The Floating Kidney Waltz?

Stories about 22 December, 1927 (4/8)

Now, let’s return to 1927 and have a look at the music and dance of that time.  It doesn’t take much looking to discover gold.

Of course such silly dances required music to go with them.  By 1927 records and record players were a widespread and popular item in New Zealand homes, and if you fancied a little Christmas shopping in 1927 then what better way to celebrate the season than with a Columbia record from Pinny’s on Willis Street.  Here is an advertisement from The Evening Post of 22 December, 1927. 

Who doesn’t like a good organ medley?  Columbia records 9139 looks like a great purchase for a conservative Aunty or Uncle.  Or how about something for the children?  Perhaps a campfire sing-song by the Scouts and Vernon Lee, although a Gramophone review is not promising:

The Camp-Fire Sing Song performed by Vernon Lee and Caterham School Scouts (Col. 9235, 12in., 4s. 6c1.) was no doubt recorded for a purpose and is a success, but not indispensable to most of us.

Perhaps some Layton and Johnstone instead.

Or how about something to dance to, something like the Black Bottom?

The dance craze of 1927 was the Black Bottom.  Here are the instructions:

• Hop down front then Doodle back
• Mooch to your left then Mooch to the right
• Hands on your hips and do the Mess Around
• Break a Leg until you’re near the ground
• Now that’s the Old Black Bottom Dance

Well, I’m glad we cleared that up.  Still, I think it would be safer to see a demonstration just to clarify the terms “doodle”, “mess around” and “break a leg” before we embark on a series of indecent acts ending in hospital.

As with most aspects of jazz and rock’n'roll this was originally a dance from the southern black community in the USA.  I imagine the original might have been a little wilder than the white version of 1927 although some of those sliding moves, and foot flicks look a lot like they were borrowed back again by MJ and Usher many decades later.  In case we think that the Black Bottom is just a bit of fun, the dance critic for The Evening Post (April, 1928) is here to tell us differently.

The jungle.  The negro.  Vulgarity.  I suppose that what they’re saying is that this dance and others like it are a bit “saucy” and a bit “physical”.  Jazz as a whole swept on to the popular scene in the 1920s as a style of music with a set of new dances (and as an ubiquitous adjective for anything cool) that was shocking and new precisely because it wasn’t the sedate and measured pace of the foxtrot and the waltz.  To the ear brought up on the waltz this new jazz sound was pretty riotous stuff, and the dancing that went with a positive public health menace.

This led to a type of injury referred to as the “Charleston Knee.”  Further “research” was clearly needed:

Which leads me to believe that not much has changed about trendy research funding, or about how the establishment deals with any new youth trend it doesn’t like; it’s either physically bad for you, morally bad for you, or both.

Strangely all of this brings us to the hottest record of Christmas 1927: Two Black Crows by Moran and Mack.  So popular were these guys that their catch phrases (“Why bring that up?”) entered the vernacular for a time. 

Actually, there are a couple of lines in this that made me laugh smile.  “The doctor told me to take one pill three times a day, but you can’t do that.”  True.

There is a problem, however.  The problem is that this is what Mack and Moran looked like:

Which puts us in an unfortunate place in American history.  After teaching a topic about Back Civil Rights in the USA for many years it became quite hard to swallow this record once I realised it came out of the black face, vaudeville tradition.  It was the tradition that gave us the character Jim Crow, which somehow became the term used to describe all the racist laws applied in the USA to the black community.  In fact two drawling, black crows became quite a popular feature of cartoons and even made it into the movie Dumbo.

Listening to Moran and Mack is complicated.  In New Zealand I imagine the whole black face thing was lost on us, and it was treated as a comedy record featuring two country bumpkins at a railway station.  Still, it would have  become clear later on because there were Moran and Mack movies.  From this distance of both time and place it is easy to think that this record isn’t really very racist because it doesn’t make racial jokes, but the whole routine is a racist joke.  Black people, the routine goes, are dumb.  They might say things that are funny and unintentionally clever, but any cleverness is unintentional: the dumb black – the routine goes - doesn’t realise they are being clever but we do.

Here are Moran and Mack in a much later film (you gotta love the lady at the start with her planetary breasts):

 Awkward.

Which, in a curious way, brings me back to Layton and Johnstone who, I was surprised to discover, were black.  Surprised because they sound so white.  Apparently this duo were based in England and very popular until one of them got involved in a divorce case which was a sufficient scandal in of itself to be a career-ender. 

Race seems a complicated thing in an age where recordings were not accompanied by videos, or the possibility of TV appearances, and so you ended up with a few white people putting on black face and selling records, and a few black people sounding white and selling records.  Awfully complicated really.

Best just to hit the dance floor and doodle back.

