Jeanne Cooper, beloved/hated 83-year old matriarch of "The Young and the Restless," reveals the secrets of her success and long life ... including which TV crime show star she slept with. (Her first movie was "The Redhead from Wyoming.") Plus, Steve Julian's theory of why live theatre is struggling (it has to do with news), and an NPR executive reveals his surprising backstory (surprising for an NPR type).
Jeanne Cooper, RIP: 'Not Young, Still Restless' — Off-Ramp's tell-all interview
We got the sad news Wednesday that beloved soap star Jeanne Cooper had died. In her memory, we're rerunning host John Rabe's August 2012 interview with the daytime TV legend.
Oh, who knows if everything in 83-year old "The Young and the Restless" legend Jeanne Cooper's memoir, "Not Young, Still Restless" is true?
It's plainly labeled "memoir," and Cooper has paid her dues over 70 years in showbiz, dating back to her first school play.
Cooper was born in Taft, California and lived all over California. Her friends in Stockton - where she was happily ensconced in the local theater scene, a big fish in a little pond - kidnapped her and brought her to Hollywood. In 1953, she made her first movie, but she shot her first television episodes that same year, and it was in TV that she made her career.
"The Young and the Restless" debuted in 1973 and since the 1987-88 season has been the #1 daytime drama. And for all but a few months, Cooper has played Katherine Chancellor, the matriarch of Genoa City, Wisconsin.
"Not Young, Still Restless" is biting, frank, charming, bitchy, and immensely enjoyable. You find out about her parents, a strong, wonderful couple; her love life; her battle with booze; the famous on-air facelift; and her thoughts about the slow death of the soap opera. "It's not dying; they're killing it." And she feels the networks' treatment of soap operas is a slap in the face to the millions of people who have been loyal to the soaps - and the products advertized on them - for decades.
Her voice is a little ragged in our interview, because of all the talking she's done on the book tour, but her will is strong, and her personality is irresistible.
KPCC's Steve Julian says live theatre is in trouble because we're desensitized
How come live theatre's in trouble? The standard arguments say we're not optimizing social media, ticket prices are too high, we're not reaching into other communities, and the LA Times does a lousy job covering local theater. But that's not the real problem.
The real problem is: we're desensitized.
Channel 2, today's KCBS, was LA's first TV station. It began live programs in 1938 to just a few hundred homes. In '39 it had programming six days a week, but that was drastically cut back during World War II, cutting its audience even further.
Lowell Thomas began blazing the TV news trail in 1940, when an entire news program lasted ten to fifteen minutes. In 1954, Edward R. Murrow set a tv record with his 30-minute special on Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Newspapers and radio dominated. We could dirty our hands by reading all about it or sit around the radio and lean in as mother darned our socks. We didn't see live images in any meaningful way until well into the 1950s. So imagine sitting in the audience for Arthur Miller's All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible, and Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, The Rose Tattoo, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
These plays broke ground and reminded us how to behave or begged us to question the effects of war, depression, truthfulness, self-awareness, humility, mendacity, and greed on us, our families, and our communities. Audiences were touched. Or offended. They hadn't seen anything like it. People didn't talk about sexual abuse or genocide in polite circles. Today, we do it freely and often.
And because we talk about it, early 21st Century people who put on plays -- and their audiences -- are at a disadvantage. Is there anything left to shock us? Teach us? We have read it all, heard it all, said it all.
The questions of ticket prices, LA Times coverage, social media, expanded communities ... they're meaningless unless we first ask, how do we break ground today?
Having just written and directed Altarcations at Hollywood Fringe, I put myself at risk of asking a question without being included in the answer, but ... Of all the plays you have seen in the past few years, how many broke new ground for you? Not, "how many moved you," because we all can be moved by Feed the Birds now and again. But, which works taught you something new? What play left you in your seat after your row emptied out? Which is the first to come to mind months later?
As the LA theater community forms a producers league and comes off its Fringe high and scouts out new works, we need to ask ourselves: can we give our audiences something they have not yet seen or heard? And I mean beyond the classics that collapse time. Because, if we can't, we're sunk.
(Steve Julian is a playwright and host of KPCC's Morning Edition. His play "Altarcations" was in the Hollywood Fringe Festival.)
Bird Talk Magazine sings swan song, ruffles readers' feathers
After 30 years in businesses, Southern California based Bird Talk Magazine is printing their last ever issue. It's one of the only magazines of its kind in the world--devoted to birds and bird owners alike.
