Southern Bookman

Farewell George Lois, creator of provocative Esquire magazine covers

George Lois' covers for Harold Hayes' Esquire magazine showed that the 1960s counterculture had become the nation's culture.

An innovative ad man who brought a hip insouciance to TV commercials and magazine ads, Lois' audacious covers trumpeted the magazine's New Journalism inside the magazine. The dazzling supernovas of Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, John Sack, Michael Herr, Susan Sontag, Rex Reed. Bruce Jay Friedman and Terry Southern revolutionized American literature.

Hayes' magazine under fiction editors Rust Hills and Gordon Lish also published ground-breaking short stories by Raymond Carver, Philip Roth, James Salter, Jim Harrison and Truman Capote. Hayes gave voice to columnists Timothy Crouse, Peter Bogdanovich and the young Mikc Lupica, and, from an older generation,Dwight MacDonald. and Dorothy Parker.

Lois, who died Friday at his Manhattan home at age 91, defined the magazine's provocative style, reflecting and influencing the consciousness of the baby boomer generation that came of age in the 1960s and 1970s. While the conservative "silent majority" triumphed in politics, Lois' irreverent style remains prevalent in advertising and journalism.

The collaborative Esquire covers, eventually collected at New York's Museum of Modern Art, ranged from Sonny Liston as Santa Claus to Muhammad Ali as the arrow-riddled martyr St. Sebastian and Andy Warhol swirling into the maelstrom of one of his soup cans. One of my favorites was a beautiful model, her face covered with shaving cream.

Lois' concepts, expressing complex ideas in simple images, gave readers the sense they were part of a hip, insider community understanding a secret code.

Hayes produced a trumpet blast with each monthly issue. Lois covers' were a vibrant fanfare for the brilliant writing within.

 

 

It's only October, and I'm already following the NBA

I'd planned to spend Tuesday evening reading, but turned instead to the wise basketball philosopher Dominique Wilkins.

Opening night for the Hawks, and new sensation Dejounte Murray, drew me to the vaudeville routine of  'Nique and play-by-play partner Bob Rathbun, one of my favorite TV pastimes over the years. Bob and 'Nique were in good form, pausing for a reflective moment in which 'Nique recalled his close friendship with the late Boston Celtics great Bill Russell.

After the quick demise of the Braves, I was happy to see Murray, Trae Young and John Collins hold off the Houston Rockets. I also enjoyed spirited sideline reporter Lauren Jbara joining an impromptu dance with joyous Hawks fans.

Murray scored 20 points, with an admirable 11 assists. The most promising sight for the long defensive-challenged Hawks was Murray dashing down the court for uncontested dunks after making steals - he finished with five. The Hawks could contend for the NBA finals, if Murray and Young can keep working together.

Oh my goodness, I even found myself watching the end of the Memphis Grizzlies-New York Knicks game on ESPN. The devil-may-care Ja Morant pulled the Grizzlies to an overtime win.

Guess who scored 20 points for the Knicks, including the three-pointer that put them into overtime? It was Cam Reddish, for whom I had high hopes when he played for the Hawks and has been a dud for the Knicks until he awakened on the banks of the Mississippi. Now Knicks fans hope he'll be the second coming of Linsanity.

Switching to Ted Turner's old station TBS, I watched my childhood team Houston Astros beat the Yankees. The familiar voice of Braves color analyst Jeff Francoer, mercifully free of the irritating tics that mar his Braves broadcasts, described the action along with play-by-play announcer Brian Anderson and color analyst Ron Darling. Francoeur, called "Frenchy" by Anderson, held his own in the crowded booth.

Bob Costas, who annoyed some critics with his verbose play-by-play work during the Yankees' win over the Cleveland Guardians, was relegated to studio hosting duties, replacing Atlanta favorite Ernie Johnson Jr., who returned to the TNT NBA desk. It'll be another long winter and early spring with Johnson and Shaquille O'Neal, Charles Barkley and Kenny "the Jet" Smith.

