calico. I have to say thank you to them for just being there and being a support system and, of course, you just for being here to support me and giving me the permission to press record and share and know that you're tuning in. So thank you for that. ⁣ ⁣ 17:33⁣ But back to this week. During this week I found myself watching a lot of YouTube videos on how to connect with your pets from beyond, how to change your frequency and be present. I did a lot of writing, I did a lot of soul searching and I really spent my time in Virginia disconnecting to reconnect Because, like I said, said so much of my emotional bandwidth was really absorbed by Eliza's illness and not really being able to separate from that and it was kind of like giving me the ability to take a breath that I hadn't taken in a really long time. But I had a moment. It happened when I was at Chris's house. It was the first morning I was there after we arrived and there was a trundle bed in the guest room where Eliza loved to sleep in the drawer which was filled with linens. She really made that area her home. In fact I'm not really even sure that the linens have been touched in there because it was just so Eliza right, but I remember that morning opening a drawer and I could still see tiny little calico hairs in there Not too much because she was a very clean cat, but you could see the impression from her body that was on top of a blanket that she had probably been sleeping on and my heart just sank. ⁣ ⁣ 19:15⁣ I remember just being on my knees and putting my hands in the drawer and putting my head down and I sat there for a minute just being so grateful to have her in my life. And I don't know how and I can't explain it, but I felt something brush my ankle, my leg, as if it was her little tail that was brushing by. I was wearing shorts, so it didn't quite make sense to me. There was no fabric around me and I just kind of went huh and smiled and just let it be. You know, not everything has to be explained, and I realized that some things just don't need to be explained, right, they just are just like our pets, they don't look for explanations, they just are there, awesome, authentic, organic selves. So it got me thinking on how, the last 19 years, what I've witnessed with Eliza has been the utmost amount of awesomeness and, frankly, with the other animals that have been in my life as well, and the lessons that I've learned as a pet parent, and I really had to stop and think for a moment that I've truly witnessed some amazing things from the being that she is and other animals have been in my life. ⁣ ⁣ 20:55⁣ And that's where I want to take this episode is to leave you with the top 10 things I've learned from my life with Eliza, and that number one thing is you've got to find the sunshine. I know every time I would turn around, that cat was looking for sunshine, she was basking in the sun, she was sleeping in the sun. She would find that ray just coming through a window and it could be on a floor and she was there. And it's just a reminder how easy it is to find the sunshine if we're just present in the moment. And that leaves me to number two be present and be still the being over the doing is really why we're here, isn't it? And animals do that. They just are so organic about being and we're just too much in the doing, and I share more about that on episode 128. I'll put that in the podcast notes as well, on the importance of being a human being over human doing. ⁣ ⁣ 22:06⁣ Number three is play Adulting gets the best of us, doesn't it? So I want you to stop as often as you can and laugh and play and find that childish enthusiasm that lives within you. Without a care in the world, animals just play. They don't worry about what other animals are thinking, they just are. I learned that no matter how upset I am in a situation, it doesn't need to consume me. That's number four. Be in that place where you can move forward, just like the animals around you move forward Just like the animals around you. They don't spend time in the upset, they just keep moving forward. I learned to let your guard down to trust, and if you've ever spoken to your pet in a childlike voice or as if they are a child, you know exactly what I'm talking about. They aren't judging you, so why are you judging yourself? Just trust that you're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing. ⁣ ⁣ 23:21⁣ Number six I learned that we're all just walking each other home. I know I say that often, but I use that here because it makes such perfect sense. But when you think about it that way that we're all just walking each other home on this planet, no matter what kind of being we are, we become kinder beings. I learned that in grief beings I learned that in grief we find one another and we share the most vulnerable and beautiful parts of ourselves. It's a reminder of the power of community, right? If you've ever seen animals together, how they play, how they laugh, how they cuddle, it's just so easy to find that comfort and support. We need that too. We need that too. ⁣ ⁣ 24:14⁣ I learned the importance of sleep from that cat Now cats I hear sleep up to like 19 hours a day. I would imagine that's just about right when I think about my time with Eliza and she seems pretty refreshed when she gets up right, just does her thing. But it's just about right when I think about my time with Eliza and she seems pretty refreshed when she gets up right, just does her thing. But it's just a reminder to me that sleep is so important for our well-being. So be sure that you're getting good rest, just like your pets. ⁣ ⁣ 24:45⁣ Number nine find your people or your person. I know I've said this before. I said it earlier in this podcast episode. Eliza saved me as much as I saved her. I became her person. I don't think that was accidental. And number 10, I think, is really important, if not the most important. ⁣ ⁣ 25:09⁣ I've learned that you need to love without condition. You need to love without fear and worry. And when you do this and you just let go and realize that being vulnerable is being courageous, you are just allowing yourself to be the most pure sense of self by loving. And in time grief will come, but that grief will turn to gratitude when you remember that loving is a reason to be grateful, even if it was only for a short time, because love will always fill your home again. You're just that kind of person. You're that kind of person. I'm that kind of person. And somewhere out there an animal is going to want to call you their own, want to call you their own, and maybe, just maybe, they'll be sent to you from someone or something that has loved you from before in your past. When you think about it that way, it's heart opening. ⁣ ⁣ 26:22⁣ In closing, I imagine you've connect with this episode in some way, shape or form. And if you do you've connect with this episode in some way, shape or form and if you do, if it did resonate with you in any way, I would love to know and I'd also love to offer you an opportunity to share your story about your special pet on an upcoming episode In the sharing in the community, we do find that we are never truly alone. So what I'm asking you to do is pretty simple and kind of fun. I would love for you to go to speakpipe dot com slash hilisticallyspeaking. I'll put this in the listen notes and share your voice and your story about a pet that you have loved any point in your life. Really, it could be one that you connected with as a child to more recently, but in sharing about them you're keeping their spirit alive. ⁣ ⁣ 27:14⁣ You know, miss Eliza might not be here on this earth in this moment, sitting on this lap or behind me on my chair in this moment, but she's with me. I will continue to share her stories. I'm sure she's going to come up again and I would love that for you as well. So just press record, share your journey, and then you can take it one step further and share a picture of you with your pet, so that when I release the episode, that memory will be remembered, along with your voice and your story. And once you record, once you go to speakpipe dot com, I will personally reach out to you to share details on how you can share that photo and get in on the show. ⁣ ⁣ 27:53⁣ Do yourself a favor. Give that special being that gave you so much unconditional love a moment in the spotlight. I look forward to hearing your stories, seeing your connection, and I imagine others will as well. So, on that note, thank you for showing up, for tuning in, for being part of my journey, allowing me to feel safe and vulnerable to share my story, this episode. I leave you with the words that you probably have heard before and they are quite memorable from Winnie the Pooh, heard before, and they are quite memorable from Winnie the Pooh how lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. That's the gratitude right there until next time. I love you, I believe in you and I appreciate your open heart. Be well.

