I'm thinking a little older than the 60's but I've ran into this talking to some of the older Emeritus professors I met and this is something I think isn't talked about enough. There was for a certain section of older white Boomers/extremely young Silent Gen. this real energy to the rapid rise and prosperity of America that you could just do all kinds of crazy shit and the world was your oyster. If any of your crazy schemes and travels didn't work out or you had money problems, then your brother or whoever will hook you up with a good union factory job so that you could get back to a stable income and health insurance, while you planned your new scheme to backpack across Afghanistan and though the Himalayas until you find a remote monastery to try to join and become a Buddhist monk.
Hunter S. Thompson wrote about this when reflecting on Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. I found it labeled as "previously unpublished" in the Gonzo Papers vol 1.
Which gets down to a final point about Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. I have called it, only half sarcastically, "a vile epitaph for the Drug Culture of the Sixties," and I think it is. This whole twisted saga is a sort of Atavistic Endeavor, a dream-trip into the past--however recent--that was only half sucessful. I think we both understood, all along, that we were running a hell of a risk by laying a sixties trip on Las Vegas in 1971 . . . and that neither one of us would ever pass this way again.
[...] Because it was nice to be loose and crazy with a good credit card in a time when it was possible to run totally wild in Las Vegas and then get paid for writing a book about it . . . and it occurs to me that I probably just made it, just under the wire and the deadline. Nobody will dare admit this kind of behavior in print if Nixon wins again in `72.
The Swine are gearing down for a serious workout this time around. Four more years of Nixon means four more years of John Mitchell--and four more years of John Mitchell means another decade or more of bureaucratic fasicsm that will be so entrenched, by 1976, that nobody will feel up to fighting it. We will feel too old by then, too beaten, and by then even the Myth of the Road will be dead--if only for lack of exercise. There will not be any wild-eyed, dope-sucking anarchists driving around the country in fireapple red convertibles if Nixon wins again in `72.
[...] So much, then, for The Road--and for the last possibilities of running amok in Las Vegas & living to tell the tale.
I got extremely jealous when reading Thompson's Hells Angels because back then in the USA working 3 months a year and collecting unemployment for 3 more allowed you to buy (and maintain and drive) an extremely big motorycycle and a pile of drugs and just hang out with your horrible friends
Of course the system was crumbling even then, there is a subtle shift towards serious drug running even within the time frame of the book.
I understand that, I think what I was expressing was that it was a lot easier, more accessible, and less risky then, which meant more people did it.
IDK, this sounds strongly income-dependent, but I suppose it's also not something I'm fit to try my hand at. I'm too autistic to be able to manage social matters anyways.
This is the story of all the people in Kerouac's circle that were actually interesting.
Also Now: His aunt is a famous actor or his uncle is an executive producer.
they used to do that a lot back then too. Everyone in hollywood is a nephew
I think a lot of actors all look alike now too
My related comment - https://hexbear.net/post/223137/comment/2843226. It's about the character actor Leon Rippy.
I wanted to mention an actor with an "old-timely" bio but I had no hope of remembering his name without google. I remembered he was in a movie (that I didn't remember the name of) by a director (I didn't remember the name of). I watched the director's commentary and he said he cast Rippy in the small role of the lawyer because he said something very roughly like "Rippy had a memorable look" and "his teeth weren't perfect". My other clues were that the there was a "cowboy" who drives a pickup (never rode a horse) and he likes opera.
I was thinking of The Life of David Gale directed by Alan Parker. Pointless trivia - Kevin Spacey plays the lead role of a professor who is against capital punishment but he's accused of murdering his wife. It's sort of amazing how many "I'm not at all what I seem" roles Spacey played over the years. He must have been in creep heaven while performing them.
Anyway - I love character actors. They're awesome.
I remember watching that. He’s accused of the murder and gets the death penalty then when he’s executed the big reveal is that she killed herself and they did it on purpose to prove that the death penalty kills innocent people. Pretty dumb since we already fucking know that it kills innocent people, that people don’t know this isn’t the thing stopping it from being abolished.
I saw a tweet “they don’t make white guys like Paul Newman anymore”. Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and James Dean were heartthrobs but did not look like each other at all.
You’re right about actors like Peter Lorre. Can you imagine Jack Nicholson getting casted today as a leading man?
I have a friend of a friend who is up and coming and semi famous and hangs out with a lot of C-list and occasionally higher tier celebs.
It's fucking wild. There are exceptions but as a general rule I now assume that anyone who has been even slightly famous in media is related to somebody rich and powerful.
What ways are there for an artist to fight against the current of Capital?
Stale thread, but this is why I will never acknowledge the legitimacy of Brian Herbert's fan-fiction.
Just paid an (admittedly not unreadable) Star Wars novelist to beat the dead horse of his father's work into an unrecognizable paste.
Even rehashing of the past wont save you if you're more for 1660 than 1960.
I mean there are still guys in the industry like Danny Trejo, and a lot of old actors came from money too - James Dean and Clint Eastwood could both trace their lineages back to the Mayflower, Elizabeth Taylor's dad was an art dealer.
Also the tiny amount of research I did on these people shows that a bizarre amount of actors in the 60s were raised as Christian Scientists :soviet-hmm: what's up with that
My family traces back to not exactly the mayflower but near enough. We’ve been poor as fuck the entire time except a couple generations ending with the boomers. Long-standing mayos can be proles too.
There was a huge growth in Christian Science between 1900 and 1950, so that would have been the correct time to be raised as one. I guess part of it was their newspaper, which is still huge. It's won seven Pulitzers. Probably involves a lot of media connections.
I've always guessed Christian Science grew so fast in those decades specifically because that's when more modern medical practices started becoming the norm in America. Widespread distrust and alienation going to hospitals and regimented medication programs when before it was more like door to door doctors with magical elixirs.
I'm pretty sure within the last few months I had a very quick look at an actor's Wikipedia page (born around 1940?) and they were literally in the merchant marine. But I just can't remember who. Damn it.
The following example involves a character actor and it isn't 100% on point but I did want to mention somebody...
Leon Rippy (born October 30, 1949, Rock Hill, South Carolina) is an American character actor. [...] Rippy has appeared in more than seventy plays. His non-acting occupations have included working with a circus and as a foreman of a cattle ranch. At one time he was regarded as an accomplished ballet dancer.
check out the pedigree on Oliver Platt:
Platt was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, to American parents Sheila Maynard, a clinical social worker, and Nicholas Platt, a career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Zambia, and the Philippines. His older brother, Adam Platt, is a New York magazine restaurant critic. They returned to the United States when Platt was three months old.
Platt's paternal great-grandfather was artist and architect Charles A. Platt, and his maternal great-grandparents were equestrian Arthur Scott Burden (of the industrialist Burden family) and socialite Cynthia Roche. Platt is also a great-great-grandson of General Robert Shaw Oliver (through his mother). He is a second cousin once removed of Diana, Princess of Wales, and of her brother Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer, through his great-great-grandparents, MP James Roche and heiress Frances Ellen Work. When asked about Diana, Platt has said, "I never met her. It's a non-story. I'd love to tell you we were confidantes. The truth is I don't know much more about it than you do."
Platt's paternal great great-grandfather was diplomat and lawyer Joseph Hodges Choate. Choate was the most successful lawyer in New York City during the Gilded Age and was later appointed U.S. Ambassador to England by President William McKinley. His brother William Gardner Choate, who was also a prominent lawyer and federal judge, created Choate Rosemary Hall.