Bowtie Inc, the magazine's parent company, announced last month that Bird Talk's September issue would be its last. Bird Talk's content will shift to Bird Channel--the magazine's website.
Susan Chamberlain? has written for Bird Talk magazine for 28 years--almost as long as the magazine has been around. She when she found out about the magazine's plans to fold--she wasn't surprised--the magazine has struggled with readership and advertising revenue for some time now. But the news still hurt. "It's like losing and old friend. I've made a lot of friends through writing for Bird Talk."
Loyal readers were hurt, too. Especially when they found out Bowtie planned to send subscribers issues of Dog Fancy in the future:
Chamberlain--who's also a board member of the Long Island Parrot Society--says the magazine was a point of pride in her community. Many bird owners delighted in seeing their parrot or conure in an issue of Bird Talk.
Bird Talk's final issue is adorned with an African Gray parrot. Holding a copy, Chamberlain points out an article on bird health, how to trim wings safely. There's no mention that this issue will be the magazine's last.
Chamberlain, who also runs a bird supply store online, says now that Bird Talk has ended, she'll continue writing for the magazine's website when she can. Bowtie Incorporated still plans to publish Birds USA, an annual publication.
But Chamberlain says she thinks the demand hasn't gone away. "I think that despite the internet, people do like to have something to hold in their hands," she says. "It's been a very enriching experience--and I will miss it."
Sonos Gallery in Los Angeles makes art out of bottle noises with 'Bottle Tones'
Remember the first time you blew into a bottle as a kid? KPCC’s Peter Stenshoel does, and that’s what got him to check out Bottle Tones, the new installation at Sonos Studio--owned and operated by the electronics company of the same name.
Sonos Studio is a gallery--acoustically-designed--celebrating the art of listening. It hosts exhibitions, intimate concerts, and parties geared to tickle eardrums. The slanting walls and foam pyramids look cool, and make the room sound great. And from now until the end of August, the Bottle Tones installation by composers Luke Rothschild and Bennett Barbakow provides a playful introduction to the space.
"It’s something universal and simple as blowing into a bottle like I did when I was six years old" said Rothschild. "It seemed kind of magical."
It may be kid stuff, but Rothschild and Barbakow give bottle music a symphonic twist. Visitors use pumps to blow air into a collection of empty bottles to make different tones. Microphones capture sound the sound vibrations and electronic devices process them--sometimes it sounds like a bottle, sometimes like the soundtrack to a science fiction film.
Rothschild said he and Barbakow originally planned to use bike pumps to blow air over the bottles. But it wouldn't work. "Once we realized it was possible to take these marine pumps that are designed to inflate inflatable boats like a Zodiac, or whatever, and they move quite a bit of air."
Visitors use these foot pumps to activate the installation.
In a city with countless art galleries, we now have a sound gallery, Sonos Studio is at 145 N. La Brea and open to the public--Wednesday to Sunday--from noon to six.
Eric Nuzum, NPR programming executive tells rocky life story in Giving up the Ghost
Eric Nuzum works for NPR as the Vice President of Programming. He oversees shows like Wait Wait Don't Tell me, worked with Car Talk, Fresh Air, Marketplace. Before all that, though, Nuzum's early life was nothing short of chaos: he lost friends, lost money, took too many drugs, and almost took his own life. He ended up in a mental ward before finally turning his life around.
In his new memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, Nuzum reconciles his rocky past with his stable present--with a healthy dose of ghost hunting worked in for good measure. It also tells how music--specifically, 80s rock--became the soundtrack to those tumultuous years.
Nuzum talked to KPCC's Kevin Ferguson about how some of those songs helped him tell his life's story.
Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
"I was at a party one night when I was at the height of my mental instability. And whenever I was in social situations with people when I felt really kind of out of touch, I would look for something to get enraged by. And this song was playing and I was watching kids dance to it, jump around in place. And I got angry--I had been listening to the Talking Heads for a couple years at that point. I felt a sense of propriety at that point.
"I looked across the kitchen, and there's a box of Captain Crunch cereal on the shelf. I started to go on about how much I hated Captain Crunch. And the more I talked, the more people started to stare at me. I started to feel desperate. I started screaming and grabbed the box and started smashing it on the counter--cereal is flying everywhere as I'm just kind of crying and sobbing and screaming about captain crunch. And this song, 'Once in a Lifetime,' is playing in the background."