When Erika Simons went to Germany in 2012 to sing with the Cologne Opera, she had no idea that one year would turn into ten. She's a lyric-coloratura soprano, which means she has a very agile light voice with a high upper extension, typically distinguished by agile runs, leaps and trills. She's played roles like Gilda from Verdi's Rigoletto, Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, and Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro. And like the words she sang for Qantas back in the 90s, she's still calling Australia home, recently returning with her two best German souvenirs, her husband Ziggy and little boy Lawrence.  Erika and I were art and music buddies throughout high school. Learning the recorder, analysing musical genres, learning oil painting, and getting up early to for choir practise. She was turning heads back then, and she's still doing it now, attracting reviews like this one by Jenny Camilleri from Bachtrack: On stage, Erika Simons is the emotional fulcrum of the experience. She moves with feline grace and sings with unbroken intensity. In this chat she shares stories of how creativity has helped her in times of adrenaline and changed plans, the vulnerability of being on stage and managing feedback, and how she's seen creativity and innovation in the arts applied in different countries.  Your ears are going to love this one, and you might learn a few new things about Opera like I did. Please enjoy my chat with Erika Simons.  ---- Connect with us: www.instagram.com/trishjohnstone www.instagram.com/oathandstonedesigns www.oathandstone.com.au www.instagram.com/theerikathatsings www.erikasimons.com

