Woody Guthrie: hero to the left for decades. Writer of folk hits like ‘This Land Is Your Land.” Member of the Communist Party. But because he was part of the “Greatest Generation” that went through the Great Depression and World War II, his basic sensibility and outlook are still miles away from the spoiled brats of the Occupy Movement. Here’s proof …

Take a look at his 1942 New Year’s Resolution and see if it doesn’t bring a smile to your face, with cute cartoons and common sense goals. Seems to me that almost all his goals are really things that seem almost – dare I say it? – conservative in today’s world.

Keep clean. Save money. Work hard. Take care of your kids. Love your parents. Help the country win the war. (more…)

There’s been a dearth of Yuletide material here at Big Hollywood this month, so as The Most Wonderful Day of the Year draws nigh, let’s spend some time saluting the five men whose voices echo most strongly through the Christmas chapters of the Great American songbook.

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5. Johnny Mathis (b. 1935)

A host of other crooners fought tooth and nail for this fifth slot — Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, Jim Reeves, Gene Autry, Nat King Cole — but Mathis wins the day via an impressive five Christmas-themed albums, the best of which are immeasurably improved by the melodic mastery of maestro Percy Faith (1908-1976), whose inventive yet unashamedly unambiguous orchestrations make him my favorite instrumental interpreter of Christmas tunes.

The only one of our Top 5 who is still alive, Mathis made his Xmas bones by singing what is, for my money, the single most beautiful rendition of “Ave Maria” ever recorded — a feat accomplished when he was just twenty-two. Fifty years on, no one has matched the infectious, jingling energy Mathis and Faith brought to “Sleigh Ride.” And despite a good showing by Andy Williams, I daresay he takes the prize for “It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and “Winter Wonderland” as well. (more…)

“Leave it to Beaver” was an iconic television show of the 1950s, a show that has been ridiculed by decades by women’s libbers and feminists because of the allegedly stereotypical role of women that it portrayed.

Barbara Billingsley, who died last Saturday, was June Cleaver, the wife of Ward Cleaver, played by Hugh Beaumont, and the mother of two boys, Wally (Tony Dow) and Theodore (Jerry Mathers), nicknamed “the Beaver.”

The Cleaver family on ‘Leave it to Beaver’: (from left) Wally, Mom, Dad and ‘The Beav’ (AP)

June Cleaver was a stay-at-home mom who was always there for her kids, with love, sage motherly advice, and good cooking. This model of motherhood was scorned by feminists in the decades to come as the product over oppressive, abusive men who wanted to keep their wives in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.

Like many obituaries, the NY Times obituary was a bit snarky:

“Along with the mothers played by Harriet Nelson (“The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet”), Donna Reed (“The Donna Reed Show”) and others, Ms. Billingsley’s role became a cultural standard, one that may have been too good to be true but produced fan mail and nostalgia for decades afterward, from the same generation whose counterculture derided the see-no-evil suburbia June’s character represented.”

However, as I said when I appeared in Stephen Bannon’s movie, Generation Zero, almost nobody today understands what was going on in the 1950s. (more…)

“It is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?”

Those are words spoken by a superstitious old woman to Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897). Fearing for the outsider’s safety, she gives him a crucifix. “I did not know what to do,” Harker writes, “for, as an English Churchman, I have been taught to regard such things as in some measure idolatrous, and yet it seemed so ungracious to refuse an old lady meaning so well and in such a state of mind.”

But later, overcome with terror in the bowels of the Count’s Transylvanian castle, he has reason to be most grateful:

Bless that good, good woman who hung the crucifix round my neck! For it is a comfort and a strength to me whenever I touch it. It is odd that a thing which I have been taught to regard with disfavour and as idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help. Is it that there is something in the essence of the thing itself, or that it is a medium, a tangible help, in conveying memories of sympathy and comfort? Some time, if it may be, I must examine this matter and try to make up my mind about it. In the meantime I must find out all I can about Count Dracula. . . .

Over a century later, Stephenie Meyer managed to write four bestselling books concerning vampires (later translated into a quartet of popular movies) without the word crucifix appearing even a single time in her hundreds of thousands of words. The toothsome undead in HBO’s True Blood (based off of Charlaine Harris’ popular, sex-drenched “Southern Vampire” novels) are similarly unconcerned with the possibility of their nocturnal bacchanalia being interrupted by the appearance of a cross. In these movies, it’s not God but other bloodsuckers who provide supernatural support for the good guys. (more…)

Government broadcaster PBS is running a new, five-part series on a subject naturally interesting in our time: American Experience: The 1930s. Episodes are available for online viewing here.

The program is just what one would expect from PBS: earnest, well-researched, skillfully presented, and eager to lick the boots of government while criticizing individual freedom for everything wrong in the world.

There are two important lessons to be learned from the Great Depression, in my view:

1. The government causes business cycles and downturns through its erratic, manipulative policies intended to benefit powerful voting blocs at the expense of those less able to fight back. The market works when left alone, and government interference should be limited to redressing actual harms done by one party to another. This includes combating fraud, enforcing valid contracts, and setting clear but liberal guidelines for transactions made across political borders. And nothing more.

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