A little love: a dangerous thing

Seeing as we are in the middle of the Rugby World Cup in this country I thought I would post this little article from the pages of The Evening Post from 22 December, 1927.

So, to recap:

1. We are thankfully free of professional sport in New Zealand
2. The desires of spectators are given too much importance
3. Excessive training and special diets for athletes are silly, and
4. Top athletes shouldn’t be put on pedestals

I think we can all agree that times have changed.  The problem is that I suspect quite a few people would basically agree with Rev. Crosse.  Even though I am not particularly old I am old enough to remember when the All Blacks first ran out onto the field with a sponsor’s name on their jersey (the All Blacks were proudly brought to us by Steinlager).  Somehow it felt wrong.  Later Canterbury New Zealand were dumped in favour of Adidas.  Games have moved from the afternoon to the evening to maximise TV revenue, many schools have special programmes for their senior athletes that are supposed to direct them into professional sports careers, and the media goes into a frenzy every time Sonny Bill breaks wind.

It’s a funny old thing though.  Professionalism has brought us more entertaining rugby in many ways (faster, more skilful), but at times it is almost less entertaining because of this professionalism.  There wasn’t much that was pretty about a bunch of guys slogging around on muddy fields (remember muddy fields?) to win a scrappy encounter by a single penalty, but it had its charms too.  No sponsors, no elite programmes, no show-boating after you scored a try (“settle down, lad”).

Which is why some provinces still go crazy about the Ranfurly Shield.  Who can forget the match when Auckland won the shield off Canterbury in the 80s, and Robbie Deans seemed like he was going to snatch back victory as he chased a ball that had been kicked through, but the ball scampered away from him and into the crowd?  The crowd as I remember were standing practically on the field.

It was an age when we didn’t have to endure ads by multinational corporations telling us about the history and deep personal meaning of All Black rituals while we watched Dan Carter spray deodorant on his arm pit, or drive an American car, or sell Japanese heat pumps, or ponce around in his undies. 

I suppose it’s the mixed message that is grating.  It was a message I first noticed working for a large(ish) Japanese company.  They preached loyalty and commitment and long hours for the glory of the team, but in any downturn workers were expendable (“it’s not personal; it’s a business decision”).  In the same way All Blacks Inc. and their sponsors want to trade on a proud tradition of honour, loyalty, commitment and amatuerism to sell us stuff.  Which feels a little, well… slimey.

Which I suppose makes me a fuddy-duddy in agreement with a school Headmaster from 1927.  I had better get with the programme.

But the programme is so dull.  Wasn’t it nice when the All Blacks went on tours to England that took a month and they played club teams on little grounds mid-week?  The truly extraordinary thing is that if you watch those old matches the crowds are so civil.  When we took our conversion and penalty kicks the crowd would go silent.  Remember, this is for the opposition.  When the kick went over there would be polite clapping. 

Thankfully, though, the spirit that Rev. Crosse is talking about has not disappeared.  It is still alive and well in our schools.  You can go and see it any weekend on the netball courts and playing fields around New Zealand, where teams of kids play as hard as they can while their parents stand on the sideline and gossip, and the rain sleets in horizontally across the field.  I think if Rev. Crosse saw this he would be a little cheered.

“Fruity Laxative”

I was always under the impression that unless you were quoting something putting words in quote marks suggested irony.  If you read this ad ironically you begin to wonder what a “fruity laxative” really is.  Not to mention ‘remember a good “inside cleansing” should always be the first treatment given.’

This ad seems to cross a line at one point into the too-much-information category: “and in a few hours all the foul, constipated waste, sour bile and undigested food passes out of the bowels”.  Ok, ok, we get the idea.  And remember, Mother, don’t be sucked in by those ridiculous imitation fig syrup products that are flooding the market – a happy child gets his enema from the good stuff: Califig.

Any friend of the lung is a friend of the athlete

I’d like to think that these athletes are running for their lives away from Clarence, but they are probably jumping over a cigarette to show how Clarence has boosted their performance.

I remember you (2/2)

HOYTS is closing its Regent cinema in Manners Mall, making way for a new retail development.

The final reels will roll tomorrow and the site will be vacated by the end of the month.

Manager Kirsty Renwick has worked at the cinema for 12 years, “and I’m not even the longest”.

Ms Renwick said it had not quite sunk in that the cinema was closing yet, “but as I see it get stripped down it will probably get quite emotional”.

Dominion Post, 18 August 2009

I can’t really say why I have become fascinated with a building in Wellington that doesn’t even exist anymore.  Yesterday after school I raced down to the library for an hour to try and track down two old Evening Post articles about retiring usherettes who used to work in the Regent.  Looked at from any angle this is very odd behaviour.  Never mind.  They were a diverting read.

In 1987 the Evening Post carried a story about Diane Jones.

