Tag: Ronald Reagan

Sting Performs “Russians” in Plea to Help Ukraine

Sting makes an appeal to help Ukraine, revisiting his 1985 song “Russians.”

Making an appeal to help the people in Ukraine, Sting recently posted on Instagram a video of him singing his song, “Russians,” originally released in the 1980s. In the song, he pleads, “We share the same biology, regardless of ideology;/ But what might save us, me and you,/ Is if the Russians love their children too.”

“Russians” first appeared on Sting’s debut solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985). At the time, the song, mentioning both “Mr. Krushchev” and “Mr. Reagan,” highlighted the idiocy of cold war policy that was fueling a nuclear arms race.

Sting made the new recording as a world power’s aggression is causing great tragedies in Ukraine. He notes in the video that he has rarely sung “Russians” since it was written because he thought it would not be relevant again.

“But,” he explains, “in the light of one man’s bloody and woefully misguided decision to invade a peaceful, unthreatening neighbor, the song is, once again, a plea for our common humanity. For the brave Ukrainians fighting against this brutal tyranny and also the many Russians who are protesting this outrage despite the threat of arrest and imprisonment – We, all of us, love our children. Stop the war.”

[March 20, 2022 Update: Unfortunately, the recently posted video no longer seems to be available for embedding, so below is the original video for “Russians.” You may also check Sting’s Instagram account for the video.]

With the posted video, Sting provides a way to help: “Supplies shipped to this warehouse in Poland are delivered in coordination with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and are guaranteed to go to people most in need. Wherehouse address:
Pol-Cel; Ramos Breska 63, 22-100 Chelm, Poland. Every box should be labeled “HELP UKRAINE” and indicate the contents: “Medicines,” “Clothes,” “Food,” “Humanitarian Aid.” For more info, contact: UK +44 1353 885152; USA +1 855 725 1152. helpukraine.center.

Leave your two cents in the comments.

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Gary Cooper’s Three Oscars

Gary Cooper Oscar

On May 7, 1901, Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana. After some work as a salesman and promoter, he started working as an actor in 1925, changing his first name to Gary when he signed a contract with Paramount. Reportedly, a casting director suggested the new name after her tough hometown of Gary, Indiana.

Gary Cooper went on to star in many memorable films including Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), Pride of the Yankees (1942), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), and The Fountainhead (1949). Cooper was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar and lost for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Pride of the Yankees, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Cooper’s First Best Actor Oscar

He received the Best Actor Oscar twice. First, he won the honor in 1942 for Sergeant York (1941).

Sergeant York features a terrific performance, even if some note that Hollywood may have been motivated to honor the World War I film about a pacifist becoming a soldier to encourage Americans to sign up to fight in the new war. Below is the trailer.

Cooper’s Second Oscar & The Meaning of High Noon

More than a decade later, he won the Best Actor Oscar for High Noon (1952), the last time he was nominated for Best Actor. It is hard to pick a favorite Gary Cooper movie, but I am not sure anything tops High Noon (1952).

We liked Cooper as a hero.

At the 25th Academy Awards in 1953, Cooper was filming another movie in Mexico and was ill.  So, John Wayne accepted the award for him.

Below, actress Janet Gaynor announces Cooper’s win, and Wayne accepts the statue.

Interestingly despite Wayne’s joke wondering why he did not get the High Noon role, Wayne reportedly did not like the movie. There are various theories about why, but Garry Wills in John Wayne’s America explained that Wayne thought the movie ended on a note of disrespect for the law when Cooper dropped his badge in the dirt at the end.

Like Wayne, a number of people found political messages in High Noon. Some suspected High Noon had a “leftist” message. By contrast, though, others believed the script, written by Carl Foreman, who would later be blacklisted, was not sending a left-wing message but exploring the way people had cowered to the bully Sen. Joe McCarthy.

Other viewers find in High Noon a conservative message about how one man has to stand up when the justice system breaks down. Or they find an allegory about the Cold War. In Bright Lights Film Journal, Prof. Manfred Weidhorn summed up the contrasting theories about the movie, saying “High Noon, bristling with ambiguity, is a veritable Rorschach test.”

But High Noon is deep down a great movie, however you want to interpret any messages about the man (and his wife) standing up to the bad guys. And maybe the possibility of so many interpretations adds to its American character.

Many years ago when I was in college in the pre-Internet days and had some friends visiting from Sweden, I took them to a revival theater to see High Noon.  I thought it was a wonderful example of an American movie, or at least of an example regarding how Americans see themselves.

