With some of the commentary in the various articles, as well as the catchline on this particular CD, it appears that the producers have taken some of the old classic recordings of Vera Lynn, used them as a basic music bed, and overlaid a fullscale new orchestral and choral backing.
Based on some old Caruso and Bing Crosby recordings where this was done, it can be very effective if done well. It should be interesting to hear.
Frankly, as a Vera Lynn fan, I'm pretty happy if they HAVEN'T recorded Vera---at the age of 100---for this issue.
With some of the commentary in the various articles, as well as the catchline on this particular CD, it appears that the producers have taken some of the old classic recordings of Vera Lynn, used them as a basic music bed, and overlaid a fullscale new orchestral and choral backing.
Based on some old Caruso and Bing Crosby recordings where this was done, it can be very effective if done well. It should be interesting to hear.
Frankly, as a Vera Lynn fan, I'm pretty happy if they HAVEN'T recorded Vera---at the age of 100---for this issue.
That’s right, M ...... they have used her original recordings and added "Guest Stars" and bigger orchestrations.
I think I would rather just have her original recordings, thank-you very much!
If you can access these links over there, you’ll be able to see for yourself....
For Carl Reiner and His Fellow Nonagenarians, Death Can Wait By DAN HYMAN
Carl Reiner and Betty White in the documentary “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast.” HBO
The title of Carl Reiner’s most recent book is “Too Busy to Die,” and this 95-year-old comedy legend can thank his vivid dreams for inspiring many of the (sometimes wacky) ideas that keep him going.
There was the “selfish-y,” a self-indulgent selfie he introduced on “Conan” in which the photographer blocks the other person in the picture from view. And “Gnarly Carly,” the rap alter ego he debuted on “The Queen Latifah Show.” His nighttime reveries also spawned the concept of his next book, his 22nd, a compendium of the films that enraptured him growing up, including “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Mark of Zorro.”
“My mind keeps popping,” Mr. Reiner, who created “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and directed the movies “Oh, God!,” “The Jerk” and “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” said in a phone interview from his home in Los Angeles. “So I’ll keep going as long as it lets me.”
It’s stereotype-shattering nonagenarians like Mr. Reiner who inspired the documentary “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast,” which debuts Monday, June 5, on HBO. The film, directed by Danny Gold, takes its name from Mr. Reiner’s daily activity of checking the death notices to make sure it’s safe to go about his business.
A look into those leading vital lives well into their 90s, the documentary is also a toast to Mr. Reiner’s career and to those of his famous peers. He serves as narrator and plays something of a host throughout: There he is interviewing Kirk Douglas and Dick Van Dyke and enjoying freewheeling, reflective conversations with the longtime friends and colleagues Mel Brooks and Norman Lear.
Mr. Brooks, 90, first met Mr. Reiner in 1950 while working on Sid Caesar’s early television series “Your Show of Shows,” and the pair still watch films together at Mr. Reiner’s house several times a week. (In 2012, Jerry Seinfeld joined the two men at Mr. Reiner’s home for deli sandwiches on an episode of his web series, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”)
Mr. Brooks said the thought of him slowing down in older age is heresy. “There is living and dying; there’s no retirement,” Mr. Brooks said in an interview.
Mr. Brooks, the comic mind behind “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein” and “The Producers,” is currently revamping the Broadway version of “Young Frankenstein” for its reopening in October in London’s West End. And on June 30 and July 1, at the Encore Theater at the Wynn Las Vegas, he’ll perform his one-man show, during which he’ll sprinkle in comedy bits and film clips while recounting tales of his life.
“If we die, then we can’t do much,” he said. “But as long as we’re alive, we can still tap dance, we can still crack a joke, we can still sing a song, we can still tell a story.”
For Mr. Lear, 94, participating in the film is a continuation of a mission to buck the stereotype of the elderly as “decrepit and weak and foolish.”
Mr. Lear, the creator of “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons” and “Sanford and Son,” has been having a bit of resurgence lately. A remake of his 1970s and ’80s sitcom “One Day at a Time” will be returning for a second season on Netflix, and he reviews scripts and attends nearly every casting session and show taping. He also hosts a weekly podcast, “All of the Above,” talking comedy with guests like Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Amy Poehler.
“The culture has an impression of aging that is not realistic,” he said. “To get the laughs, it paints a picture of older people as infirm, as whiny, and as incapacitated and foolish. I don’t think that’s who we are.”
George Shapiro, the film’s producer (with Aimee Hyatt) and Mr. Reiner’s nephew, agreed. He’s been thinking about such a documentary since 2010, when he started a paper file marked “Vitality After 90.” Last year, with Mr. Reiner’s blessing, he went ahead and self-financed the documentary, tapping Mr. Gold to direct after Ms. Hyatt showed him the filmmaker’s recent documentary “100 Voices: A Journey Home,” which tells the history of Jewish culture in Poland. (Mr. Shapiro, a longtime talent manager whose clients include Mr. Seinfeld, declined to disclose the budget.)
Mr. Reiner wanted the documentary to land at HBO, and it found a receptive audience there. Sheila Nevins, the president of HBO Documentary Films, said she’s overseen “a lot of sorrow onscreen” in her career, particularly as it relates to older people. Most documentaries featuring older subjects “are about elder abuse or diseases,” she noted. “To suddenly be able to laugh is a very rare thing in a documentary.”
