Mountain Views News          Saturday, October 3, 2015

12

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

 Mountain Views News Saturday, October 3, 2015 

Jeff’s History Corner By Jeff Brown

SEAN’S SHAMELESS 

REVIEWS:

FOX’S “GRANDFATHERED” 

DELIVERS BOTH LAUGHTER 

& HEART IN ITS DEBUT 

By Sean Kayden


1.Harvard College established the first Mount 
Wilson Observatory in 1889.The installation of 
the Harvard telescope in 1889, which brought its 
own problems of transporting the instrument up 
the old Wilson trail, caused an interest in a Mt. 
Wilson roadway, something more than a trail. 
The Harvard telescope was removed and in July 
the new toll road was officially opened to the 
public. The toll was set by the Los Angeles County 
Board of Supervisors at 25 cents for hikers and 50 
cents for horseback. The new road was called the 
“New Mt. Wilson Trail” and it was more popular 
at the time than the old Sierra Madre trail. Foot 
and pack animal traffic became so heavy that in 
June 1893 the trail was widened to six feet. The 
Pacific Electric “Red Cars” established their route 
to Sierra Madre from 1906 until 1950. Literally 
thousands of people rode the cars to Sierra 
Madre to hike the original Mt. Wilson Trail.


2.On April 21, 1931, the first meeting of the Sierra 
Madre Historical Society took place, in conjunction 
with the city’s fiftieth anniversary celebration.In 
1936, a city ordinance officially changed the name 
of Central Avenue to Sierra Madre Blvd.In March 
1938, a disastrous storm and the resulting flood 
destroyed many resorts in the local mountains, also 
ravaged the (John) Muir Lodge in Big Santa Anita 
Canyon above Sierra Madre. No trace remains 
of it today. In 1939 the city purchased 760 acres 
of land in San Gabriel Mountains near Orchard 
Camp to avoid contamination of water supply.


3.Arcadia’s beginnings go back over 3,000 years 
to the Tongva/Gabrielino Native American 
settlement whose members were attracted to 
the water rich, ripe Southern California land in 
which to hunt and gather.Arcadia saw it’s first 
notable settler in Hugo Reid who was deeded the 
land by the Spanish government, making him 
the first individual land owner of the area and 
the first to make a modern impact on the land by 
stocking cattle and building the first structure.


4.A succession of land owners followed and the 
one who made a lasting impression on the area was 
Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin who in 1875 bought a large 
area of land including what is known as Arcadia for 
$200,000 ($25 an acre). When Lucky Baldwin first 
saw the land of Arcadia with its beautiful foothill 
landscape, lush greenery and oak trees, fertile 
growing land and acres full of potential, Lucky 
Baldwin was amazed and declared “By Gads! 
This is paradise.” Upon buying the land, Lucky 
chose to make the area his home and immediately 
started erecting buildings and cultivating the 
land for farming, orchards and ranches. It didn’t 
take long before he turned his sights to cityhood 
for the blossoming area he named Arcadia.


5.Arcadia (Greek: .......) refers to a vision of 
pastoralism and harmony!

This isn’t the Uncle Jesse you may remember from 
eight seasons on FULL HOUSE. John Stamos 
returns to television as Jimmy Martino, a 50 year-
old restaurant owner content on being a perpetual 
bachelor in the new Fox sitcom, “Grandfathered.” 
Just as Jimmy finds his restaurant losing business 
to the brand new Bistro Six across the street, he is 
taken by surprise by the presence of Gerald (played 
by Josh Peck from “The Wackness” and “Drake & 
Josh”). He claims to be the son Jimmy never knew 
he had. Gerald is an awkward yet deeply amicable 26 
year-old that throws Jimmy for another curveball 
as well. After revealing himself as his son, he 
informs him he has a granddaughter too. Jimmy, 
a self-proclaimed bachelor, can’t even bare to say 
the word “grandfather.” The unintended result of 
Jimmy’s many, many years ago relationship with 
Sara Kingsley (Paget Brewster) is how Gerald came 
into the picture. He pursues to find out why Sara 
hid this from him, but as you may know, she had 
her reasons since Jimmy prided himself on never 
being able to commit to someone.