Eliza Doolittle wants to move up in life, and Professor Henry Higgins wants a showcase of his skills with the English language. Is a love connection in the cards for these two? This week we head to the theater and take in a classic, as it celebrates it's 60th year, and those 8 Oscar wins. Join us for singing, dancing, getting to the church, horse races, drowning in gin, and a chat about My Fair Lady! https://www.patreon.com/drinkthemovies https://www.instagram.com/drinkthemovies/ https://twitter.com/drinkthemovies https://www.facebook.com/drinkthemovies https://www.drinkthemovies.com https://discord.gg/fsdW2QqqpS *Please Drink Responsibly*

This adaptation of the musical stars Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews was released in 1956. The Broadway musical won six Tony Awards. The story follows Eliza Doolittle who takes elocution lessons from Professor Henry Higgins in the hopes of losing her “vulgar” cockney accent. The plot of My Fair Lady was based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, which many of us were forced to read in high school.

We're back! We're starting our 5th year a little late, but as opinionated as ever! We're looking at "I want" songs here in 2024, and we're starting with one of the most famous and beloved examples: "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" from Lerner & Loewe's Golden Age classic My Fair Lady. But is it beloved by your intrepid hosts? Only one way to find out...   All clips are from the 1956 Original Broadway Cast Recording of My Fair Lady featuring Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle and are protected by the Fair Use guidelines of Section 107 of the Copyright Act for criticism and commentary. All rights reserved to the copyright owners. Buy/stream the album on Amazon! Listen to the SMSTS playlist on Spotify! Follow SMSTS on Instagram: @somuchstufftosing Email the show: somuchstufftosing@gmail.com

Evan Bertram is a NY based actor, singer, and dancer. She has traveled around the regional theatre circuit for a few years and is currently touring with the national tour of My Fair Lady (ensemble, u/s Eliza Doolittle). Some of her credits include The Secret Garden (ACT of CT), Million Dollar Quartet (Ogunquit Playhouse), A Christmas Carol (Gateway Playhouse), and Bright Star (Riverside Theatre). She is engaged to the love of her life and is so happy to be traveling the country performing together! Evan's socials: ⁠IG: ⁠@evbertram Seeded Productions, LLC: Visit our website for more info ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.seededproductions.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ IG: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@seeded.productions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠MERCH!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Make a tax deductible donation ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Episode 068: Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw Host: Douglas Schatz Guests: Ivan Wise Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We'll discuss the play's origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing. Pygmalion is arguably George Bernard Shaw's most famous play, partly because it spawned the even-more famous musical My Fair Lady. The enduring popularity of the play can be attributed to the romantic arc of its central story, and to the fact that it offers two iconic parts in the characters of Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins. As a new production of Pygmalion opens at The Old Vic in London, Ivan Wise returns to the podcast to help us assess whether Shaw's charming social parable remains as entertaining or as relevant more than a century after it was written.

