Let Us Again Praise Two Famous Men
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) when they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.
“You see, you can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the same name)
11/16/2022 I’ll begin here by noting that sage advice just above about the useful benefits of pleasing yourself (Not pleasuring yourself, damn it! That’s a topic for an adults-only-blogsite, not this one.) to tell you that Film Reviews from Two Guys in the Dark will be taking next week off (with a Two Guys wish for a Happy Thanksgiving as best as it can be for all of you) so that my wonderful wife, Nina Kindblad, and I can indulge once again with our regular immersion in The Godfather trilogy (Francis Ford Coppola; 1972, 1974, 1990), but I’ll be back after that to start pursuing as best I can the ongoing releases of probably some of 2022’s best in the cinematic realm as anticipated-Oscar-season slowly approaches, so we can all speculate on who/what will get nominated. Now, on to this week’s review.
Opening Chatter (no spoilers): If you’ve been religiously (even non-denominational) reading this blog recently (Well, of course you have, right? If not, get thee busy!), you’ll know I wasn’t among the many millions worldwide who packed into theaters to see Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Ryan Coogler) with its debut in upper North America of $192.5 million, $342.8 million globally, due to my continued caution about crowded indoor spaces as a cluster of diseases are on the rise with the return of cooler weather, but while I can’t yet report to you (depending on how long it takes for this blockbuster to migrate over to Disney+ streaming) on the new activities of this (fictional) African nation I can encourage you to see two excellent documentaries on two excellent African-Americans, jazz superstar Louis Armstrong and baseball superstar Willie Mays, both of which are available to stream, the former on Apple TV+, the latter on HBO Max (also HBO TV cable if you happen upon a repeat showing), both of them free if you’re a subscriber to either of those services.
While these docs are completely separate from each other they do have the similarities of using direct testimony from their subjects—old footage of Armstrong who died in 1971, a recent interview with Mays—rather than an ongoing, off-screen narrator, enhanced with appropriate images, stills and motion, from days gone by along with tributes from a wide range of admirers, so I’m going to try something I haven’t done in quite awhile by blending my comments on both films into 1 consolidated review, broken up into 3 sections of early life into celebrated careers, struggles against racism, and the steady moves into their well-earned fame. As with most docs, you can get all the necessary information about the lives of these guys from Internet sources, but the real pleasure is seeing them on screen with the added punch of all that celebratory testimony, so rather than getting too verbose on my part (if such a thing is possible; of course, the end result rambled on more than I'd intended) in recounting what’s here to be seen, I’ll mostly encourage you to watch for yourself, with no Spoilers from me because there’s nothing to be lost in knowing beforehand what you’ll see; in fact, it might help to know what’s coming so you can pay better attention as each of these segments transpires.
Also, links for cable network Turner Classic Movies showing a wide selection of older films with no commercial interruptions and JustWatch with its wide range for streaming, rental or purchase. If you want to find out what reigned at the domestic (U.S.-Canada) box-office last weekend, go here.
Here are the trailers of the feature documentaries:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate
that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)
The Early Years: Louis Armstrong is the older of the 2 greats under consideration here, born in 1901 (Willie Mays was born in 1931, still with us today), so I’ll start with the man often called “Satchmo” or “Pops,” who began both his life and his renowned trumpet-playing-career in New Orleans, then about 1922 he followed his mentor, Joe “King” Oliver, to Chicago to join the Creole Jazz Band. As his history progresses in the doc and his fame grows worldwide we hear from a wealth of admirers including Ossie Davis, Artie Shaw, Wynton Marsalis, Leonard Bernstein, Count Basie, and Dizzy Gillespie, along with clips of other recognizable figures such as Orson Welles, Ed Sullivan, Edward R. Murrow, Dick Cavett, and Walter Cronkite. Various footage from along the way shows us how he was raised first by his grandmother, then his mother in poverty; at age 6 he was enrolled in the Fisk School for Boys but dropped out when he was 11, soon got into trouble, ended up in the Colored Waif’s Home for a bit while developing his skills with the cornet, which eventually got him to Chicago; yet, he played so loud he had to be positioned a good distance from Oliver so both could be heard. Throughout the 1920s-‘30s he played, switching to trumpet (singing as well, with that famous gravelly voice), mostly on the road in various locations including Chicago, New York City (especially in connection with the 1920s Harlem Renaissance), New Orleans, and Europe, but by 1943 he settled in the Queens borough of NYC where he maintained a home with his fourth wife, Lucille, until his death (not that I think I would ever have run into him on the street—although it would have been fabulous—but I never got the chance as he was already gone when I moved to the Flushing section of Queens in the summer of 1972 [he was in Corona, though, so another obstacle]).
