Lew Powell

Lena Horne: Too hot for Durham to handle

“In Durham, North Carolina, the Morning Herald ran an ad for the [local premiere of the 1946 movie ‘Ziegfeld Follies’]. It listed [Lena] Horne among the players. Scores of black patrons bought tickets for the first showing — and saw a jagged splice where [her rendition of] ‘Love’ should have been.  Many of them complained angrily and asked for refunds. Within 24 hours, Horne’s name had vanished from ads. The Pittsburgh Courier tried to investigate, but no one would take responsibility.”

— From “Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne” (2009) by James Gavin

From Apple Street to Hollywood and Vine

Death noted: Kathryn Grayson, who brought operatic talent to the golden age of  Hollywood musicals, at age 88 in Los Angeles.

From the Winston-Salem Journal (Feb. 19):

“Grayson was born Zelma Kathryn Hedrick on Feb. 9, 1922, in Winston-Salem. Her family lived on Apple Street. They moved to St. Louis when she was a child, but she… returned several times after she became a Hollywood star.

“In 1949, Grayson sang at Forsythorama, a pageant at Bowman Gray Stadium attended by more than 10,000 people in honor of Forsyth County’s centennial.

“She made reference to her Winston-Salem childhood after she married [crooner Johnnie] Johnston, telling a reporter, ‘You know what I’d like to do? Go back to 1000 Apple Street and have 12 children.’ “

Mad Men made mountains ‘Great’

“Community leaders in Knoxville and Asheville got on the bandwagon — some out of a love of the mountains, some on the belief that tourism would bolster the local economy, some on the hope that a national park would result in better roads for the region.

“A New York publicity firm, brought in by the Knoxville Automobile Club, suggested the group call itself the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association. Soon the mountains themselves were referred to as the Great Smokies.”

— From “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” (2009) by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns

‘Ma, I’m goin’ no’th to git me a job….’

“Since nothing travels in the direction of hungry men like news of  work, they started to roll in on foot and in old Model Ts as soon as the contract… to build the world’s biggest smokeless powder plant in Charlestown, Indiana… was announced in the newspaper….

“A man from a small town in North Carolina said, ‘I seen this paper lyin’ there on top of bag o’ potatoes. Well, since the cotton mill shet down, I ain’t seen no kind of decent job. My wife was always takin’ sick, an’  then we had a cyclone come into town. Blowed some families all to pieces, geese, bedstead, fences, ev’thing. We was just skeered near ’bout to death. That was in ’36 or ’37, understan’. So when I seen this thing in the paper, I said, Ma, I’m takin’ th’ automobile ‘n goin’ no’th  to git me a job in that dee-fense factory. Next day I was on my way.’ ”

— From “The American Homefront: 1941-42” by Alistair Cooke (2006). If Cooke’s interview notes ever turn up, surely they belong in the North Carolina Collection.

Think you know your state? Take this quiz N.C.

Here’s a Tar Heel knockoff of a “Va.” quiz offered by puzzlemaster Will Shortz on NPR.

Limit your responses to only “N.C.” words (Northampton County, for example, or Nextel Cup.)

Spoiler alert: Answers immediately below.

1. As a gubernatorial candidate, Bev Perdue lamented that “Wherever I go, people ask me, ‘Can’t we stop the — –?”

2. Birthplace of  football player Julius Peppers.

3. How Cabarrus County bills itself to tourists.

4. State bird.

5. Charlotte-based steel maker.

6. Bait popular with the state’s fresh-water fishermen.

7.  Athletic Association that sponsors basketball’s Final Four.

8. Bank of America headquarters, tallest building in the state, was previously known as the — — Center.

9. The Alford plea, based on a Forsyth County murder case and invoked by such defendants as former House Speaker Jim Black, is closely akin to this more common plea.

10. Yadkin Valley wine growers hope to emulate the success of….

Answers:

1. “Negative campaign.”