Nick Butcher and Tom Ling, two of the creators behind the hit new show The Little Big Things running at @sohoplace, join us in the studio. They reveal how they adapted Henry Fraser's inspirational memoir – about how a diving accident changed the sportsman's life forever and what happened next – into an inspirational new musical, which has been given the seal of approval by Andrew Lloyd Webber.We review Pygmalion at the Old Vic, which stars Bertie Carvel as Henry Higgins and Patsy Ferran as Eliza Doolittle, and Beautiful Thing at Theatre Royal Stratford East, a 30th anniversary revival of this classic coming-out and coming-of-age story.And finally we discuss Starlight Express steaming back into London next year, ask if you would pay £395 to see Plaza Suite and celebrate another 30th anniversary – of our chief theatre critic's first review for the Evening Standard. Listen now…For all the latest visit standard.co.uk/culture/theatre Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Charlotte Kennedy is currently playing Pamela and Natasha in Flowers For Mrs Harris at Riverside Studios.Based on the novel by Paul Gallico, Flowers For Mrs Harris is a new musical by Richard Taylor and Rachel Wagstaff. This production, which marks the show's London premiere, is directed by Bronagh Lagan.Charlotte appeared in the concert stagings of Honeymoon In Vegas (London Palladium) and South Pacific (Cadogan Hall). She played Cosette in Les Misérables (Sondheim) and most recently starred as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady on its UK & Ireland Tour, having understudied the role at the London Coliseum. Flowers For Mrs Harris runs at Riverside Studios 30th September - 26th November 2023. Visit www.riversidestudios.co.uk for info and tickets.Hosted by Andrew Tomlins  @AndrewTomlins32  Thanks for listening! Email: andrew@westendframe.co.uk Visit westendframe.co.uk for more info about our podcasts.  

Book Title: Pygmalion Author: George Bernard Shaw Episode: Number 99 | Part 1 __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Pygmalion" is a play written by George Bernard Shaw, a renowned Irish playwright, and first premiered in 1913. The story is a satirical exploration of social class, language, and personal transformation. The plot revolves around the transformation of Eliza Doolittle, a poor flower girl with a strong Cockney accent, into a refined and well-spoken lady under the tutelage of Professor Henry Higgins, a phonetics expert. Higgins takes on the challenge of teaching Eliza to speak "proper" English and present herself as a member of the upper class. As Eliza undergoes this linguistic and behavioral makeover, the play delves into themes of identity, self-worth, and the impact of language on one's social status. The interactions between Eliza and Higgins, along with the supporting characters, highlight the complexities of societal expectations, the power dynamics between different classes, and the blurred lines between authenticity and pretense. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ About the author:  George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was an Irish playwright, critic, and essayist, renowned for his wit, social commentary, and contributions to literature and theater. Born on July 26, 1856, in Dublin, Ireland, Shaw initially pursued a career in music and writing before gaining prominence as a playwright. Shaw's early works included novels and plays, but he rose to fame with his witty and thought-provoking plays that often challenged societal norms and conventions. His plays, such as "Mrs. Warren's Profession," "Arms and the Man," "Major Barbara," and "Man and Superman," tackled themes like social inequality, the impact of capitalism, and the role of women in society. One of his most famous works, "Pygmalion," explored issues of class, identity, and language. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Additional Resources Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw http://www.loyalbooks.com/book/pygmalion-by-george-bernard-shaw  

Melanie Zanetti, is an award-winning Australian actress of both stage and screen, who divides her time between Australia and the United States.         Melanie voices the role of Chilli, in the popular, internationally renowned, Emmy Award winning animation series, Bluey. Her most recent feature films include Raven's Hollow, which was written and directed by Christopher Hatton, who has been a guest on StoryBeat, Gabriel's Rapture, Love and Monsters, and Head Count, which is set to be released in 2024. Aside from Bluey, Melanie's other TV credits include Young Rock, The End, The Bureau Of Magical Things, and The Leisure Class, which was produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.Melanie began her career in theatre and has played many iconic roles such as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion, Cathy in Wuthering Heights and numerous others since graduating from The University of Southern Queensland in 2007.