Willie Mays is also from the South but born during a later era in Westfield, AL, near the town of Fairfield. Unlike Armstrong, though, he was raised by his father (after his parents separated), Cat Mays, a talented baseball player who came home daily from his work at an iron plant, then took his young son to a field where Dad’s excellent skills were imparted to his son, both through constant practice and by the boy watching from the bench as his father played with the Birmingham Industrial League, with Willie getting good enough at an early age (also was a star basketball and football player in high school) to join the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League in 1948, playing with pros although he was only 17 at the time. After finishing high school, he was scouted by several Major League teams including the Brooklyn Dodgers, but ultimately was signed by their long-time Manhattan rival (the Dodgers scout wasn’t impressed with his hitting, although his fielding was already becoming legendary), the New York Giants, where Mays was called up to the major league team in 1951, spending most of his career with them in New York and especially San Francisco after the team moved west. Watching this documentary you’ll also hear lots of supportive testimony from Giants teammates such as Orlando Cepeda and Juan Marichal, Dodgers-rival Dusty Baker (current manager of the once-again World Series champs, the Houston Astros), his superstar-godson Barry Bonds, announcers Vin Scully, Jon Miller, and Bob Costas who saw him play on a regular basis, along with others such as former S.F. mayor Willie Brown and sports sociologist Dr. Harry Edwards. Another frequent voice is San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter John Shea who co-wrote a 2020 book along with Mays, 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid (a good dose of his commentary’s in the second item connected to this film in the Related Links section farther below).
Racism Rears Its Ugly Head: Despite Armstrong’s greatly-acknowledged-fame when he returned to New Orleans for concerts in 1931, he and his entourage had to attach their own separate car to the train that brought them to the city because they weren’t allowed in the rest of the train; then, when they performed Blacks weren’t allowed into the venue so large crowds of them sat on nearby levees to hear what they could as music drifted over to them. Later, Louis noted he performed in dozens of upper-class hotels where he wasn’t allowed to stay for the night, almost anywhere he went. Sadly, after publically enduring all that crap Armstrong was criticized by some younger Black musicians either for being willing to play to those segregated audiences or for not taking a stronger stand in support of the emerging Civil Rights movement, yet he publicly called President Eisenhower “two-faced” and “gutless” for not taking a stronger stance against White bigots who actively tried to prevent the integration of public schools in Little Rock, AR in 1957. As TIME’s Stephanie Zacharek notes in her review of this film, Louis was a towering figure of our contemporary age, even when sometimes taken to task for being too accommodating to the White culture that often accepted him more as an entertainer than as a man: “Determining the most influential pop-culture figure of the 20th century is probably a fool’s errand. But if you truly had to choose one, your best bet would be Louis Armstrong […] Through a career spanning more than half a century, the world came to adore Louis Armstrong, but he truly belonged to America—even if we didn’t deserve him. […] Armstrong was the whole package, as adored as he was respected, across the globe. […] Armstrong preferred to keep his political views to himself and sometimes came under fire for not being vocal enough about injustices suffered by Black Americans. But Jenkins makes it clear how strong his feelings really were, defending Armstrong’s right to express them in his own way.” Once again, you can’t please everyone so you’ve got to do what you feel is right, no matter who agrees with you or not, as also noted by The Beatles (their own minor connection to Armstrong in '64-'65 will be shown a bit below).
