Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Honolulu Star-Bulletin extra on Pearl Harbor attack, today 1941:


FADM Chester Nimitz believed the U.S was fortunate that the attack on Pearl Harbor came as a surprise. Had the U.S. known of the approaching Japanese fleet, the American fleet would have been sent to intercept it and then been entirely lost to a superior force.

Dec 7, 1941: Kazuo Sakamaki became the first Japanese PoW in U.S. captivity after his midget sub ran aground during the attack on Pearl Harbor. 50 years later, he was reunited with the sub when he attended a symposium at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas.


Dec 7, 1941: USS Ward (APD-16) fired the first American shots of the war in the Pacific when the destroyer sank a Jap midget sub trying to enter Pearl Harbor. The 14th Naval District HQ believed the action was a false report, not recognizing that the sub was part of an incoming Japanese attack. USS Ward was built at the Mare Island Navy Yard, California in a record of 17½ days back in WWI days!!



Ironic Fate: Set ablaze by kamikaze strike on 7 December 1944. Later scuttled by gunfire from the USS O'Brien whose commanding officer was the Captain of the Ward on December 7th 1941. WoW!


In early December 2017, Ward's wreckage was located by RV Petrel on the seabed in Ormoc Bay near Ponson Island in the Philippines.

The photo of the explosion of USS Shaw's forward magazine is one of the most iconic images from the attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite the heavy damage, the Shaw was repaired by 1942 and served in the Pacific for the rest of the war, earning 11 battle stars.



One of the Japanese pilot's (who survived) took aerial pictures of Pearl Harbor just before the bombing started. My dad has one of the original photos, (believed to be the only one of its kind in existence) that he restored & enlarged from the original negative. Long story on how he obtained it. He gave the negative to the Library of Congress, after he made a copy of it.


After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bill Of Rights was prepared for an emergency evacuation. Archivist of the United States Solon J. Buck stands with a volume containing the Bill of Rights, wrapped for "quick removal."




Ride out the Armageddon in your Fox Hole, Inc. fallout shelter. 1961.




"68% correctly identified the civil defense fallout shelter sign."


Source PDF from Defense Technical Information Center


Happy Birthday to conservative recording artist and performer Janet Greene [Dec 7, 1930-2021 in Klamath Falls, Oregon]. She was promoted as the "Anti-Joan Baez". Here she is at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles in 1964 belting out "Commie Lies" for Fred Schwarz and Herbert A. Philbrick.



Here's a clip of her from that second "Red" era:



Dr. Frederick C. Schwarz (Australian, 1913-2009) founder of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade (CACC), and were persuaded by Schwarz's arguments on the evils of communism. After Schwartz became aware of Janet Greene's singing experience, she resigned from WTVN, stating:

"I am very grateful to have had the privilege of growing up in the United States of America. I was reared in a Christian home with the love of my parents and my brother and sister... My husband and I have two children of our own, and it is my concern for their future that has prompted me to leave my TV career. Our American heritage and Christian religion are in great jeopardy. The enemy is Communism. Communism denies the existence of God, the individual right to freedom of choice and woman's right to raise her own family as God intended. The Communists plan to take our children away from us.... I am hoping and praying that the women of the United States will become aroused and save our country and our children from the tyranny of Communism. I am dedicating my voice and musical talents to help bring this to pass."

Phillipa Fallon, the beat poetess from HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL! (1958) played at the Village Vanguard in NYC in April of 1959. It's an old jazz club in Greenwich Village, New York City. The club was opened on February 22, 1935, by Max Gordon. Originally, Max wanted it to be a cabaret club, but was refused such a license by the NYPD. The club presented folk music and beat poetry, but it became primarily a jazz music venue in 1957. It has hosted many highly renowned jazz musicians since then, and today is the oldest operating jazz club in New York City. Back in the 70's-80s when my late uncle was working for the Mafia he would often hang out (moonlight) here.



The scene is from the movie "High School Confidential". Phillipa Fallon, who plays the poet, is brilliant, but she seems to have had few other roles, and not much is known about her. Jackie Coogan is the piano player. The poem itself seems to have been written by "B-movie actor and writer" Mel Welles (1924-2005). The lyrics to "High School Drag" kinda go something like this:

My old man was a bread stasher all his life.
He never got fat. He wound up with a used car,
a 17 inch screen and arthritis.

Tomorrow is a drag, man.
Tomorrow is a king sized bust.

They cried ‘put down pot,’ ‘don’t think a lot,’ for what?
Time, how much? And what to do with it.

Sleep, man, and you might wake up digging the whole
human race giving itself three days to get out.