Just when I think I've cured my sports addiction, it keeps pulling me back in.

 

Respected anchorman John Pruitt's "Tell It True" explores 1960s racial violence, Atlanta's emergence

Longtime Atlanta news anchor John Pruitt's debut novel "Tell It True" examines Atlanta's rise as a major American city in the early 1960s, prevailing against Georgia's ingrained racial violence.

Published by Mercer University Press, the book hinges upon the brutal Klan slaying of a black Army reserve officer and Baltimore businessman. Driving through rural Georgia on his way home from his annual tour of duty at Fort Benning, Jarvis Pendry is killed late at night by a father and son consumed by racial hatred.

The fictional murder is loosely based upon the 1964 killing of Washington educator and Army officer Lemuel Penn, slain by a shotgun blast from a passing car while driving through Madison County, Ga, just outside of Athens. Pruitt as a young TV newsmen covered the Penn murder case and trial, in which three Klansmen were acquitted by an all-white jury.

Pruitt's crime takes place in the fictional Pickett Country, named for the Confederate general who led the failed Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, known as the high-water mark of the Confederacy. That historical echo of the South's "lost cause" effectively sets the stage for Pruitt's exploration of white resistance to the civil rights movement, black demands for equal rights and Atlanta's emergence as the leading Sun Belt city.

Drawing upon his career as a TV journalist, Pruitt views the novel's key events following the murder through the eyes of his alter-ego, the young TV cameraman Gil Matthews. Gil is joined in his dangerous pursuit of the truth by Mindy Williams, an AP reporter eventually hired by Mathews' WDX TV station, modeled after Atlanta's WSB. 

Gil and Mindy's partnership and perhaps budding romance provide an entertaining rom-com counterpoint to the book's dramatic moments. The young journalists encounter a rich cast of fully imagined characters.

An Atlanta executive resembling business leader Robert Woodruff works behind the scenes to influence a fictional 1964 gubernatorial election, seeking to engineer the victory of a moderate candidate over an avowed segregationist. In another insider reference, the wealthy Buckhead power broker bears the name Devereaux Inman, echoing the real-life names of two old Atlanta families.

The fictional gallery based on historical models includes a black minister and civil rights leader, a satirically flamboyant defense attorney, young black radicals at Morehouse College who reject the slow pace of change accepted by the older generation, a respected TV anchorman and Georgia politicians, prosecutors, journalists and law officers.

As in the Penn trial, the Klansmen accused of killing Pendry are acquitted by an all-white male jury. Showing an impressive talent for dramatic set-pieces, Pruitt brings alive the rural courthouse and the trial's testimony, judge's directions and closing arguments. In a historical parallel to the Penn case, the first in which those accused of racial murders could face federal charges of violating the victim's civil rights, the book foreshadows a federal probe of the Pickett County murder.

Pruitt ends the book with a poignant racial reconciliation between the white Pickett County sheriff and Pendry's widow, a memorable minor character. Sheriff Lucas McSwain overcomes his white supremacist heritage in an uplifting subplot.

"Tell It True" closes with the moderate candidate's election and a foreshadowing of Atlanta's vibrant future as "the City Too Busy to Hate." Tragically, the rest of Georgia and the South found plenty of time for racial hatred. Pruitt's message of racial healing appears fragile after the Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd killings, and retreats on black voting rights.

Like the best historical novels, "Tell It True"  reveals hard truths of the  present and future through the lens of the past.

 

Tour Championship to again highlight revival of Bobby Jones' East Lake course

The PGA's season-ending Tour Championship returns this weekend to the East Lake Club, one of Atlanta's success stories.

Bobby Jones' home course, originally called the Atlanta Athletic Club, barely survived the surrounding neighborhood's urban deterioration during the 1950s and 1960s. The club's members voted to move to a new course in suburban Duluth, taking Jones' trophies with them.

One of famed course architect Donald Ross' masterpieces, the old course remained open, held on life support by a dedicated core of Jones admirers. The adjacent East Lake public housing project and surrounding neighborhoods were ravaged by drugs and crime.