Likewise, Willie Mays knew overt segregation and racism firsthand from his years in the South, then had to endure a continuation of it in New York City as well as San Francisco. He, and other Black Major Leaguers of the 1950s had some softening of the hatred thrown at them by stadium crowds and even other players due to the breaking of the baseball color line by Jackie Robinson in 1947, but just because there were a few more people who looked like Mays on the field when he hit the big time didn’t erase the hostility that festered in our country in those days with bigoted idiots incensed that Black men would “invade” their previously all-White sport. When the National League Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958 (to balance the Dodgers relocation to L.A., providing some opportunity for a relative short trip from southern to northern CA for games that didn’t require extensive travel back to the East or Midwest) Mays, despite his amazing talent, was somewhat ignored at first because local loyalty was with the American League’s NY Yankees, due to the popularity of SF hometown hero Joe DiMaggio; however, even after the fans began their shift in support of Mays he found he wasn’t going to be allowed to buy the house in a neighborhood he wanted due to the same kinds of racial barriers he’d run up against in most of the rest of the country (ironic now, given San Fran’s [a barely-acceptable-abbreviation here locally, but still better than the despised "Frisco"] reputation as a bastion of ultra-liberal attitudes). Like Armstrong, Mays was criticized by some other Blacks for not being more strident in his support of the Civil Rights struggle, especially stung when attacked personally by former-ally/integration-hero Robinson.
Regarding Mays' relative-quiet on challenging U.S. racism, Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times notes in his review: “If you’re well-versed in the life and times of Willie Mays, this documentary will serve as an invaluable reminder of his greatness; if you’re only vaguely aware of his legend, this is absolute must-see TV. Every baseball fan and every student of American history should know the story of arguably the greatest player ever to don a uniform: a five-tool phenom who was equally spectacular hitting, hitting for power, running the bases, fielding and throwing. […] Mays was deeply wounded when Jackie Robinson publicly criticized him for not being a public voice for civil rights and joining the likes of Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell and Arthur Ashe on the front lines of the fight, but Willie responded by saying, ‘In my own way, I think I’m helping.’ Joe Morgan, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson and Maury Wills were among the many Black players who spoke up in defense of Mays, citing his behind-the-scenes efforts to help and support them.” Just goes to show it helps to know the larger story, if available, before criticizing anybody about anything.
Well-Earned Fame: Despite anyone trying to dismiss him for his race, Armstrong’s fame as a musician with great innovations on the trumpet and an instant ability with “scat” (improvisational, no-words) singing continued to grow on an international basis, including appearances in Hollywood mainstream features such as Glory Alley (Raoul Walsh, 1952) with Ralph Meeker, Leslie Caron, Kurt Kasznar, and Gilbert Roland; High Society (Charles Walters, 1956) with Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Celeste Holm, Armstrong and his band playing themselves; and—most notably—Hello Dolly (Gene Kelly, 1969) with Barbra Streisand, Walter Matthau, and Michael Crawford, following Armstrong’s big-hit-single with the title tune in 1964 (knocked The Beatles off the top of the Billboard chart they’d held for 14 weeks) connected to the success of the Broadway musical starring Carol Channing (he seems to clarify in the lyrics how he pronounced his name as “Louis” rather than “Louie”; this record was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001, following Armstrong’s own 1965 Grammy for Best Vocal Performance, Male for that song [it also won Grammy's Song of the Year in 1965; written by Jerry Herman, it beat among others the Lennon-McCartney single “A Hard Day’s Night”])—movie won an Oscar for Best Score of a Musical Picture – Original or Adaptation. Along the way in his famous years he was often the first Black, first Black man, first jazz musician, etc. to be honored with breaking various barriers, color or otherwise, such as being on a 1949 cover of TIME magazine. 11 of his other recordings are now in the Grammy Hall of Fame too, including 1928’s “West End Blues” (more on that shortly). He’s also been inducted into several Halls of Fame as a performer with a lot more info available on him at this site, but much of what we know about him comes from his own archive of reel-to-reel recordings he made at his home narrating events in his life or talking to wife Lucille and others. The filmmakers of … Black & Blues had full access to this treasure trove, incorporating a lot of Armstrong’s own words into the informative flow of this film.
