ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY DOES THE WORK OF TWO

The entertainment industry is where you go with time to kill and you don’t workout.

Pick up a book, a screen, go to a play.

The last one, go to a play, is different because now you have to make plans for your anticipated spare time, which means scheduling, which is another word for work.

I like spending my leisure time working?

Nooooo. But . . .

I married a ‘gal’ from Los Angeles.

You know the place. Hollywood, movies stars, swimming pools.

But that wasn’t her LA.

It’s where the local kids meet in high school and become movie stars together.

At least that’s the story rolled out for anyone who has never been to California.

“There it is folks, the great state of California awash in the waves of hustlers, pimps, and prostitutes known as the entertainment industry.”

And so much more.

 

As a young man, Trump had been interested in attending film school at USC.

“I’ve always thought that Louis B. Mayer led the ultimate life, that Flo Ziegfeld led the ultimate life, that men like Darryl Zanuck and Harry Cohn did some creative and beautiful things,” he told Playboy in 1990.

“The ultimate job for me would have been running MGM in the ’30s and ’40s–pre-television.”

 

Trump knows films, though, like Citizen Kane, the story of a man who had everything but in the end yearned only for the lost pleasure of a childhood day aboard a sled named Rosebud.

“The word ‘Rosebud’ is maybe the most significant word in film,” Trump once said for a never-completed project in which documentarian Errol Morris interviewed notables about their favorite movies.

“The wealth, the sorrow, the unhappiness, the happiness just struck lots of different notes,” Trump continued.

“Citizen Kane was really about accumulation, and at the end of the accumulation you see what happens, and it’s not necessarily all positive, not positive.”

Rosebud.

 

California Is The Culprit?

This is Max Bauer Jr, and his dad Max Bauer, the former heavyweight boxing champion of the world.

Little Max grew up to be a television star. That’s him driving the car in the top photo.

He was such a convincing actor that no one thought he could be anyone else but Jethro Bodine, noted brain surgeon student.

No one thought he could make movies instead of star in them with his Beverly Hillbillies fame.

But he made movies for hundreds of thousands that hit the box office for tens of millions.

He was one of the first to turn a song and a song title into a successful movie with Ode to Billy Joe.

Max knew how to get things done in a Hollywood that wanted Jethro, not him.

In some ways his career path is similar to that of the current president.

 

How would Max have played from the Oval Office when he reported on the war in Ukraine, Chinese navy drills around Taiwan, and the complexities of the world wide economy based on long range planning?

He could handle movie budgets with his bachelor’s in business administration from Santa Clara University after serving in the Air Force.

This was a man who made learning a part of his work, education a tool to use.

He could fill his administration with his business associates.

Mr. Drysdale for treasury, Jed Clampett for Interior, Grannie for HHS.

What other Hollywood people for president?

 

 

I nominate Jackie Gleason, a man who rode the roller coaster of fame up and down and seemed to find a way to let his light shine.

He knew the right people for an entertainment industry administration.

The Bandit for FBI, Art Carney for State.

If he ran out of people, he had those he made up:

 

Reginald Van Gleason III, a top-hatted millionaire with a taste for both the good life and fantasy;

Rudy the Repairman, boisterous and boorish;

Joe the Bartender, gregarious and with friendly words for the never-seen Mr. Dennehy (who was always the first one at the bar)

Stanley R. Sogg, a pitchman who usually appeared on commercials during late-night TV movies, often selling items that came with extras or bonuses (the ultimate inducement was a 100-pound wedge of “Mother Fletcher’s Fatchamara’s Matzoroni” cheese.)

 

California Show Biz Government Good For Ratings

These are the men who served in the Nixon administration of 1968-1974 after things caught up with them.

Caught up with most of them.

I remember them as a college kid wondering why they scowled around looking like hard-ass punks in suits.

Elected, or appointed, or hired to raid an office, these men found their fate tied to that of their president.

 

In the aftermath of Richard Nixon’s resignation, Watergate continued to claim victims.

The final toll included:

one presidential resignation

one vice-presidential resignation – although Agnew’s crimes were unrelated to Watergate

40 government officials indicted or jailed

H.R. Haldeman and John Erlichman (White House staff), resigned 30 April 1973, subsequently jailed

John Dean (White House legal counsel), sacked 30 April 1973, subsequently jailed

John Mitchell, Attorney-General and Chairman of the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), jailed

Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy (ex-White House staff), planned the Watergate break-in, both jailed

Charles Colson, special counsel to the President, jailed

James McCord (Security Director of CREEP), jailed

 

PS: Some names are familiar to baby boomers with an ear for history, but it’s the forty officials indicted or jailed, known only to family and friends, that I’m looking at. How many of the current crop of untouchables in government service will be in a similar lineup?

 

PSS: If the people around the cabinet table today giving thanks and paying fealty do time, they may come out unrecognizable unless they go to a prison with make-up rooms and cosmetic surgery touch-ups.

The entertainment industry ought to be able to help them.