A Penny for Your Thoughts

Back in the dark ages, before cable TV and its plentiful fare, Sunday mornings were a wasteland.

Public domain image

One of the options was watching old B movies of the family variety. Lots of Andy Hardy. Ma and Pa Kettle. And Blondie.

The title character in Blondie was played by Penny Singleton. Her portrayal was of the dizzy dame variety, making for screwball comedy that took place largely around the home.

I never thought much about Ms. Singleton, who would eventually appear in over two dozen Blondie movies opposite Arthur Lake's Dagwood. 

What brought her to mind recently was watching After the Thin Man, in which she appeared.

Penny was born Mariana Dorothy McNulty. She began her career as a child actor, completing her formal education only through the sixth grade. Performing in vaudeville, she sang and danced with the likes of Milton Berle and Jack Benny.

Dorothy married dentist Laurence Singleton in 1937, but after two years, the only thing she kept was his name. ("Penny" came from her habit of collecting pennies in a jar.) In 1941, she wed again, this time to Blondie producer Robert Sparks, a marriage that lasted until the groom's passing in 1964. She had two daughters with her second husband.

After the Blondie movies, Singleton cast about for her next act. Being typecast stymied her career, but she forged ahead, recreating herself in her own nightclub act. She also joined the USO tour in Korea. 

But what's really cool about Penny Singleton wasn't so much her career (although playing the voice of Jane Jetson in The Jetsons animated TV show was pretty awesome), but her extracurriculars.

Clearly, this Blondie was one smart cookie. 

Penny Singleton became an active member and occasional president of AGVA (American Guild of Variety Artists). She fought for women's rights and even testified before a United States Congress subcommittee in 1962 about the union's failings in representing its female workers. She fought for better pay, improved working conditions and benefits for the performers.

In 1967, Singleton led a strike by the Radio City Rockettes, one that proved successful in achieving better working conditions for the dancers. In 1970, she fought for a safer stage for the Disney on Parade Show. (Dancers had been suffering from injuries because a support floor had been deemed too expensive to ship with the traveling show.) This same year she took on Disneyland as well, fighting for better treatment for the college students they employed for summer jobs.

The practice of paying actors for repeat broadcasts of their appearances in movies or shows (known as "residuals") was purportedly an idea she came up with, along with the term "residuals." 

Other fun facts: Singleton was the first woman to be president of an AFL-CIO union. She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for radio, the other for movies. And she was the lucky recipient of Humphrey Bogart's first screen kiss in Swing Your Lady. 

Penny Singleton had quite a life. It ended in 2003 at the age of 95.

But what a run it was.

Trivial Pursuits

I would say I'm beset by "ponderables," but that would imply my thoughts had some weight to them. Many of the bits of this and that which zig and zag through my brain are anything but weighty.

Gen-Y-Me?

Instead, they fall under the category of "trivial." 

For example, I'm of the Baby Boomer generation. My parents were part of the greatest generation. Then some genius, deciding that naming each generation was too onerous a task, opted instead to begin using letters. But instead of starting at the front end of the alphabet, they began with the letter "X." Were they thinking the world would end soon, thus relieving us of the need to decide where to go next? Perhaps we'll transition to emojis. Generation eyeroll might be a good choice.

Another of the random thoughts that came to me this week was about seasonal depression. Do people in Los Angeles, for example, get sick of winter? And if so, why? Maybe they just get tired of all that sunshine and warm temperatures. On the minus side, no leaves changing colors. On the plus side, no blizzards. Sure, a few mudslides and a bunch of forest fires. But mostly sunshine and warm breezes. Does that depress anyone? I guess it would be difficult to feel sorry for them if it did. Still, I guess too much of good thing could burn you out after awhile. But I wouldn't mind trying it myself, especially after the weather we've had here this week.

Speaking of weather, if scientists had called it "climate change" from the outset instead of "global warming," could we have avoided all the stupid jokes about "shoveling another six inches of global warming"? I'm asking for a friend.

The roads also become a popular topic this time of year because the salt trucks bring out the potholes. Some folks call them "chuck holes." So, who was the "Chuck" that so pissed someone off they named these bone-jarring pavement craters after him?

Why are Hallmark movies like crack cocaine for some of us? I mean, seriously, people, they have predictable plots, feature the same seven or eight actors (or lookalikes) and still, STILL, I've got my hanky at the ready for the ending. 

Do you cover up your milk chute or let it be, a bit of nostalgia that reminds you of your youth? We still have one at our house, although it's blocked from the inside. So we couldn't put our kid through it if we locked ourselves out (like our parents did with us). There was a lively discussion about milk chutes on my hometown Facebook page. I guess that's why I was pondering this one. Also, just to note, we have not one but TWO laundry chutes in our house as I write this. Ah, the labor saving devices of yore. We don't use them much. Things always seem to get stuck. I still remember my siblings coaxing the youngest patsy to stand in the basement at my grandmother's house right where the chute came out as they threw something down at us (like a shoe). Good times.