Welcome to Summer! .:. Tracklist .:. Stolen Dance - Milky Chance Restless Bones - Disco Lines Better than This - John Summit, Parachute Youth Answer Me - Ranger Trucco Remix - Mindchatter, Ranger Trucco Other Side - Azzecca Zonnetje Op M'n Porem - Didier Armeni Sweet & Spicy - Dedwork,Hot Pot Perfect (Exceeder) [Mix Cut] - Vocal Club Mix - Mason, Princess Superstar We Belong Together - Speaker Honey, VVVIRTU Baby Again.. - Fred again.., Skrillex, Four Tet Let's Go Dancing - Mindchatter, Kyle Watson Mezmerized - Disclosure, Slum Science You & Me - Disclosure, Eliza Doolittle

Hailing from Camden, London, ELIZA is a singer and songwriter whose sound can best be described as restrained R&B and Neo Soul.ELIZA first came to public attention in 2010 as Eliza Doolittle, along with her debut album of the same title. At this time she was signed to the major record label "Parlophone", who were pushing her to write and release pop hits. After a couple of albums ELIZA become disillusioned with this approach. She left the record label, changed her stage name to simply "ELIZA" and began writing and recording a new album, "A Real Romantic", which would result in her most authentic sounding music to date.Join us as we discuss her career, her creative approaches, and her famous family."Roots to Grooves" is a production of SIGNL.https://www.signlradio.comhttps://www.instagram.com/signlradiohttps://www.twitter.com/signlradiohttps://www.facebook.com/signlradiohttps://www.mixcloud.com/signlhttps://open.spotify.com/user/96mhz6qfjoztxbl2dpm0uj903?si=aAZpsoEnRAKdx85kr1QWhg

Mrs. Patrick Campbell was a hugely famous actress in the early 20th century, though she hasn't really retained her iconic status. She quickly had a reputation as a stage diva with a sharp tongue, and originated one of the most beloved characters of the stage and screen. Research: Campbell, Mrs. Patrick. “My Life and Some Letters.” New York. Dodd, Mead. 1922. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/mylifesomeletter00camp Sudermann, Hermann. “Magda.” Lamson, Wolffe and Company. New York. 1895. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/34184/pg34184-images.html Woods, Leigh. “'The Golden Calf': Noted English Actresses in American Vaudeville, 1904-1916.” Journal of American Culture. 1992. https://www.academia.edu/47469417/The_Golden_Calf_Noted_English_Actresses_in_American_Vaudeville_1904_1916 Aston, Elaine. “Campbell [née Tanner], Beatrice Stella [performing name Mrs Patrick Campbell].” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Jan. 3, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/32261 Whitaker, Alma. “Personal Reminiscences of Mrs. Patrick Campbell.” Los Angeles Sunday Times. Nov. 3, 1912. https://www.newspapers.com/image/380204798/?terms=Mrs.%20Patrick%20Campbell&match=1 Peters, Margot. “Mrs. Pat: The Life of Mrs. Patrick Campbell.” Bodley Head. 1984. “Famous Actress at Death's Door.” Salt Lake Tribune. Sept. 19, 1912. https://www.newspapers.com/image/76001747/?terms=Mrs.%20Patrick%20Campbell&match=1 “Mrs. Patrick Campbell Ill.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Sept. 20, 1912. https://www.newspapers.com/image/54225938/?terms=Mrs.%20Patrick%20Campbell&match=1 Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "problem play". Encyclopedia Britannica, 20 Jul. 1998, https://www.britannica.com/art/problem-play Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Mrs. Patrick Campbell". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Apr. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mrs-Patrick-Campbell “Mrs. Campbell, 75, Famous Actress.” New York Times. April 11, 1940. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1940/04/11/92937919.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 Shaw, George Bernard. “Pygmalion.” 1912. Digitized March 1, 2003. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3825/3825-h/3825-h.htm Atkinson, J. Brooks. “Mrs. Campbell Returns.” New York Times. Feb. 8, 1927. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1927/02/08/110039988.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stephen Fry introduces three real forebears to the fictional Eliza Doolittle who were found over the centuries in Covent Garden's iconic fruit and vegetable market:Corpses and Cucumbers written by Joanna Clarke and performed by Cassius Konneh [Covent Garden Piazza]Cleaning Strawberries written by Joanna Clarke and performed by Lulu Freeman [Covent Garden Piazza]Oi! You! Jollocks! written by Joanna Clarke and performed by Stephen Fry [Covent Garden to Elephant and Castle, London]Sound editing by Viel Richardson.