Atlanta businessman Tom Cousins stepped in to revive the course, and the desolate streets nearby. The East Lake Foundation led the urban revitalization.

The refurbished course, once surrounded by barbed wire, is now the home of the Tour Championship. Like the Masters, the championship pays homage to Bobby Jones, who grew up playing East Lake. The world-renowned amateur in 1930 won what was then considered golf's "grand slam," the U.S. and British opens and the U.S. and British amateurs. After retiring from tournament golf,  Jones founded the Masters and co-founded Augusta National, some of its holes inspired by East Lake.

Jones' boyhood course again will be packed with golf fans this weekend. East Lake's sweeping fairways, lakeside vistas and elegant clubhouse are again at the center of the golf world.

Big 10 to take over SEC's Saturday afternoon showcase on CBS

Southern football fans will soon say goodbye to CBS' Saturday afternoon SEC game.

For years a permanent appointment at 3:30 p.m. each Saturday in autumn, the nationally broadcast CBS game showcased the SEC as the country's dominant football power. Longtime announcer Verne Lundquist was a Southern folk hero.

The Big 10 will take over the SEC's Saturday afternoon slot on CBS beginning  in 2024. SEC announcers Brad Nessler, who replaced Lundquist, and longtime color analyst Gary Danielson will now broadcast from Big 10 campuses. Even the SEC game's thrilling theme song will head to the Big 10.

ESPN will take over SEC games in 2024, in a massive deal that CBS decided not to match. But the Big 10 this week reached a lucrative contract to broadcast its games on CBS, Fox and NBC, which will offer a prime time Big 10 game along with Notre Dame clashes.

The addition of USC and UCLA will strengthen the Big 10's national appeal beyond Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State. Michigan State and Northwestern draw some national interest, and former heavyweight Nebraska might someday return to glory. But a Rutgers-Illinois matchup won't generate the interest on CBS as say Auburn-Florida.

Shockingly, ESPN withdrew from seeking Big 10 games, casting its lot with the SEC. ESPN for years has shown prime-time SEC games following the CBS showcase. Now, Saturdays on ESPN will be an all-SEC affair. ESPN affiliate ABC will take over the SEC's premiere game at 3:30 p.m. The SEC will add Texas and Oklahoma, bringing even more heavyweight matchups.

The Big 10's mega deal, based on the NFL model, places it ahead of the SEC in TV riches. But the SEC will undoubtedly strike back in the college football arms race.

 

 

Farewell, Vin Scully, voice of the Dodgers, and Hank Aaron's historic home run

Vin Scully's voice united generations of Los Angeles Dodgers fans, flowing from radios throughout the fractured city.

Even fans at Chavez Ravine brought their transistor radios to the stadium, to listen to his call of the game they were seeing.

Scully, who died at age 94 Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles, is also remembered by Braves fans for expressing to a national TV audience the significance of the greatest moment in Atlanta sports history, Hank Aaron's home run to break Babe Ruth's record on April 8, 1974.

After Aaron's blast rose through the Georgia springtime at old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, Scully paused as the crowd cheered. When the tumult receded, he gave his witness:

“What a marvelous moment for baseball, what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia, what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol … It is over, at 10 minutes after 9 in Atlanta, Georgia, Henry Aaron has eclipsed the mark set by Babe Ruth."

A native of New York City who graduated from Fordham and grew up a New York Giants fan, Scully as a 22-year-old began calling Brooklyn Dodgers games in 1950 with Red Barber. After Barber moved to the Yankees, the young Scully was the voice of the "Boys of Summer," calling their 1955 World Series win over the hated Yankees.

The next year, in one of his first memorable calls, Scully told a national TV audience about Yankees pitcher Don Larsen's perfect game over the Dodgers in the World Series.

He moved West with the Dodgers to Los Angeles, witnessing the rise and decline of careers from Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale to Orel Hershiser and Clayton Kershaw.

