Is it possible to warn children to use their lovely sponge brains carefully? To tell them — this is it, this is what you will remember, these are the things that will crowd out your adult attempts to gather SERIOUS THINGS into your brittle gray matter?
For a lot of boys, it’s baseball and popular music; don’t get me started on how these two things have been fetishized to High Seriousness. (“Ask me what’s on the B-Side,” Shrevie says in DINER. His wife stares in confusion; his best friend just does it.) For me, it was a) Greek mythology b) Broadway musicals and c) the Marx Brothers.
Today, I’m thinking about c. We screened DUCK SOUP the other night and I’m not sure it’s going to pass muster with the next generation. For one thing, it’s black & white, always a stumbling block. (“Was the world in black and white when you were a kid?”) For another, it’s at once too fast and slow; Groucho’s speech is so rat-a-tat that the lines whizz by, but the relatively static camera makes the film feel a little stodgy.
My father adored the Marx Brothers. My mother gave him a book, THE MARX BROTHERS AT THE MOVIES, by Richard Schickel. A chapter devoted to each film they made as a team, with a synopsis and reporting on behind-the-scenes stuff. I don’t know why I picked it up, but I did and I own it to this day. I read pretty much everything I could about the Marx Brothers — GROUCHO AND ME; HARPO SPEAKS; WHY A DUCK; LIFE WITH GROUCHO; SON OF GROUCHO; THE GROUCHOPHILES; GROUCHO, HARPO, CHICO AND SOMETIMES ZEPPO. I read Betty Marx’s bittersweet remnisicence of Chico, the self-indulgent books by those who met Groucho late in life and seemed more interested in establishing their intimacy with the source than telling the story. I was Groucho for Halloween when I was 11; I won a prize, too. I’ll go this far: I have never met anyone with two X chromosomes who knows the Marx Brothers as well as I do.
Will someone one day pick up the worn red book that started my fascination? Right now, it doesn’t seem likely. Ah well, I have the consolation of passing on my fandom for Mystery Science Theater 3000. To quote my favorite line from my favorite MST3K, SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS: “Old man, take a look at your elf; he’s a lot like you.” He is and he isn’t, my elf. He’s his own person, with a brain that has sucked up the Odyssey and the Illiad (the real thing, in the new translation!), and all of Tolkien (“Not for me,” to quote Ralph Tabakin, also in DINER).
Maybe one day my elf will sit down to screen MST3K for the next generation and they’ll ask him: “Was the world in just two dimensions when you were a boy?”
What did your 11-year-old brain absorb?
P.S. The title of this entry is one of Margaret Dumont’s lines: “As chairwoman of the reception committee, I welcome you with open arms.” Even if you haven’t seen DUCK SOUP, you should be able to guess at Groucho’s comeback.
I turned 11 in 1989, which means that my brain absorbed – and is still tormented by – David Hasselhoff singing ‘Looking for Freedom’ at the Berlin Wall. I’ve since tried scrubbing it with bleach, but to no avail.
Fortunately, the year was improved by seeing ‘Batman’, starting a lasting love for gothicky noiry Tim Burtony films, and – if I remember right – buying my first ever album. It was Black Sabbath’s ‘Never Say Die’, released 10 years earlier and just as uncool then as it was at the time.
And, incidentally, 1989 was also the first year MST3K first hit cable (apparently). But I was too young to watch it and it didn’t make it over to the UK for many years. But still…
John, what are you doing up? Isn’t it quite late in your part of the world?
(Hey, if I’m old enough to be his mother — albeit, his very young, lithe, with-it mother — I might as well play the part.)
Sorry about the Hasselhoff. May be grounds for reparations.
1977.
11th birthday party.
STAR WARS.
Laura, my body clock broke in 2001, and while I’ve been meaning to get it repaired I just haven’t gotten round to it yet.
I wasn’t using it for anything anway. And the ticking noise was annoying the crap out of me.