Ms Jones was retiring after 23 years as an usherette.  She had spent the last five years at the new Regent complex, and the previous 18 doing her job at the Majestic.

During 23 years as an usherette, Ms Diane Jones, of Kilbirnie, has seen standards slip.  There was too much bad language, sex and violence in today’s movies, she said on Saturday, her last day in the business.  “It astounds me what they can get away with,” she said the Censor was not doing his job well.

Ms Jones, let me assure you that we had a lot more slippage to come.

Ms Jones said she always enjoyed working at a good comedy when the theatre vibrated with laughter.  And the lovers in the back row of the movie theatres always provided a good laugh for the staff she said.  There were still young people who liked to cuddle up in the dark.

Curiously after 23 years Ms Jones was not retiring.

Ms Jones said she felt like a change.  She has taken a clerical job at Wellington Hospital.

It was the Regent that Ms Jones worked at that I remember.  In the 80s and early 90s I saw a few movies at Regent Cinemas.  It had three screens inside the space that the old cavernous Regent had previously filled with one, and it had a real 80s glamour to it.  Lots of red velvet curtains, and gold handrails, and mirrors.  Underneath the theatres was a shopping arcade.  As time went on this shopping arcade became totally deserted, and the street kids began tagging everything, and all the 80s glamour became run down and shabby.  I had a friend who was assaulted on the back stairs of this version of the Regent, and I had my brand new tape of Achtung Baby swiped from the spacies on the second floor.

I have two enduring memories from that Regent.  It was there that I learned that Kurt Cobain had killed himself.  A friend told me and I couldn’t believe it.  The news just seemed so ridiculous.  My other memory was of being totally blown away by the movie The Doors, and staggering out in a kind of daze and deciding I wanted to be Jim Morrison.  It took me a long, long time to recover from that movie.  Actually, I also remember that for an absolute age they had a poster up for Prince’s movie Graffiti Bridge and I don’t think they ever screened it.

Eventually things got so dire at the Regent that I think everyone stopped going.  I had a friend who worked at MindGames in the shopping arcade below.  They were about the last shop to flee the place after they were broken into and the robbers did a massive turd in the middle of the shop as a final insult.

When the theatres reopened as Hoyts 5 they were ghastly.

The Evening Post in 1979 carried an article on Alice Needham who was retiring after 43 years as an usherette.

Starting in Gisborne in the days “when we had tapestries on the walls and served coffee and biscuits at the interval,” Miss Needham looks back on nearly half a century of cinema as “a world of its own.  When I started out we were coming out of the Depression and about 200 girls queued up in Gisborne for a job as an usherette.  In those days Sir Robert [Kerridge] handpicked his usherettes – I was lucky to be one of the four chosen.”

Miss Needham declares Mutiny on the Bounty to be her all time favourite movie, and gives the prize for most popular to Hard Day’s Night.

She recalls Sir Bernard Fergusson as Governor General going to see a movie.  When he came in everyone in the theatre stood up.  When he popped out everyone stood up.  When he came back in everyone stood up.  Sir Fergusson was a little embarrassed and started running about flapping his arms and telling everyone to sit down.

“I never had any trouble in all those years – except with one man.  He was a very large, very drunk Norwegian seaman who had fallen asleep during the 5pm session.  I had to wake him up.  He apparently thought I was some other woman, and started to chase me all over the cinema yelling he was going to crucify me.”

Alice’s retirement coincided with the Regent Theatre’s last night.  When she left the job the Regent in its old form closed it’s doors for the last time and was demolished for the glam 80s Regent that I knew.

On the back page of the same edition of the Evening Post there is a picture of the theatre manager Bill Wander standing on the theatre steps with a small article below.

After the 8pm show a few words may be said and regular customers will be able to toast their goodbyes with a glass of wine.  Tomorrow people will begin removing the photographs, fittings and equipment which will go to other Kerridge Odeon theatres around the country.

After 43 years Alice was retiring to look after her mother.  She received a presentation clock and “substantial cheque” from Sir Robert.

“I started in the Regent in Gisborne and I finish in the Regent in Wellington,” she says, “and in between have had a life which I would gladly have over again.”

So, I am sad to see that what is being built on the site of the Regent now is not a theatre.  There has been a theatre of some kind or other on that piece of land since 1878.  Theatres are special places.  Like Ms Jones said, they could “vibrate with laughter” or be a place for lovers to meet.  130 years of laughter and tears has disappeared.  Of torches in the dark, and jaffas down the aisle, and Governor Generals, and standing for the anthem, and high wire acts, and orchestras, and Clara Bow.  All gone.

Here is the advertisement for the opening night of the first theatre on the site.  It comes  from the Evening Post, 20 May, 1878.  The first night of 130 years.

And what a night it was.