Pygmalion (1913) is a play by George Bernard Shaw based on the Greek myth of the same name. It tells the story of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics (based on phonetician Henry Sweet), who makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can successfully pass off a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, as a refined society lady by teaching her how to speak with an upper class accent and training her in etiquette. In the process, Higgins and Doolittle grow close, but she ultimately rejects his domineering ways and declares she will marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill – a young, poor, gentleman. - The play was later the basis for the successful movie adaptation "My Fair Lady" with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza and Rex Harrison as Prof. Higgins. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/librivox1/support

Can anyone break into high society? From Cinderella, Eliza Doolittle and Jay Gatsby to Don Draper and Anna Sorokin, characters that can fool their way into the elite through their smarts, willpower and chutzpah help us pierce the pretensions of the rich. Kyla Zhao, in her debut novel, The Fraud Squad (Berkley Books: 2023) creates her own version of the character in Samantha Song, a harried writer at a Singaporean public relations firm who embarks on a scheme with a close friend and a very handsome and wealthy acquaintance to break onto the city's social scene in just three months. But The Fraud Squad is Singaporean: Samantha drinks kopi, swelters under the summer heat, lives in an HDB flat and deals with overbearing Asian parents–a different setting than what readers might normally experience. You can purchase the book here. In this interview, Kyla and I talk about Singapore, its elite society, the glamor (or lack thereof) in the publishing industry–and why audiences may finally be ready for works by Asian and Asian-American authors. Born and raised in Singapore, Kyla Zhao graduated in 2021 from Stanford University. Right now, she works in marketing at a tech company in Silicon Valley, California. Besides novel-writing, Kyla has an extensive magazine editorial portfolio. Previously, she was a fashion and lifestyle writer at Vogue Singapore. She has also written for the Singapore editions of Harper's Bazaar and Tatler, covered the Asian Television Awards, and interviewed personalities such as singer Nathan Sykes. She can be found on Twitter at @kylazhao_, Instagram at @kylajzhao, and TikTok at @kylazingaround. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Fraud Squad. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Can anyone break into high society? From Cinderella, Eliza Doolittle and Jay Gatsby to Don Draper and Anna Sorokin, characters that can fool their way into the elite through their smarts, willpower and chutzpah help us pierce the pretensions of the rich. Kyla Zhao, in her debut novel, The Fraud Squad (Berkley Books: 2023) creates her own version of the character in Samantha Song, a harried writer at a Singaporean public relations firm who embarks on a scheme with a close friend and a very handsome and wealthy acquaintance to break onto the city's social scene in just three months. But The Fraud Squad is Singaporean: Samantha drinks kopi, swelters under the summer heat, lives in an HDB flat and deals with overbearing Asian parents–a different setting than what readers might normally experience. You can purchase the book here. In this interview, Kyla and I talk about Singapore, its elite society, the glamor (or lack thereof) in the publishing industry–and why audiences may finally be ready for works by Asian and Asian-American authors. Born and raised in Singapore, Kyla Zhao graduated in 2021 from Stanford University. Right now, she works in marketing at a tech company in Silicon Valley, California. Besides novel-writing, Kyla has an extensive magazine editorial portfolio. Previously, she was a fashion and lifestyle writer at Vogue Singapore. She has also written for the Singapore editions of Harper's Bazaar and Tatler, covered the Asian Television Awards, and interviewed personalities such as singer Nathan Sykes. She can be found on Twitter at @kylazhao_, Instagram at @kylajzhao, and TikTok at @kylazingaround. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Fraud Squad. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