Which I suppose is demonstrated by posting this at just gone 3am here…
I blame The Hoff.
Not really into the Marx Brothers, but I have very distinct memories of the first time I saw Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
Yay, Laura.
When I was 11, it was the Marx Brothers. Everything about the Marx Brothers. Every book I could find. I remember seeing triple features of their movies at the Waverly Cinema in Manhattan and feeling completely wrung out and disoriented as I staggered out of the theater. Then eagerly awaiting the next one.
More recently….MST3K. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a great one, containing Pia Zadora’s finest performance.
Joe
“Is that so? How late do you stay open?”
I was 11 in 1987 and wasn’t absorbing much of anything. These were the dark years between my mass pop culture absorbtion during my early years and the mass pop culture absorbtion I would later undertake in high school. I was at a private Baptist academy and wasn’t allowed to watch movies or much TV. The exent of my “movie” knowledge was gleaned from movie-tie in books, especially the Back to the Future one was I was punished for reading during Bible class.
My two biggest obsessions were Ducktales and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was still two years away from becoming a full-blown Batman freak. The rest of my reading consisted of Hardy Boys and Bobsey Twins books and all of the other staples of adolescent literature.
I read the Chronicles of Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time and such along with David Eddings’s Belgariad series which was just getting underway. The most influential book I read at that time was The Outsiders assigned by an English teacher who was later fired for it. I was blown away. My entire music collection was one Beach Boys cassette tape called “I Get Around.” I also think Kokomo was on the radio around this time.
Since this memory blog is a comfortable place, I’ll share with you guys (if you promise not to spread it around) that my brain was 11 years old in (gulp) – 1956. So, what was this impressionable young girl absorbing way back then? …
In books, the coolest thing going was, bar none, ‘Peyton Place’. You have to remember, there was no such thing as sex education in those days, particularly if you were a Catholic school kid. On tv, even married couples slept in twin beds, so most of what we knew of the ‘facts of life’ came not from school or parents but from Grace Metalious, and later, the ‘racy’ novels of Harold Robbins. (Our curious minds couldn’t get enough of these books which we passed around without parental approval or (we hoped) their knowledge.
At the movies that year: On Saturday afternoons, my worldly 13 year old cousin Trina and I stood in lines around the block to see ‘Around the World in 80 Days’, ‘Giant’, ‘Godzilla’, ‘The Ten Commandments’, and the original ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, the latter is still one of my scary faves. Afterwards, it was always the ritual meal of cheeseburgers, fries, and cherry sodas or hot fudge sundaes consumed while perched on tall stools at Walgreen’s where they still had real soda fountains!
At St. Justin Martyr we were taught by the Sisters of Mercy (though we felt ‘no mercy’ was closer to the mark). And as you might have guessed, they were seriously strict. I was in 5th, then 6th grade and a pretty good student, though I tried hard not to draw unnecessary attention. Being labeled ‘too smart’ was definitely not the path to the longed for status of the ‘inner circle’… so test answers would be marked wrong intentionally, or once in a while there’d be failure to deliver on a homework assignment. Being second tallest of ALL the sixth graders – girls or boys – did not help one’s social aspirations either. So I did my best to develop really poor posture that, I hoped, made me appear shorter than the 5’8″ reality.
Weekly air raid drills were the norm in this the year of the first above ground H-bomb testing at Bikini Atoll. We’d file obediently into the darkened corridors, sit with legs crossed, backs to the wall, eyes closed tightly to avoid being blinded by the impending ‘nuclear flash’, our heads into our laps as far as possible, and then our clasped arms over our heads. Yes, it was terrifying.