The 1950’s-‘60s also saw the emergence of Willie Mays as one of the greatest players in all of major league baseball, following his 1951 Rookie of the Year award, interrupted by being drafted into the Army in 1952 (but instead of being sent to the battlefields of the Korean War he spent most of his military time playing on baseball teams with other major-leaguers for the entertainment of the troops). When he was back on the civilian fields in 1954 the Giants made it to the World Series against the Cleveland Indians (now the Guardians, after years of Native American complaints about that name) where in Game 1 he made a spectacular over-the-shoulder-catch of a long Vic Wertz drive (about 425 feet) in NY’s Polo Grounds’ cavernous center field, one of the great moments in sports history (Giants swept the Series 4-0). As his skills continued to grow—his numbers of hits, home runs, stolen bases as well—he became a huge star in NY, then had to adjust to his new home in San Francisco’s windy Candlestick Park where he learned to gauge the winds both for fielding and hitting, while also encouraging the addition of more Caribbean players into the majors, although he often had to become the peacemaker between the ones who came to the Giants and easily-abrasive-manager Alvin Dark. Awards along with outstanding play continued through the 1960s, but baseball players rarely prolong success past their late 30s, even a superstar like Mays who was traded back to NY, with the Mets in 1972; his on-field-skills continued to deteriorate, although he played in the Mets’ 1973 World Series against (my now-beloved-but-I-didn’t-know-a-damn-thing-about-them-back-then) Oakland’s Athletics (I even lived not far from Shea Stadium in 1973 but wasn’t following baseball then, so I remember nothing about even watching those games on TV). Mays stumbled in centerfield, Mets lost in 7 games, “Say Hey Kid” retired soon after. Now in an ongoing role with the Giants he’s celebrated for many accomplishments (including induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame), including hitting 660 home runs (topped only by godson Bonds at 762, Hank Aaron 755, Babe Ruth 714, Albert Pujols 703, Alex Rodriquez 696 [with the Bonds and Rodriquez numbers tainted with steroid-accusations]). Detailed accounts of his life/career are available here.
The subjects of both of these documentaries are often discussed as being the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time, not the shamed loser of some crucial event when someone’s derisively called a “goat”) in their respective fields with some claiming much of the popular music from various forms of jazz, rock & roll, to rap would never have evolved the way they did if not for the exquisite contributions of Louis Armstrong which eventually reached far beyond jazz, just as others say while baseball stars from the earliest day to now can’t match the full combination of skills Willie Mays displayed in his “heyday,” but neither of them claimed such for themselves (although just like Armstrong appeared in notable movies, Mays often popped up on TV shows such as What’s My Line? [CBS TV 1950-’67], The Donna Reed Show [ABC TV 1958-’66], The Dating Game [ABC TV 1965-‘73], and Bewitched [ABC TV 1964-’72]; in 2015 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, then in 2017 the World Series MVP Award became the Willie Mays World Series MVP Award, with many other honors throughout his brilliant career), with Mays specifically deflecting talk of such in the interview for his doc. Both of these films give great insights into the impactful lives of these unique, honorable men with my rating of the Mays doc just a notch lower in that it’s difficult to truly show the historic accomplishments of a baseball player who needs to simply keep doing much more of the same thing while a musician becomes ultra-famous by continuing to branch out, find newer avenues of creativity.