Tomorrow is a drag, pops, the future is a flake.

I had a canary who couldn’t sing.
I had a cat who let me share my pad with her.
I bought a dog that killed the cat who ate the canary.
What is truth?

I had an uncle with an ivy league card.
He had a life with a belt in the back.
He had a button-down brain.
Wind up a belt in the mouth with a button-down lip.

We cough blood on this earth.
Now there’s a race for space.
We can cough blood on the moon soon.

Tomorrow’s dragsville, cats.
Tomorrow is a king size drag.

Tool a fast shore, swing with a gassy chick.
Turn on to a thousand joys.
Smile on what happened, or check what’s going to happen,
You’ll miss what’s happening.
Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum.

Tomorrow, DRAG.



 John Drew Barrymore, father of Drew Barrymore.

Good ole American censorship: "European prints featured more explicit versions of two scenes, including co-star Jan Sterling showing a naked breast when Russ Tamblyn calls her on the telephone. Additionally, a girl suffering from heroin withdrawal also shows a naked breast as she lies uncomfortably on a bed." IMDB

Biography

Phillipa Fallon was a 1950s actress singer and actress most noted for her appearance in the film High School Confidential (1958), reciting the Cold War-themed beat poem "High School Drag", written by B-movie actor and writer Mel Welles, recruited by producer Albert Zugsmith to ensure the film's slang was believable because, as Welles recalled for interviewer Tom Weaver in 1988, “I was an expert on grass in my day…” Her performance is accompanied on piano by Jackie Coogan.

As a movie actress Fallon had minor roles in two other films, 1957's Confidential: The Girl in the Kremlin 1957) and The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960) She also worked as a singer for the NBC television network in 1956. Little else is known about Phillipa Fallon, and attempts to trace her have been fruitless.

Best I could find about her...

B-Movie Phantom: The Phillipa Fallon Story Part 9

Around the time of her triumph in High School Confidential!, Phillipa Fallon appeared in the industry casting publication, the Academy Players Directory, for the very first time.[1] Her publicity photograph, along with the name and telephone numbers of her talent agency, Paul Small Artists, Ltd., appears on page 103 of the 79th edition of the directory issued in 1958. Phillipa, who would turn 35 in August of 1958, is in the Leading Women section surrounded by hundreds of other actresses, most of whom the contemporary reader would be hard-pressed to recognize. She and her agents could not have known it at the time, but Phillipa had already had the best role of her career.

In July of 1959 production began on Albert Zugsmith’s biblical sex comedy The Private Lives of Adam and Eve. Zugsmith co-directed the incoherent, poorly shot film with Mickey Rooney who also stars as the devil. The movie’s plot revolves around a modern couple played by Martin Milner and Mamie Van Doren who fantasize that they are Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The film opens with a bizarre title sequence in which Paul Anka drives a car with his feet while singing the theme song.

Rooney spends most of his screen time dressed in dime store Satan drag surrounded by a harem of women known as “The Devil’s Familiars.” Phillipa, in the non-speaking role of Desire, can be seen approximately thirty-seven minutes into the movie giving the devil a pedicure. It was a thankless role and, quite understandably, her last.

1960, the year that Private Lives was released (and condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency), was also the last year that Phillipa paid to have her listing in the Players Directory. Her final entry appears in issue number 85 on page 125. Her agents are identified as Len Kaplan and Mark Harris of the William Schuller Agency. Unfortunately, both of these men are deceased so they could not be asked for details about how Phillipa came to be cast in such a terrible movie. Mickey Rooney, seemingly immortal, did not respond to our inquiries for an interview, but he has probably forgotten about the film by now anyway.

Phillipa had made three movies, all for Albert Zugsmith, and she was now ready to move on. Her new focus would be on her songwriting career, politics and a long campaign against fluoridation...

[1] CONELRAD reviewed the Academy Players Directory for the period 1941 (the year Fallon arrived in Hollywood) through 1960. We searched under all of her known aliases. We found that she appears in issues 79 through issue 81 and issues 83 through 85. Her agency affiliation changes from Paul Small Artists, Ltd. to William Schuller in issue number 83 (after not appearing at all in issue number 82). In issue number 80 (1958, page 105) Fallon’s listing immediately precedes another tragic actress, Frances Farmer:

Only if you're really curious (her story is very strange & complex) you can hit parts 1 thru 8. Links at bottom of his post.





Phillipa Fallon superfan/stalker (?), Howard Feldman. Los Angeles Free Press, Nov. 18, 1966...

"Soon I'll Wed My Love" written by Philippa Fallon. First release by Gale Storm (June 1958)
Worth a listen:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMi6vjRBkqY