I'm sure there are lots more trivials I could be pursuing, but I'll let you get on with your day.

Think of me the next time you're sitting at a traffic light and some weird factoid comes bounding into your head.

You're welcome.

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

A recent online discussion asked the question we all heard in our childhood.

Leaves your skin silky-smooth.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

The answers in my era were mostly predictable. If you were a boy, you wanted to be a fireman, doctor, cowboy, pilot or train engineer. Typical girl answers included teacher, nurse, airline stewardess, fashion model and secretary. 

Not surprisingly, more mundane professions like accountant, insurance salesman, auditor and bank teller rarely, if ever, made the list.

Girls were encouraged to choose homemaking as a career, hence the home economics classes we endured in junior high school. We learned how to be Donna Reed, with skills like baking a cake and sewing a skirt. Boys took shop classes to prepare them to be Mr. Handy Pants Fix-It, capable of managing such tasks as using tools and building things like birdhouses. 

In most schools, these classes no longer exist. I have always been a proponent of teaching life skills, although I believe the classes should be mandatory for both sexes. Also, every high school curriculum needs to include things like balancing a budget. And how things like insurance and taxes work. These skills are clutch, but most kids are clueless, leaving them open to difficult lessons in the real world.

For the life of me, I can't remember what my dream profession was as a child. I do remember playing teacher with my younger brother, but that may have merely been an excuse to boss him around...something I did with relish until he grew to the point where he was bigger than I and was therefore in a position to ignore me. 

There was a time when I thought I'd like to do TV commercials. I would stand in front of the bathroom mirror and read from the back label of a jar of cold cream, using slogans I'd made up. 

In high school, we had to take aptitude tests. Creative writing seemed to come to the top of my list of skills, but at the time, I didn't know how to parlay that into a career. Instead, I fell back on the tried-and-true profession of secretary. In high school, I took business prep classes and found myself typing spreadsheets and memos in an accounting department. It wasn't until my mid-20s when I realized I wanted to be in advertising. 

Fortunately, I was able to make the transition, thanks to the influence of a mentor who saw I was unhappy and likely to leave to the company. I started out as a secretary in the advertising department, but I was so excited about the opportunity, I worked my ass off. I learned to write copy, to put together motivational newsletters and eventually, paste up ads for printing, manage special events and write radio spots. If it weren't for J.B. Robinson Jewelers and the amazing mentors I had there, I'm not sure how my career would have looked.

Alas, I never did get a stint in front of the camera, although someday I think I'd like to give audio book reading a shot. My voice, if not my face, is still in pretty solid shape. 

Retirement isn't in my immediate future. I feel the pull of something new coming, and I'm looking forward to it.

That rocking chair will just have to wait.

Beautiful Music

Snippets of memories often come unbidden to mind at odd times. Maybe it's just a function of becoming an alter cocker*. 

The other day, I remembered my mom listening to an FM station whose brand was self-described as "WDOK, Beautiful Music for the Lands of the Western Reserve." 

Their playlist was much like what we used to define as "elevator music," i.e., soft soap versions of light rock tunes, crooners like Perry Como and lots of stuff from popular melody makers like Ferrante & Teicher and 101 Strings Orchestra. 

All day, every day the radio was tuned in and provided the background of my childhood. I never thought much about it, and I wonder how much my mom actually listened to it. 

I would cringe a little as the Beatles were reduced to pablum, but mostly I just didn't give it a lot of thought. 

The radio went off when my Dad arrived home from work. 

For my Dad's part, he had a collection of LPs that included Al Hirt, Mitch Miller, Herb Alpert and Mantovani. Plus some old 78s of Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey. He played records when we were small, but at some point, he lost interest, and the record player remained largely mute throughout my teens and ever after.

Try as I may, I can't recall if the two of them listened to music after my Dad retired. Of course, by then, WDOK had changed its format, and no one was really catering to folks of my parents' generation.

One year, I gave my mom a tape player and a few cassettes, but I don't think she listened to them very much. 

It may be telling that after he got Alzheimer's, Dad would spend hours watching VHS tapes, his favorites being musicals like My Fair Lady. So music did come around to him again.

I cannot imagine I will ever enjoy listening to lighter versions of my favorite rock tunes. 

My goal is to keep on Driving Down the Highway, singing I Can't Drive 55, Highway Star, Radar Love or Drive My Car, beating on the steering wheel in time, and not giving a good you-know-what if the other drivers think I'm a nutjob.

That's just how I roll.

*Old fart, Yiddish style. (Props to Harry.)