2. Nash County.

3. NASCAR Country.

4. Northern Cardinal.

5. Nucor Corp.

6. Night crawler.

7. National Collegiate.

8. NationsBank Corporate.

9. Nolo contendere (or no contest).

10. Napa, California

‘More Doctors Smoke Camels’: Recount, please

“As concerns about the health implications of smoking persisted — and then increased — in the 1930s and 1940s, advertising explicitly addressed these anxieties…. R. J. Reynolds fixed on the likely notion that smokers would be attracted to the brand that their physician chose, and that physicians would advocate for a brand that lionized the medical profession….

“The ‘More Doctors Smoke Camels’ campaign was apparently based on the work of A. Grant Clarke, a William Esty ad executive, on loan to R. J. Reynolds to establish a Medical Relations Division. Clarke would distribute free packs of Camels at medical conventions; pollsters from an ‘independent research organization’ would then be sent to ask the physicians what brand of cigarettes they were carrying.”

— From “The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America” (2007) by Allan M. Brandt

NY Times gives thumbs up to Charlotte museum

This is the first paragraph of the New York Times’ lengthy appreciation of the Levine Museum of the New South:

“CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It is unlikely that anything resembling the impressive Levine Museum of the New South would exist anywhere else. A museum of the New North or the New East would be merely peculiar, but here the term “New South” has a venerable heritage, recalling unrealized hopes and great expectations. There is also much at stake in trying to understand just what the term really means.”

The Greensboro Historical Museum, by contrast, comes across — fairly or not — as an out-of-touch vestige of the Old South, notable mainly for “what may be the world’s largest collection of Confederate firearms.”

I’m having linkage problems, but you can find the story in the Arts section of today’s Times.

This time, bully ended up sadder Budweiser

“Typically, the inequality of economic power between corporation and parodist determines who prevails in trademark infringement lawsuits…. The weaker party — the parodist — is effectively censored and denied due process.

“An unlikely victor against a trademark bully was Michael Berard, who in 1987 was a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Berard had designed a T-shirt [depicting] a beer can with a red, white and blue label — think Budweiser — but instead of grandiose references to great hops and barley, Berard substituted…   ‘Myrtle Beach Contains the Choicest Surf, Sun and Sand.’ Instead of ‘This Bud’s for You,’ the T-shirt read ‘This Beach is for You.’

“On appeal the judges found no likelihood consumers would falsely believe Bud had sanctioned the T-shirts…. Anheuser-Busch lost. But if Berard had known about the ‘Mutant of Omaha’ ruling [squelching a 1983 T-shirt protesting the nuclear arms race], he might never have dared to produce his innocuous T-shirt.”

— From “Brand Name Bullies” (2005) by David Bollier

There’s running, and then there’s running

jimbeatty

On this day in 1962: In a meet at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, Charlotte-reared Jim Beatty, a UNC Chapel Hill alumnus, runs the mile in 3 minutes, 58.9 seconds — the first time the 4-minute barrier has been broken on an indoor track.

Pictured: A pinback button promoting Beatty’s candidacy for the N.C. House, where he represented Mecklenburg County for six years.

OUR slavery? What about YOUR witch trials?

“The day after [John] Brown’s execution in Virginia, [the Raleigh Register] warned Virginia governor Henry Wise to burn the gallows, lest some enterprising man remove it and ship it north, since ‘The Yankees have no objection to mingling money-making with their grief.’  The idea of memorial services and ‘mock funerals’ rumored in the North irritated the same editor enough to make him suggest that if Northerners were looking for public entertainment, ‘It is a pity they haven’t a witch or two to drown or burn’…

“Angered by [Massachusetts Rep.] Horace Mann’s comments condemning  slavery, [Rep. Abraham Venable of North Carolina] lashed out: ‘Let him blush when he speaks of the sins and crimes of any people on earth… no southern calendar of crime can afford such cases as the Salem murders.’ ”

— From “The Specter of Salem: Remembering the Witch Trials in Nineteenth-Century America” (2008) by  Gretchen A. Adams