 The episode follows Jimmy attempting 
parenthood for a day, giving Gerald advice on both 
life and of course, women. We discover the mother 
of the child is not with Gerald. They’re just good 
friends. Gerald would like to be more than just 
friends, but only time will tell with each subsequent 
episode. Despite the bachelor mentality, Jimmy 
shows much sentiment and compassion for taking 
care of Gerald’s daughter in the third act of the 
episode. Things, as expected in a comedy of this 
nautre, go terribly wrong when Jimmy takes 
responsibility in babysitting his granddaughter. 
It’s on the same night when Deion Sanders, Don 
Rickles, and Lil Wayne unexpectedly all show up 
at his restaurant. Very strange trio right there for 
a cameo and all of them, especially Rickles, was 
wasted in their guest roles. Jimmy rushes back to 
his restaurant and brings his young granddaughter 
with him. Comedy slightly ensues around this part 
of the episode. As this storyline came to an end, it 
offered more heart than anything.

 With “Grandfathered,” we aren’t telling a brand 
new tale, but is the freshman series worth your 
precious 22 minutes each week? Well from what 
I can tell just the first episode alone, it certainly 
does. The pilot delivered several more laughs 
than I ever expected from a FOX show. While it 
wasn’t zinger after zinger throughout the show, 
it definitely out performed your average network 
sitcom in the jokes department. To my surprise, 
the show presented a lot of heart. At any rate, this 
is a feel good show that has some sharp jokes in 
between. In addition, the chemistry between 
Stamos and Peck is spot on. This duo works well 
together. The pilot episode was sharp and never 
wasted too much time in any given scene. Overall, 
if I was to grade this show, I’d score it a solid B. 
Give this one a try since the majority of network 
comedies are truly awful. I’m looking at you “The 
Big Bang Theory.”

 Tune in to “Grandfathered” every Tuesday night 
at 8pm on FOX.

Jeff’s Book Pics By Jeff Brown

A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and 
the Birth of America by Stacy Schiff

 In this dazzling work of history, a Pulitzer Prize-
winning author follows Benjamin Franklin to France 
for the crowning achievement of his career.”In 
December of 1776 a small boat delivered an old man to 
France.” So begins an enthralling narrative account of 
how Benjamin Franklin--seventy years old, without 
any diplomatic training, and possessed of the most 
rudimentary French--convinced France, an absolute 
monarchy, to underwrite America’s experiment in 
democracy.When Franklin stepped onto French soil, 
he well understood he was embarking on the greatest 
gamble of his career. By virtue of fame, charisma, 
and ingenuity, Franklin outmaneuvered British spies, 
French informers, and hostile colleagues; engineered 
the Franco-American alliance 
of 1778; and helped to negotiate 
the peace of 1783. The eight-
year French mission stands not 
only as Franklin’s most vital 
service to his country but as 
the most revealing of the man.
In A Great Improvisation, Stacy 
Schiff draws from new and little-
known sources to illuminate the 
least-explored part of Franklin’s 
life. Here is an unfamiliar, 
unforgettable chapter of the 
Revolution, a rousing tale of 
American infighting, and the 
treacherous backroom dealings 
at Versailles that would propel 
George Washington from near 
decimation at Valley Forge to 
victory at Yorktown. From these 
pages emerges a particularly 
human and yet fiercely 
determined Founding Father, as 
well as a profound sense of how 
fragile, improvisational, and 
international was our country’s bid for independence.


Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff 

 Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold but was 
richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above 
all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an 
ingenious negotiator. She was married twice, each time 
to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the 
first and poisoned the second; incest and assassination 
were family specialties. She had children by Julius 
Caesar and Mark Antony, two of the most prominent 
Romans of the day. With Antony she would attempt 
to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled both 
their ends. Famous long before she was notorious, 
Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong 
reasons. Her supple personality and the drama of 
her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly 
return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff boldly 
separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic 
queen whose death ushered in a new world order.


Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New 
America by T. J. Stiles 

 From the Pulitzer Prize and National Book 
Award winner, a new biography of Gen. George 
Armstrong Custer that radically changes our view of 
the man and his turbulent times.In this biography, 
T. J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply 
personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much 
of Custer’s legacy has been ignored. He demolishes 
Custer’s historical caricature, revealing a volatile, 
contradictory, intense person—capable yet insecure, 
intelligent yet bigoted, passionate 
yet self-destructive, a romantic 
individualist at odds with the 
institution of the military (he 
was court-martialed twice in six 
years). The key to understanding 
Custer, Stiles writes, is keeping 
in mind that he lived on a 
frontier in time. In the Civil 
War, the West, and many 
areas overlooked in previous 
biographies, Custer helped 
to create modern America, 
but he could never adapt to it. 
He freed countless slaves yet 
rejected new civil rights laws. 
He proved his heroism but 
missed the dark reality of war 
for so many others. A talented 
combat leader, he struggled 
as a manager in the West. He 
tried to make a fortune on Wall 
Street yet never connected with 
the new corporate economy. 
Native Americans fascinated 
him, but he could not see them as fully human. A 
popular writer, he remained apart from Ambrose 
Bierce, Mark Twain, and other rising intellectuals. 
During Custer’s lifetime, Americans saw their world 
remade. His admirers saw him as the embodiment of 
the nation’s gallant youth, of all that they were losing; 
his detractors despised him for resisting a more 
complex and promising future. Intimate, dramatic, 
and provocative, this biography captures the larger 
story of the changing nation in Custer’s tumultuous 
marriage to his highly educated wife, Libbie; their 
complicated relationship with Eliza Brown, the 
forceful black woman who ran their household; as 
well as his battles and expeditions. It casts surprising 
new light on a near-mythic American figure, a man 
both widely known and little understood.

On the Marquee: Notes from the Sierra MadrePlayhouse

A NEW SHOW BEGINS 

By Artistic Director, Christian Lebano

Monday night we have our first rehearsal for the 
holiday show A Christmas Memory which opens 
November 27, the day after Thanksgiving. With 
the long run of Always…Patsy Cline it has been a 
while since we have had a first rehearsal. Truman 
Capote’s lovely story has been turned into a 
delightful musical by Duane Poole, with music by 
Larry Grossman (who wrote the music for Minnie’s 
Boys), and lyrics by Carol Hall (who wrote the 
music and lyrics to Best Little Whorehouse in 
Texas.) This is a show about friendship and the 
joys of giving and it’s perfect for the holiday. Every 
time I hear the music, I like the show more.

Alison Eliel Kalmus is directing. Alison last 
directed Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Gondoliers at the 
Playhouse and famously did The Sound of Music 
several years ago which was one of our biggest 
successes – eclipsed only by Patsy! We have a 
wonderful cast assembled for this show. Charlo 
Crossley is playing Anna – Charlo was featured 
in the Academy Award winning documentary 20 
Feet from Stardom and was one of the original 
Harlettes, Bette Midler’s backup singers; Diane 
Kelber was last at SMP as Miss Maudie in our To Kill 
a Mockingbird, she’s playing Sook; Jean Kauffman 
who plays Sook’s sister Jennie has been on Broadway and in National tours and her husband is the 
Tony-winning author of A Gentlemen’s Guide to Love and Murder; Jeff Scot Carey will play the 
Adult Buddy and he was on Broadway in South Pacific and Rent; Christopher Showerman will be 
playing the bootlegger Mr. HaHa Jones and the busybody postman Farley, he was Tarzan in the 
sequel to the live action film; Kevin Michael Moran was in Heartburn with Meryl Streep and he’ll 
play Sook’s brother Seabon. We have cast four wonderfully talented young people to play Young 
Buddy (the young Truman) and Nelle (the young Harper Lee) – locals Patrick Geringer, Ian Branch, 
Lucy Ferrante, and Samantha Salamoff will alternate performances. AND…my dog Felix will be 
making his stage debut in the show! I can’t wait for you to meet this cast.

Tickets are on sale now and are selling briskly already. I think with the extraordinary reception 
we’ve had to Patsy and the great number of new patrons who have found us because of that show 
that we are likely to sell very well. We cannot extend this show, but should sales warrant it, we can 
add performances – we currently have 20 planned. I hope we’ll see you at a show over the holidays.

If you haven’t seen Patsy you have until October 30 to do so. If you think a show may be sold-out it 
is still worth calling Mary Baville in our box office and getting on the waiting list for the show you 
want – we sometimes get cancellations and Mary will call you and let you know. Remember we give 
20% discounts for groups of 10 or more who purchase their tickets ahead of their attendance date. 
Please call Mary at 626.355.4318 to arrange your purchase.