Laurie Anderson - Gravity's Angel
Laurie Anderson is a performance artist, composer and violinist who's spoken word and signing albums have caught the attention of crate diggers and brat pack fans alike. "Gravity's Angel" is off of her second album, Mister Heartbreak.
"When I was in high school, the way we discovered punk and new wave music was on a little FM station at the University of Akron called WAUP. And at night they would play all sorts of stuff, and it was a discovery and delight every night. There's two songs, the Smiths' "How Soon is Now" and that song, "Gravity's Angel," that I knew within the first 20 seconds of hearing them that they would become one of the greatest songs I ever heard.
"I think that people who are music fans have moments in their lives when something just blows their minds, and it seems like when I would listen to WAUP I would discover something every night like that. It was an indication to me, that song, there was a bigger world for me to discover than what I was experiencing in this rust belt town in Ohio."
KISS - God of Thunder
"When I was a young boy, I thought KISS was the bee's knees. I was kind of weird, and kind of strange and looked funny and acted funny. And KISS was not only tolerated for this but was encouraged to do it.
My friends and I started a KISS tribute band that we called KISS Junior. I had a little electric organ, my friend Terri had an electric guitar which she never learned how to play, and her sister had a beat up old tambourine. We had this massive hi-fi, and we would put the album side on--and the crowd sounds would start and then the band would start. We would just kind of bang along and sing along with them. I've been in dozens of band in my life when I was playing music and I was never able to have as much fun in any band as I did in KISS Junior. It was great."
Here's the entirety of Eric's Playlist:
Heart of Los Angeles takes back MacArthur Park
Heart of Los Angeles, also known as HOLA, is an after school academics, athletes, and art program geared towards students living in and around MacArthur Park. This past Sunday, kids in the program decorated paper-mache masks, put up their ceramic art and performed an improvised dance on the Levitt Pavilion stage at MacArthur Park. They called it We Are Talking Pyramids.
The name of the performance was inspired by the block-shaped pyramids that surround MacArthur Park's Levitt Pavilion. Nana Ampoto, 10, was one of the performers in the stage piece that afternoon. She took a public arts class through HOLA taught by artist Pearl C. Hsuing and Anna Sew Hoy. "[They] came up with the idea that we would do this collaboration with history and art," said Nana. "And we are making a theater performance for the public."
The park was a cultural hotspot in the early 20th century, where people enjoyed boat rides during the day and concerts at night. In 1968, songwriter Jimmy Webb was inspired by its landscape and wrote "MacArthur Park," which spawned numerous covers, including a disco version by Donna Summers. By 1985, the small oasis became known for gang violence. "It has this rich history that was forgotten for decades," said Tony Brown, the Executive Director for HOLA. Brown wanted to utilize the park for last Sunday's performance to show it's a safe place for families. He said We Are Talking Pyramids is "a re-enhancement of that golden era but on today's terms."
When the sun shone brightest that afternoon, the kids took the stage--wearing paper-mache masks--to an audience of friends, families, and neighbors. Nara Hernandez, the visual art director for HOLA, says it was the first time any of these kids hadn't performed like this in front of a crowd before. "If they had mask and were more anonymous, it would be easier for them," she said.
Artist Jade Gordon of My Barbarian lead the dance. Shouting out different movements, sounds and directions as the kids interact with it on the spot. Students also mimicked elements of the park as it happened. As an ice cream cart passed the stage, one young performer did the same, handing out pretend ice cream.
The dance's soundtrack was an eerie mix of ambient noises recorded and produced by the kids in and around MacArthur Park. "This is what contemporary artists are doing in grad school," says Nara, "and to see our kids doing this is really inspiring."
When Nana and her fellow performers left the stage, their faces glowed with excitement. Nana says she did her best, but wasn't sure how the spectators took it in. "I thought the audience was just staring at us cause of our masks," she said, sounding a little disappointed.
Nevertheless, Tony Brown saw the event as a step in the right direction. He said, "I see a lot of gifts in this community and I'm so happy that the kids do too. I'm so happy that the community gives the kids a chance to express what they see."
What was that song? Off-Ramp music for August 18, 2012
Heard a song you liked on this week's show but can't figure out the name? Check out our weekly playlist to find out!
Also featured on this week's show was Mandarin Dynasty's "Perpendicular Crosstalk" and James Fearnley's "Hey Ho" released earlier this year. You can find the single on CD Baby and iTunes.