In current events .. President Eisenhower won a second term by defeating ‘the egghead’ Dem candidate Adlai I, and we often heard the names Nikita Krushchev, Gamal Abdal Nasser, Castro and Batista, and read of the Suez Canal Crisis, troubles in Cuba, and the Hungarian uprising against the communists. Meanwhile, Elvis made his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, though it was only a “waist up” view, much to the disappointment of young folk like me who were dying to know what does it all mean?! A letter from the archdiocese was read aloud in all classrooms that Friday, warning that we were tempting the fates – mortal sin and burning in eternal hellfire — if we tuned in on Sunday evening, which, of course, most of us managed to do. If it was ‘banned’ by the Church and parents hated it, well, that only enhanced the appeal.
Other things remembered from that year…
- I bought my first records: 45s of Elvis singing ‘Love Me Tender’, and ‘Hound Dog’ with the flip side ‘Don’t Be Cruel’. Always on the radio was ‘Why Do Fools Fall In Love’ by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers and Carl Perkin’s ‘Blue Suede Shoes’.
- Marilyn Monroe married Arthur Miller, and Grace Kelly wed Prince Rainier, fairytale-style in a place called Monaco.. and, iirc, it was the year ‘under God’ was added to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Petyon Place is a darn good novel, better than most wish to give it credit for. (And, proportionately, it reached more American readers than The Da Vinci Code.) In 1999, I wrote an oral history of sorts about the book, which had an unusual back story — with the exception of Metalious’s agent, everyone involved in the book’s success was a woman — Leona Nevler, who discovered it, the editor, Metalious herself of course.
But then, my other 11-year-old obssession was “dirty books.” That’s how I came to read “Lolita.” And a lot of Jacqueline Susann.
“In 1999, I wrote an oral history of sorts about the book, which had an unusual back story…”
Would love to read this. Where can it be found, Laura?
(Were you ever, like me, a fan of Mary McCarthy or Rona Jaffe?
>>>>But then, my other 11-year-old obssession was “dirty books.” That’s how I came to read “Lolita.” And a lot of Jacqueline Susann.<<<<
It was Harold Robbins for me. (I’ll never forget those book jackets.)
And “Lolita.”
Joe
The Peyton Place piece was for The Sun, so it’s stuck behind the iron gates of its paid archive. If I can find a paper copy, I’ll send it to you, Annie.
I missed Jaffe, but adored McCarthy, although The Group sailed over my head on first reading. And McCarthy’s memoirs are wonderful.
Like Keith, I was 11 in 1977. JANE EYRE was required summer reading — I left it until the last minute, and then I couldn’t put it down. I remember trying to read it while I rode my bike. Part of me wonders whether JANE EYRE is the reason I’m still single.
The year I turned 11 was kind of a watershed moment in my life as I’d skipped fifth grade and landed in a class of bitchy hormonal girls who were pleased to pick on someone even lower on the totem pole than they were.
But anyway.
Marx Bros., completely. I wasn’t quite as obsessed as Laura and Joe seemed to be at a similar age but that’s because I learned about them via osmosis (aka my older brother) and he covered enough of the trivia and obsessiveness for the both of us.
On the music front, really the comedy record front, Allan Sherman. Hours and hours of playing his songs in the car, getting the other kids in the carpool to laugh hysterically at “My Zelda” and “Crazy Downtown” among other things.
And in books, I was in between, having finally concluded that Gordon Korman jumped the shark and that I had absolutely no business whatsoever reading any more Sweet Valley High books. Those seem *so* quaint now…
Hmmm, 11? 1971 and lipsincing to The Beatles with my best friend Alison Prendergast. We were obsessed with The Beatles, even though we were a little late to the party. We also threw darts at a large poster of Donny Osmond and if we hit his teeth we got 10 points. No Marx Brothers. But Alison and I did decide to read “Gone with the Wind” that year and we wrote and produced and starred in our own play based on the book.
At the risk of, for possibly the first time in my life, being a predictable male, in 1991 my eleven year old brain absorbed…baseball and pop music. Great year for the O’s. No 1989, mind you, but 35 hr’s and an MVP for Cal. I remember looking at my baseball cards and evaluating the relative ages of myself and the players. I remember that even the youngest of them, twenty or so at the time, seemed sooooo much older than me. Oh dear.
