It`s no secret that away from the ball park, Mickey Mantle was no Boy Scout.
In the July issue of Gallery magazine his former teammate Whitey Ford recalls how Mantle, red-eyed and hung-over, arrived at Pittsburgh`s Three Rivers Stadium after the two of them had been on an all-night hoot. Intending to teach him a lesson, Yankees manager Casey Stengel decided to keep Mantle in the line-up. On his first time at bat, the Mick ”staggered to the plate . . . his head banging and his eyes refusing to focus.” He swung–and
”turned the first pitch into one of the loftiest home runs the Pirates ever saw.” Hey, nobody ever said life is fair.
To play a supporting character on a TV series is frequently to be a one-note Charlie, at least through the show`s first season. When Allyce Beasley was hired to play Miss DiPesto, the rhyming receptionist on ABC`s
”Moonlighting,” there wasn`t much the writers could tell her about her character because they didn`t know. ”It`s frustrating because you want to play a fully rounded character, but she just doesn`t exist,” says Beasley.
”I could have made random choices about who she was, but it would have been a waste of time: My choices could have conflicted with what would grow out of the scripts.”
The more things change, the more they really do stay the same. Consider the titles of some articles from two Photoplay magazines from the `50s that are reproduced in ”Starstruck: The Wonderful World of Movie Memorabilia”
(Doubleday): ”Marilyn in the House: A Wife Dares To Make a Friend of Monroe,” ”1955 Sexation: Sheree North,” ”Hollywood`s New Look in Sex,”
”Doris Day Says Wake Up and Live,” ”Bill Holden`s Exclusive Love Story”
and ”50 Prizes: Win a Present From a Star.” With a couple of name changes, the very same articles could wind up in next week`s issue of People.
REPLAYS
”Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.”
Anonymous
”I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.”
Mikhail Baryshnikov.
”No sane man will dance.”
Cicero.