[ For full episode catalogue please subscribe to our Patreon at Patreon.com/BestActress ] The year is 1965 and the nominees are: 1. Kim Stanley - Seance on a Wet Afternoon 2. Debbie Reynolds - The Unsinkable Molly Brown 3. Sophia Loren - Marriage Italian Style 4. Anne Bancroft - The Pumpkin Eater 5. Julie Andrews - Mary Poppins - In 1965 Julie Andrews victoriously won the Best Actress Oscar for her iconic role as Mary Poppins. It was a bit of a musical vs musical of Mary Poppins vs My Fair Lady in the Best Picture category and was a snub for Audrey Hepburn in the best actress category. Andrews made Eliza Doolittle famous on Broadway and was the expected choice for the role but when Jack Warner wanted a more bankable star and gave it to Hepburn the public sunk their teeth into the drama. The win for Poppins was seen as a consolation prize for this ‘injustice' to Andrews. This made Julie Andrews insecure about the win for decades and left her Oscar in her attic. She has since seen the win for what it is, a true accomplishment (I mean MP was her first movie EVER), and Oscar is now proudly displayed on her mantle for all to see. Each performance nominated this year is so different and was a very interesting one to dissect. Join host Kyle Brownrigg with guest host Robert Watson as they discuss.

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw audiobook. Pygmalion (1913) is a play by George Bernard Shaw based on the Greek myth of the same name. It tells the story of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics (based on phonetician Henry Sweet), who makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can successfully pass off a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, as a refined society lady by teaching her how to speak with an upper class accent and training her in etiquette. In the process, Higgins and Doolittle grow close, but she ultimately rejects his domineering ways and declares she will marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill – a young, poor, gentleman. - The play was later the basis for the successful movie adaptation "My Fair Lady" with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza and Rex Harrison as Prof. Higgins.

This season we focus on character development and analysis of the female protagonists in Golden Age Musicals. We travel to London this week in Lerner and Loewe's "My Fair Lady." Join us for discussions about the development of the musical from the original myth, to the George Bernard Shaw play, to Shaw screenplay, to Broadway, and then Hollywood. Eliza Doolittle has fascinated audiences with her transformation for over a century and we analyze how her story morphed and impacted audiences then and now. *PG-13* *Full of spoilers and opinions*

My Fair Lady, the story of the flower seller Eliza Doolittle who is transformed from her humble origins into a proper lady - Released last Friday, Magnify is the fourth album from HamsandwicH - In The Boy Who Never Was, set in 1918, a young queer man exists on the fringes of an intolerant society, at a moment of profound global transformation.

In this special episode of Our True Colors, Yolandie and I discuss Disney's new live action Little Mermaid, starring Halle Bailey as Ariel. Join us for this important conversation about social expectations and redefining norms.If this is your first time with OTC, check out Season 1 Episode 1: START HERE for more background on the show.Our True Colors is sponsored by True Colors Consulting - Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion support that goes beyond compliance!REFERENCESThe Little Mermaid TrailerAI Technology Making Little Mermaid WhiteCharlotte La Bouff - "Man Catchin' Beignets"RELATED ARTICLESA New Ariel Inspires Joy for Young Black Girls: ‘She Looks Like Me'The Hashtag That Changed the Oscars: An Oral HistoryResearchers have found a major problem with ‘The Little Mermaid' and other Disney moviesThe Original Version Of Cinderella Might Shock YouHere's How Disney Is Continuing To Honor Tiana, The First Black Disney PrincessCheerios ad with mixed-race family draws racist responsesDIVERSITY ON THE STAGE AND SCREENWhitney Houston CinderellaAlice in Wonderland: Sherman HemsleyAlice in Wonderland: Sammy Davis Jr.JK Rowling tells of anger at attacks on casting of black HermioneJ.K. Rowling Defends Casting Black Actress as Hermione in ‘Harry Potter' PlayShereen Ahmed dreamed of playing Eliza Doolittle, not Princess Jasmine. Her wish came trueHEART-WARMING REACTIONSInstagram: feministTikTok: brotherboy knows what's up