Along with his melodic voice, the son of Irish immigrants possessed a gift for language. Expressing delight for children in the stands, giving brilliant anecdotes about baseball and American history, and describing simple plays with poetic flair, Scully made the stadium carved into a canyon a pastoral place.

Transcripts of his best known calls endure as classic sportswriting. Even on a computer screen, his voice echoes through his language.

His call of the end of Sandy Koufax's perfect game on Sept. 9, 1965, stands among the classic Los Angeles chronicles.

“There’s 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies. ... I would think that the mound at Dodger Stadium right now is the loneliest place in the world...

"On the scoreboard in right field it is 9:46 p.m. in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California. And a crowd of 29,139 just sitting in to see the only pitcher in baseball history to hurl four no-hit, no-run games. He has done it four straight years, and now he caps it: On his fourth no-hitter he made it a perfect game. And Sandy Koufax, whose name will always remind you of strikeouts, did it with a flourish. He struck out the last six consecutive batters. So, when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record books, that “K” stands out even more than the O-U-F-A-X.”

For most of his career, Scully worked alone, except for the millions of fans he spoke to as their closest friend.

 

Bill Russell set standard for bringing better world

Bill Russell's death brought home how many wonders and tragedies, accomplishments and evil, my generation has witnessed.

Those of us coming of age during Russell's magnificent championship run with the Boston Celtics enjoyed a golden age of TV sports.

Russell led the Celtics to 11 titles as a dominating defensive center and the league's first black head coach, bringing the NBA a new splash of national attention, although the league would gain even more popularity from the Lakers-Celtics rivalry of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and the championship reign of Michael Jordan.

TV sports began to exert an exaggerated hold on the American mind, with the rise of the NFL and the Super Bowl, and college football and basketball advancing from regional to national sports, thanks to ESPN.

Alas, once dominant Major League Baseball's popularity declined, its TV ratings sinking. In recent years, baseball hasn't developed a national star to rival the NBA's Jordan, LeBron James and Kobie Bryant and the NFL's Tom Brady and Peyton Manning.

When Russell's great rival Wilt Chamberlain received the NBA's first $100,000 salary, Russell asked for a contract worth a dollar more. Now, marginal players land $200 million deals.

Outside of basketball, Russell made courageous stands for human rights and social justice. Black athletes increasingly spoke out about inequities in American society.

Along with sports, the "baby boom" generation witnessed an amazing flowering of creativity in music, film, literature and science. Astronauts walked on the moon. Women, blacks and other minorities made tremendous gains.

We saw the murders of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. After the end of the Vietnam War, the United States won the Cold War but entered a numbing series of senseless wars.

Now, a wildfire of conservative political perfidy threatens the progressive gains of my lifetime. Humans are endangered by climate change and a heightened possibility of nuclear war.

Unless we can halt carbon emissions and species extinction, later generations will struggle to exist in a depleted planet, without the beauty and opportunities that we enjoyed.

Bill Russell exhibited the best in American life, a model for us to keep fighting for a better world.

Farewell, Tony Dow, who played Wally Cleaver on "Leave It to Beaver"

It's been a bad week for baby boom cultural figures.

Following the deaths of Hollywood legend Bob Rafelson and accomplished actor Paul Sorvino, Tony Dow died Wednesday morning of cancer at age 77.

Dow gained fame as Wally Cleaver,  the tolerant older brother of the impetuous Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver on "Leave It to Beaver," which ran from 1957 to 1963, first on CBS and then on ABC.

With Barbara Billingsley as the gorgeous, stylish mother and Hugh Beaumont as the wise father, the show presented an idealized suburban family confronting innocent challenges of childhood and growing up. As with other shows of the period, the Cleavers' neighborhood was all-white, and the turmoil then upending American life never intruded.

A former diving champion, the athletic, curly-haired Dow was a heart-throb for teenaged girls. With a persistent smile, he sometimes teased Beaver or showed exasperation at his kid brother's hijinks, but treated him with amused tolerance. Such big brothers were rare in real life.

