On Jan. 12, 1957, Harry Belafonte recorded "The Banana Boat Song," but his wasn't the only calypso boat a-coming in. Just a few weeks later, on Feb. 18, 1957, Robert Mitchum recorded "Robert Mitchum Calypso - Is Like So," an album filled with the sounds of steel drums, marimbas and Mitchum singing in a kind of pidgin English.
Gar Smith forwarded to Personals a tape of this musical event, which includes Mitchum singing "Matilda," "Mama Looka Boo Boo" and the pre-feminist anthem "Not Me (The Woman Is Smarter)."While in Trinidad and Tobago in 1956 filming "Fire Down Below" and "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison," Mitchum became interested in the music. "He had mastered all of the local West Indian songs with their complicated rhythms before a week was out in Tobago," recalled "Heaven" co-star Deborah Kerr. Jack Lemmon, co-star of "Fire," recalled that in a Trinidad joint one night, Mitchum suddenly got up and joined professionals who were making up lyrics on the spur of the moment. "I was just totally thrown. He was as good as they were."
- MAN ABOUT TOWN - After reading a recent story about the apartment over Market Street's Orpheum Theatre, built in 1926 for skirt-chasing vaudeville mogul Alexander Pantages, Pele deLappe recalled a "ditty San Franciscans were singing in the late '20s" (to the tune of "Ole Man River"):
"Ol' Sam Tages
That ol' Sam Tages
He acts outrageous
To girls on stages
That ol' Sam Tages
He just keeps messin' around."
- OOPS! - An American Airlines executive who happened to be aboard a recent flight that showed the movie "Jerry Maguire" was "appalled," says Entertainment Weekly, at the inclusion of a sex scene that contained some graphic images.
"We had been told that the scene would be cut," an airline representative told the magazine, "and it was our impression that it was. Instead, it turned out to be modified but still in there."
The movie was pulled from the main cabin (replaced by the scintillating "Vegas Vacation" with Chevy Chase) but is still offered as a "cassette choice" for business- and first-class travelers.
- Leah Garchik