Part of our exclusive Woman's Hour interview with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. She reveals the full story of her imprisonment in Iran to Emma Barnett. Nazanin explains how she survived solitary confinement, how the love of her daughter kept her alive. Anita Rani speaks to documentary photographer Joanne Coates about her exhibition and book 'Daughters of the Soil' looking at the role of women in farming; a culmination of a year's research where she explored the role of women in agriculture in Northumberland and the Scottish Borders. We also speak to arable farmer, Christina Willet, who farms with her son in Essex. This month, the health secretary announced a new plan to tackle ME and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in England. A listen back to our interview with Sean O'Neill, a senior writer for the Times, whose eldest daughter Maeve, passed away last October at the age of 27, after suffering from ME since she was a teenager. A recent landmark report called ‘Broken Ladders' has revealed 75% of women of colour have experienced racism at work, 27% having suffered racial slurs and 61% report changing themselves to fit in. Produced by the Fawcett Society and the Runnymede Trust, ‘Broken Ladders' explores and documents the experiences of 2,000 women of colour in workplaces across the UK, showing the entrenched racism that women of colour endure throughout their careers. Zaimal Azad, senior campaigns officer at the Fawcett Society spoke to Jessica Creighton. We speak to and hear a live performance from Amara Okereke who has taken on the role of a life time as Eliza Dpolittle in My Fair Lady. Amara, who is 25 has been called 'the new face of British theatre' and has been performing at The Coliseum in London. Producer: Surya Elango Editor: Lucinda Montefiore

It has been just over two months since Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori returned to the UK from detention in Iran, and were reunited with their families. But for the family of London born businessman and wildlife conservationist Morad Tahbaz it's been a different story. The family said they expected their father to be part of the same deal but he was only released on furlough and swiftly returned to prison. His daughter Roxanne Tahbaz joins Emma. On yesterday's programme Nazanin paid tribute to those who campaigned for her release and in particular the ordinary women who supported her cause. Two of those women are retired primary school teacher Linda Grove and Freya Papworth from the organisation FiLia who organised a 24 hour fasting relay hunger strike. Both join Emma in the studio. Amara Okereke has taken on the role of a life time as Eliza Dolittle in My Fair Lady. Amara, who is 25 has been called 'the new face of British theatre' and has been performing at The Coliseum in London to rave reviews. She joins Emma to talk about the show. Mina Smallman has spoken to Woman's Hour several times to talk about her grief after the murder of her daughters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman. Two weeks ago the two former police officers who took photos of her daughters and shared them with colleagues were back in court to try and get their sentences reduced. Mina was in court to see that happen, she joins Emma. Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Emma Pearce

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Michelle Dockery is an English actress best known for her leading performance as Lady Mary Crawley in the ITV television period drama series Downton Abbey for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.Dockery made her professional stage debut in His Dark Materials in 2004. For her role as Eliza Doolittle in the 2007 London revival of Pygmalion, she was nominated for the Evening Standard Award. For her role in the 2009 play Burnt by the Sun, she earned an Olivier Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.The music for the podcast is Twiggy's version of "Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks and can be found on Apple Music at this link https://music.apple.com/gb/album/romantically-yours/693460953If you've enjoyed listening to “Tea With Twiggy” please give take a moment to give us a lovely 5 STAR rating on Apple Podcasts. It really helps other people to find the show. If you haven't done so already please subscribe to this podcast so you auto-magically get the next episodes for free and do tell all your friends and family about it too. If you want to connect with me I'd love to hear from you.You can find me on Twitter @TwiggyOr you can find me on Instagram @TwiggyLawsonMy thanks go to all the people that have helped this podcast happen:● Thanks to all the team at Stripped Media including Ben Williams, who edits the show, my producer Kobi Omenaka and Executive Producers Tom Whalley and Dave CorkeryIf you want to know more about this podcast and others produced by Stripped Media please visit www.Stripped.media or email Producers@Stripped.Media to find out! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.