Like other TV child stars, Dow had a tough time adjusting to later life. He continued his acting career, appearing in a number of TV roles, and later was a busy director. But he battled and overcame serious depression, becoming an advocate for mental health services. He also received recognition as a sculptor.

His co-star, Jerry Mathers, remembered Dow as kind and generous.  As middle-aged adults, Mathers and Dow reunited for several "Beaver" sequels.

Dow's Wally was the friend or big brother we wished we knew in real life.

 

Farewell, Paul Sorvino

Paul Sorvino in a long and distinguished career never played a movie's leading character.

He was always the passenger on the bus rather than the driver, as he told Charlie Rose.

But Sorvino's characters always exerted a memorable presence.

One of America's most versatile character actors, Sorvino died Monday at age 83 of natural causes at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, according to media reports.

During Sorvino's career, his roles ranged from mobsters and detectives to drug addicts. He even played Henry Kissinger, in the film "Nixon."

Sorvino stood out among a stellar cast in Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas," giving his mob boss Paulie Cicero an urbane sophistication and fatherly calm lacking in the other crime figures.

He gave the same qualities to New York City detective Phil Cerretta in one season of "Law and Order." He quit, claiming poor communications and working conditions.

Ironically, he was replaced by Jerry Orbach, who portrayed the cynical wisecracking Lenny Briscoe for multiple seasons.

Like Orbach, Sorvino had a distinguished stage career, known for a memorable performance as the unscrupulous Phil Romano in 'That Championship Season."

He also shared with Orbach a musical background; Orbach was famed for performing "Try to Remember" in "Fantasticks" while Sorvino was trained as an opera singer and starred in several musicals and operas.

Sorvino also co-starred with Al Pacino in "Panic in Needle Park," co-written by Joan Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

The father of Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino, Sorvino was one of those special performers who brought a fatherly authority to his roles.

Farewell Bob Rafelson, creator of "The Monkees" and "Five Easy Pieces"

Jack Nicholson starred in numerous films after "Five Easy Pieces."

But his performance as Bobby Dupea in the film directed and co-written by Bob Rafelson defined American manhood for the generation reaching adulthood in the early 1970s, much as Clark Gable's role in "It Happened One Night" influenced the Depression era.

Nicholson's Dupea doesn't hold up so well these days. As Studs Terkel said, the famous scene in which Dupea berates a waitress over a sandwich order is the bullying of a working-class woman just doing her job rather than an admirable rebellion against corporate arrogance.

Depea's rejection of a classical-music career to work as an oil-field roughneck appears more self-defeating than heroic. His anger, abusive treatment of his girlfriend played by Karen Black and self-absorption exhibit a now shunned toxic masculinity.

Rafelson, who boosted Nicholson's career in seven films, directing "Five Easy Pieces" and "The King of Marvin Gardens" and producing "Easy Rider," died Saturday at his home in Aspen, Colo. at age 89, his wife, Gabrielle Taurek Rafelson, said, according to media reports. He'd been suffering from cancer.

The co-creator of the TV series "The Monkees," Rafelson was a leading figure in the New Hollywood of the 1970s. "Five Easy Pieces," co-written with Carole Eastman, remains his most notable film. Rafelson produced "The Last Picture Show" and directed and produced a number of other films.

He formed the Monkees, who sought to bring the carefree spirit of the Beatles" "Hard Day's Night" to American television.

While Rafelson and co-creator Bert Schneider won an Emmy for the show, it lasted just two seasons, its forced humor and overwrought slapstick souring quickly.

But the Monkees' hits, written by top songwriters and backed by outstanding studio musicians, remain vital. Peter York, Michael Nesmith, Davey Jones and Mickey Dolenz developed into a fine performing band over the years and built an enduring musical legacy.

It's been years since I've seen "Five Easy Pieces," and wonder how it would hold up today. The misogyny of Nicholson's character might be hard to watch. Yet the energy of Nicholson's performance likely holds its power.

Bobby Dupea was a forerunner of today's social and political anger.