On the pop music side, I was sponging up the Beach Boys and Beatles at home, while at school and with friends, I got down to, um, Vanilla Ice. Oh dear.
I turned 11 in 1974. It was a tumultuous year. That summer, we moved from Port Washington, NY to San Mateo, CA in July. I went from a Catholic Grade School (St. Peter’s) to a public middle school (Abbott).
I listened to the radio a lot, which is why I can name the artist of almost any obnoxious 70′s song. I was reading Richie Rich comics and Danny Dunn books. My first “grown-up” movie was JAWS. I didn’t buy my first record album until 1976 — TOMMY, THE WHO.
“What did your 11-year-old brain absorb?”
I’m not sure if I was absorbing or morphing in ’65; I am sure that the girl across the street thought I was interesting because I was the only neighborhood ‘bad boy’ that carried a library card.
Two memories: Me & my dad sitting in the living room listening to a Beatles album together.It was the first time I saw him as a real person.
Reading my older cousins dog-eared copy of Ginsbergs ‘Howl.’ It scared the hell out of me even though much of it was beyond my comprehension. I had my own copy by 67-68? It made more sense by then. And so did The Beatles. And Hendrix. And Cream…
–john–
Andi,
I think memory is a muscle and it’s my contention that you can build it via practice/training. (Bear in mind, I spent several panicky minutes yesterday trying to come up with a fact that should have been readily at my fingertips, but that happens with age fro all sorts of reasons.)
But if you start with one small memory — e.g. When I was 11, I loved the Marx Bros. — it’s interesting to see what else arises as you concentrate. For reasons I can’t fathom, thinking about the Marx Bros. led me to remember the other “adult” things I read as a child, notably New York magazine, where I remember vividly reading the the story that became Saturday Night Fever.
As Peter Pan said . . . Just think lovely thoughts.
CRUD. This is the first time I’ve felt OLD here. That’s Old. O-l-d-e. And I don’t know what I remember. i think most of what I “remember” is what I know NOW ABOUT then. How do you folks remember childhood so well? It’s all mushed in with images that I know must have come later.
Crud….ooooolllllddddddd.
andi
Speaking of the Marx Brothers, I have a student who’s a hugger. Everytime he hugs me I say, “Ken if you hold me any closer, I’ll be on the other side of you.” Which, I believe, is a variation on a Groucho line.
Meanwhile, my 11 year old brain in 1990 probably absorbed every James Bond movie and MacGyver episode. I’m still a fan of the MacGyver where Nicky has to come save Mac from letting his friend die on the mountain top. But of course who shows up but Murdoc for revenge. Classic.
I was eleven…
My older (by 7 years) brother took me to see a double feature: JAWS and BITE THE BULLET.
I loved BTB. JAWS scared the crap out of me.
To this day, Bite the Bullet has a special place in my mind. I recently found a NIB VHS copy of it and I was so excited you’d have thought I won the lottery.
I was also making plans for my career as an open-wheel race car driver. Our family returned every year for the Indianapolis 500 – back then when it was literally the greatest spectacle in sports. Now, it’s a joke.
I wore a watch on a big wide brown leather strap. Hey, it was the 70′s.
While other kids in my class were listening to Tony Orlando & Dawn, Orleans and Olivia Newton-John, I was all alone listening to Springsteen, The Who, Bad Company, and The Ramones.
I was eleven.
I turned 11 in 1969 and I guess the two things that most impressed me both had to do with space travel. It was the year I discovered an actual wall of science fiction books in our basement and, of course, the year I watched men land on the moon.
The moon thing was neat, but discovering those books was the key to surviving the next five years.
I was 11 un 1940 who can remember back that far, Were the Marx Bros around then? I am being funny! The El Syd if the above,