Another former actor, Ronald Reagan, recognized how the movie remained in America’s consciousness decades later. He invokes the movie in this clip, discussing what it was like for a Republican to be in Democratic territory.

Cooper’s Third Oscar

Nearly a decade after High Noon, Cooper would be awarded a third and final Oscar. In April 1961, the Academy gave Cooper a Lifetime Achievement Oscar for his great career.

Cooper again could not accept the award.  But this time, unknown to many, it was because of a serious illness.

When viewers saw Cooper’s friend Jimmy Stewart give an emotional speech at the Oscars, though, they realized Cooper was not well. The news soon came out that Cooper was suffering from prostate cancer.  He died one month later on May 13, 1961, leaving behind a collection of great films that would be the envy of any actor.

What is your favorite Gary Cooper movie? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Hands Across America: Holding Hands in May 1986

    Hands Across America

    May 25 is the anniversary of 1986’s Hands Across America. For those of you too young to remember, Hands Across America is something that people did before we had the Internet. Americans across the United States gathered to hold hands in an attempt to create a 4,125-mile human chain from coast-to-coast through seventeen states.

    They held hands for about fifteen minutes, sang the “Hands Across America” theme song (recorded by Voices of America), “America the Beautiful,” and “We Are the World,” which had been released a year earlier in 1985. And this event occurred in the days before we had hand sanitizer.

    Hands Across America,
    Hands Across this land I love;
    United we fall,
    United we stand,
    Hands Across America.

    Hands Across America

    Did it succeed? Well, the chain ended up with broken places in several barren areas. But millions of people across the country, including many famous celebrities, gathered that day for the event.

    President Reagan held hands in Washington, connected at least theoretically, to Texas migrant farm workers who organized a 51-mile chain in Texas. And we had celebrities. The chain included Oprah, Jerry Seinfeld, Jesse Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Rev. Billy Graham, Prince, Bill Clinton, Kenny Rogers, and Shamu the killer whale. There is even a book about the day.

    The event did not reach its goal to raise $50 million for the hungry, and the promotion costs were high, but it raised around $20 million for soup kitchens and shelters, while raising awareness about the issue. And it gave us something to do.

    Yes, I say “us” because I participated in the event. I was on a trip traveling through Arizona on that date with a group of friends. We had not planned to be in a particular spot, but when we saw the line forming in the desert (see photo above), we all jumped out of the vehicle and joined in the festivities.

    Everyone was friendly and happy for those fifteen minutes. As silly and cheesy as it was, maybe we should do it more often.

    See these people over there?
    They are my sister and brother,
    When they laugh I laugh,
    When they cry I cry,
    When they need me I’ll be right there by their side    .

    Photo by Chimesfreedom. Were you there for Hands Across America? Leave a comment.

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    Pres. Obama: Born in the USA

    After additional pressure on President Barack Obama, he released the long-form version of his birth certificate this morning in an attempt to calm down all of the insane media attention largely driven of late by The Celebrity Apprentice’s Donald Trump. At the news conference this morning, though, I was a little disappointed that Bruce Springsteen did not show up to play “Born in the U.S.A.” as part of the spectacle.

    Springsteen Born in the USA

    It would not have been the first time that the song appeared in presidential politics. In 1984, during a presidential campaign stop in New Jersey, Pres. Ronald Reagan appeared to invoke “Born in the U.S.A.,” which was extremely popular at the time: “America’s future rests in a thousand dreams inside our hearts.” Reagan explained, “It rests in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire: New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen.”

    Although Springsteen was less active politically in those days than in recent years, he would make a few comments on stage and in interviews in response to the comments by Pres. Reagan, who would go on to win the 1984 election in a landslide over Walter Mondale.

    But Springsteen’s most pointed response came a decade later in a re-working of “Born in the U.S.A.” around the time of his Ghost of Tom Joad tour. Where the hit version sounded like an anthem, and that helped make it a hit song, his new version was quieter, stressing the sadness in the words. Pres. Reagan had focused on the sound of the original and misinterpreted the hopeless defiance in the music as a message of hope. By changing the music but not the words into a bluesier version, Springsteen captured the despair faced by many Americans that was — and is — often overlooked in popular culture.

    Bonus “Born in the USA” Information: “Born in the U.S.A.” originated in an acoustic form when Springsteen was working on his Nebraska album. Although he reworked the song with the E Street band into an anthem for the Born in the U.S.A. album, the acoustic version is available on the four-CD collection Tracks. I suppose that “Born in the U.S.A.” would be too sad to play at a press conference about our President’s birth, so maybe they could have asked Miley Cyrus to perform this song.

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