In Memoriam: A Superstar and a Supporting Player

All of Los Angeles and (I suspect) all of the world now mourn the loss of the brilliant, talented, unpredictable Kobe Bryant. More than simply a retired athlete, he was clearly a force of nature, bent on exploring all facets of life-in-the-big-city to the extent of his considerable powers. As movie buffs know, Kobe was even an Oscar winner, for the 2017 animated short called Dear Basketball. It’s a sweet (and beautifully hand-drawn) rendering of Bryant’s passion for the sport, one that recognizes in a simple but heartfelt way both the joys of the game and the limitations of the human body. It’s hard to dwell on the loss of such a man, and devastating to think of the thirteen-year-old daughter (yes, another basketball talent) who died with him, on the way to a practice.

But I’m also feeling somber because of the loss of someone much older and much less famous than Kobe Bryant. Marsha Kramer never won a major award, but she was a theatre professional from young adulthood until her death last week at the age of 74. Obituaries particularly noted her 14 appearances on TV’s Modern Family. She had a recurring role on Frasier, and appeared on such classic shows as Touched by an Angel, Cheers, Malcolm in the Middle, and Newhart. In addition, there were small parts in movies like 2013’s The Great Gatsby. By far her biggest credit, though, was as Wendy Darling, soaring off to Neverland in Sandy Duncan’s famous Broadway revival of Peter Pan.

I knew Marsha Kramer before all of that, when we were both still in high school. UCLA was offering a special six-week theatre workshop for stage-struck teenagers: kids came from all over SoCal to take part in acting exercises and perform in one-act plays for an invited audience. It was an interesting group. Some of us had family showbiz connections (like Lee J. Cobb’s pretty daughter, Julie), but most of us didn’t. Some were doing this for fun, and others were so serious about acting careers that they already had agents and stage names. Naturally we all kept an eye out for the future stars in our ranks. As was usual with high school drama kids, girls far out-numbered boys and had a far harder time getting cast in showy roles. There was one young man we all regarded as particularly talented and charismatic, and we anticipated seeing his name (either his real name or his chosen stage moniker) in lights. Never happened. But a very nice fellow named Richard Dreyfuss, who had never especially impressed me with his acting chops, has had a long, storied career, climaxing with a Best Actor Oscar for The Goodbye Girl (yes, he beat out Richard Burton in Equus).

As for Marsha Kramer, the pride of the Westchester High School drama department, she was small, cute, poised, and had a lovely singing voice. So it wasn’t surprising that she nabbed a really good juvenile role at UCLA. Though I didn’t think much then about her future prospects, she was extremely likable, and years later I got a big kick out of her Peter Pan appearance. My favorite memory: when I saw the show circa 1982 at L.A.s Pantages Theatre, I overheard two women in the lobby marveling at the fact that the adorable little Wendy flying around the stage was actually 28 years old. The joke for me is that they were almost 10 years off: Marsha was probably 37 at the time, slightly older than Sandy Duncan. But no, I didn’t spill the beans.

Play Ball! Or “Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?”

All of SoCal’s fair-weather sports fans, including me, have spent the last few days marveling over the farewell appearance of Kobe Bryant at Staples Center. Sixty points, including a game-winner! Basketball will never be the same with Kobe missing from the Lakers’ line-up.

Still, it’s the start of baseball season, so by rights I should be paying attention to the Dodgers.  Especially since another farewell season is coming up, involving someone who means the world to me and my fellow Angelenos. Yes, I’m talking about the gloriously mellow-voiced Vin Scully, who will retire at the end of 2016. The veteran play-by-play man is now 88 years old, and so he’s entitled to some rest. Meanwhile, the Dodgers have saluted him by re-naming the road up to their Chavez Ravine ballpark Vin Scully Avenue. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

If you check IMDB, Vin Scully has his share of acting credits. I don’t think there’s an Oscar in his future: he has mostly played (you guessed it) baseball announcers. But this is a man who, through years of radio broadcasting, has known how to use his voice to add color and drama.  Plua, he’s got a great stock of anecdotes. In his earliest days, he used to broadcast games in the hinterlands, where all he had for input was a tickertape feed. When you only know the bare bones of what has happened (three up, three down . . .), it’s up to you to fill the empty air with excitement. He could, and he did.

There are, of course, lots of movies that deal with professional sports: football, basketball, golf, tennis, boxing. But though I haven’t conducted a survey I’m convinced that no sport has seen more screentime than baseball. It makes sense. Baseball is the essence of an American preoccupation. It’s got a long, proud history, and it’s a sport that honors individual heroes as much as it does teamwork. The game is slow enough and the uniforms are revealing enough that individual personalities shine through. That’s probably why the studios were making baseball movies way back in 1942 (Pride of the Yankees) and The Babe Ruth Story (1948). Jackie Robinson, the first African-American big league player was honored with a film in his own lifetime: The Jackie Robinson Story (1950). Since Robinson played himself, the movie was more than a bit stiff and polite. But that was rectified in 2013 when Chadwick Boseman played Jackie (and Harrison Ford was masterful as Branch Rickey) in the underrated 42.  Now documentarian Ken Burns, who chronicled baseball as a sport in 1994, is about to release a four-hour video on Jackie Robinson, made with the cooperation of Robinson’s widow, and concentrating on his post-baseball life as well as his sports legacy.

Of course baseball lends itself to fantasy movies too, like Damn Yankees! This charming musical transfer from Broadway (1958) rings a change on the Faust legend by depicting a true-blue fan who sells his soul to the Devil in order to help his beloved Washington Senators (yep, it’s an oldie) win the pennant. A more serious form of mythology shows up in The Natural (1984), based on Bernard Malamud’s novel eerie novel about fate and fame. And of course there’s Field of Dreams (1989), which has reduced many a grown man to tears, while introducing a phrase we can’t seem to shake: “If you build it, they will come.” (I suspect a lot of bad decisions have been based on that particular piece of folk wisdom.)

More soon. But for now, play ball!