And when she's singing, you see that she can't

[sovay]

Well, last night was a horror of sleeplessness having nothing to do with native insomnia and everything to do with being repeatedly woken on a night when I had been trying to sleep specifically to make up for not doing so. Have some links.

1. I had no idea there ever had been a 1930 Broadway play of Grand Hotel preceding the 1932 Hollywood movie. Absolutely nobody in it appears to have transferred to the film except Raffaella Ottiano (which I now suspect explains why her equivalent character in the 1989 musical is named Raffaella rather than Suzette). Sam Jaffe looks perfect as Otto Kringelein. If I couldn't get Buster Keaton, I'd have gladly accepted him.

2. Courtesy of skygiants: my new favorite Bletchley Park story. "The mistake led to a moss specialist being deposited into one of the most intense covert operations of the war."

3. Courtesy of mooncustafer: "Franz Kafka's Part Time Job."

4. Courtesy of larryhammer: Thomas Bailey Aldrich, "Sea Longings."

5. Currently on internal repeat for reasons unknown to me: Theodore Bikel's "The Kretchma." I love how he can shrug and play a guitar at the same time.

Prior to the sleeplessness, spatch and I made Monte Cristo sandwiches for dinner and they were great. No powdered sugar was involved, but I recommend the use of cinnamon and nutmeg in otherwise unsweetened egg batter. We even got back from the grocery store in the rain before our paper bags melted.

Comments

[moon_custafer]

Almost being cast in Grand Hotel would explain where Keaton got his idea for a parody, which unfortunately he didn’t get to do either:

After GRAND HOTEL was released, Keaton, who had parodied others’ work since his days in vaudeville, got an idea for a take-off. His would be set in a well-known fleabag hotel in New York, the Mills Hotel. Jimmy Durante would take John Barrymore’s part, Marie Dressler would stand in for Garbo, Oliver Hardy would play Wallace Beery’s role, Polly Moran would replace Crawford and Keaton would finally play the part that went to Lionel Barrymore.
“In our version, Hardy would be a manufacturer of front collar buttons who is trying to arrange a merger with Stan Laurel, a manufacturer of back collar buttons,” Keaton writes in “My Wonderful World of Slapstick.”

[sovay]

Jimmy Durante would take John Barrymore’s part, Marie Dressler would stand in for Garbo, Oliver Hardy would play Wallace Beery’s role, Polly Moran would replace Crawford and Keaton would finally play the part that went to Lionel Barrymore.

Oh, man, I'd have watched that.