Early in the film, Mr. Reiner asks a rhetorical question: “How come we got the extra years? Was it luck, good genes, modern medicine? Or are we doing something right?”
The film then sets out to answer that question and attempts to serve as something of a how-to guide, proposing the maintenance of close friendships and passions for hobbies as paramount.
Mr. Seinfeld, who appears in the film to offer a perspective on aging and reveals he often wakes up depressed every morning thinking about yet another day of tasks, first met Mr. Reiner as an 8-year-old seeking an autograph at the Westbury Music Fair. Mr. Seinfeld said he’s a firm believer in remaining dynamic in one’s later years. “That song ‘Young at Heart,’ I don’t believe in that,” he said with a laugh, referring to the Frank Sinatra hit. “You gotta do something! You may start with a philosophy, but you got to actually act on it. It doesn’t happen just because you have a sunny disposition. You actually have to do some work.”
Mr. Shapiro said he’s already booked the 63-year-old Mr. Seinfeld for a 100th-birthday comedy show at Caesars Palace, in Las Vegas, in 2054. “We even have a hold-the-date certificate,” Mr. Shapiro said with a laugh. “He will be there. I don’t know if I’ll be there.”
Mr. Reiner admits to still being surprised on occasion by his contemporaries. During his research for the book about films from his youth he learned that Olivia de Havilland, who, in 1938, starred alongside Errol Flynn in “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” was still alive and living in France at 100.
“It makes me so happy,” Mr. Reiner said. “To know you can go on like that and still have your wits about you.”
Review: ‘If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast’ Finds Vigor After 90 By NEIL GENZLINGER
From left, Mel Brooks, Norman Lear and Carl Reiner in the HBO documentary “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast.” HBO
In this era full of baby boomers caring for frail parents, we’ve seen plenty of documentaries, plays and memoirs about dementia, infirmity, loss. But in the HBO documentary “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast,” Carl Reiner and friends take up another side of the phenomenon of longer life spans: the many people in their later years who are still sharp and vigorous and engaged.
The film, which has its premiere on Monday night, doesn’t pussyfoot around when setting its bar; no “life after 65” theme here. Mr. Reiner is interested in people 90 and above. What are their secrets for staying so energetic for so long? What are the frustrations of living in a society that tends to marginalize this age bracket?
Mr. Reiner, who acts as host in the film, with Danny Gold directing, is himself Exhibit A for his study: He recently turned 95. In this breezy, anecdotal film, he chats with others in their 90s and beyond, many of them friends from show business, like Mel Brooks (90), Dick Van Dyke (91) and Betty White (95).
They reminisce a bit, flash a little song-and-dance ability and share observations about how they view themselves and how society views them. There is chagrin on occasion; no one likes the condescension that is often showered on people of this age.
Of course, celebrities are not particularly representative of the 90-and-older population, so Mr. Gold brings a few nonshowbiz people into the film as well, like Ida Keeling, who took up running at 67 and last year, at 100, set a record for her age group in the 100-meter dash. A lot of the advice heard in this film is fairly vague, but not that from Ms. Keeling.
“You’ve got to be the boss of your body,” she says, urging people to put effort into physical fitness if they want a robust old age.
The film does acknowledge, though, that not everybody in this demographic can run a 100-meter dash.
“Almost everyone I talked to about staying vital said how important it was to stay healthy,” Mr. Reiner says. “But good health is a wild card. Sometimes eating right and staying fit isn’t enough. Is it possible to enjoy vital life even with health problems?”
To address that question, he checks in on Kirk Douglas, 100, who performed a one-man show in his 90s even though a stroke two decades ago impaired his speech.
The film would have been better if it had gone further into this and some other areas, like health care costs for noncelebrities, but at least it starts the conversation. It provides delightful evidence that there is plenty of life yet in the population born before the Great Depression. Now the broader culture needs to consider how to change its preconceptions if 90 is the new 65.
You'd think some of the Star Trek TOS series fans would have chimed in about this guy by now.
Character actor Morgan Woodward, Ron Tracy from "Omega Glory" and Dr. Simon Van Gelder from "Dagger of The Mind" is still alive and is 92 years old. Woodward's pockmarked mug was seen EVERYWHERE on episodic television (mostly cast as heavies) from the 1960's on through to the 1980's. And of course, who can forget his quiet menacing presence sporting those mirrored shades in the film classic "Cool Hand Luke".
William Russell was 93 on Sunday. Sir Lancelot in the 1950s TV series of the same name, and of course he was Ian Chesterton in the first 77 episodes of Doctor Who.
Happy 101st (!!!!) birthday to the great Kirk Douglas! Still alive (which is a bit contrary to the normal "Happy Birthday" posts for people who were born on the date of the post but died fifty years ago).
That is phenomenal graham. 1 of the last major stars of his era. I remembr thinking when he was 94 that there was some comfort in knowing he was still going.
The 101-year-old Kirk Douglas made an appearance onstage at the Golden Globe Awards last night, with his daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones. He was wheelchair-bound and barely understandable, but alive and kicking nonetheless,.
Has anyone mentioned Morgan Woodward? He was in the original Star Trek twice - Simon Van Gelder in Dagger of the Mind and off the rails starship captain Tracey in The Omega Glory. Grey haired in both episodes. I saw him in a 1983 episode of Knight Rider yesterday playing an elderly looking sheriff. He's still going, 92 years old!