Still, I highly admire both of these guys, certainly see them as (at the very least) among the truly top few in their fields, and encourage you to find and watch both documentaries, where I’m easily supported by the CCAL with the Rotten Tomatoes reviews for both currently sitting at 100% positive (although that’s based on only 50 reviews for Louis Armstrong’s …, a mere 5 for Say Hey …,) while Metacritic gives an 80% average score to ...Black & Blues (very high for them, just like I rarely go above 4 stars except for films that somehow advance the communicative/aesthetic realm of the medium), although no score yet for .. Willie Mays because all they have so far are 2 positive reviews (more details on both of these critics’-accumulation-sites are found farther below, in Related Links).
In that I try to end these reviews with some variation on a perspective from a Musical Metaphor, I’ve several for you here. Starting with Mr. Armstrong, I’ll begin with one of his most-lauded-recordings, 1928’s “West End Blues” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W232OsTAMo8 (referring to the last New Orleans trolley stop at the community on the southwestern shores of Lake Pontchartrain), a song written by Louis’ mentor, Joe Oliver, the recording inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1979, but, in respect to how Armstrong always tried to see the best interpretations in even the most absurd/demeaning situations I’ll also offer another recording of his in that same Hall of Fame since 1999, “What a Wonderful World” (on his 1967 album of the same name [written by Bob Thiele as George Douglas]) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqhCQZaH4Vs (you'll find lyrics below the YouTube screen if you’d like to sing along). As for Mr. Mays, during his famous years there was “Say Hey (The Willie Mays Song)” from 1955 by The Treniers at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UduDreaZq6c which is certainly relevant here, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t also add John Fogerty’s “Centerfield” (from the 1985 album of the same name, his first solo effort after leaving Creedence Clearwater Revival) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq3hEMUeBGQ, a song chock-full of relevant baseball references including famous centerfielders Mays, DiMaggio, and Ty Cobb, references to Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s famous poem, “Casey at the Bat” (1888), Chuck Berry’s song “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” (1956)—connected to a photo of Jackie Robinson—and former Athletics’ and Giants’ announcer Lon Simmon’s “Tell it goodbye” home-run-call (Fogerty played this tune on July 25, 2010 at the 25th anniversary of the Hall of Fame, Mays in attendance [this video uses footage of games and noted players from over the years, including Mays' famous 1954 catch]).
That’s all for my critical commentary this week (which usually reminds me of some parting lyrics from Pink Floyd’s "Time": “The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say,” or maybe R.E.M. knows me even better [from "Losing My Religion"]: “Oh no, I’ve said too much / I haven’t said enough”), but whether you agree with any of that stuff or not I’ll offer you one more opportunity to be in unity with an attitude that would benefit all of us, James Taylor’s "Shower the People" (on his 1976 In the Pocket album), because we should “Shower the people you love with love / Show them the way that you feel / Things are gonna be much better/ If you only will.” We’re now sailing through divisive times; it could be a smoother ride if we’d only help each other a bit more.
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
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Here’s more information about Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues:
https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/louis-armstrongs-black-blues/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmhuBwh94Q0 (24:17 interview with director Sacha Jenkins, producer Julie Anderson, composer Terence Blanchard, and executive director of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation Jackie Harris [audio’s quite low much of the time; I recommend clicking on the CC—Closed Captions—button at the lower right of the YouTube screen])
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/louis_armstrongs_black_and_blues
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/louis-armstrongs-black-blues
Here’s more information about Say Hey, Willie Mays!:
https://www.hbo.com/movies/say-hey-willie-mays
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTxabMw044Q (21:09 video with radio hosts on San Francisco’s FM station 95.7 Steiny and Guru talking to the San Francisco Chronicle’s baseball writer John Shea on the telephone with them talking about his friendship with Willie Mays [and co-author with Mays in a book about his life and career, 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid {2020}—ads interrupt at 6:30, 10:16, 17:19)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/say_hey_willie_mays
No reviews on Metacritic yet.
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