Harold Ramis had a distinguished movie career as an actor, director, and writer. And he was also amazing for his work on Second City Television.
We were sad to hear when writer-director-actor Harold Ramis passed away from autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis. Only a day earlier, I had watched one of my favorite movies, Groundhog Day (1993), which Ramis directed and co-wrote. I first saw Groundhog Day in the movie theater when it came out in 1993. At the time, I liked the movie but it was with repeated viewings over the years that made it a classic for me. Some previous Chimesfreedom posts discuss Groundhog Day, and for other fans of the movie, make sure to check out this touching tribute to Ramis by Stephen Tobolowsky, who played Ned Ryerson in the movie.
Of course, Ramis also played a role in other classic films. For example, he co-wrote and starred in Stripes (1981) and Ghostbusters (1984). His role as Russell Ziskey in Stripes will always be one of the first things that comes to my mind when I think of him. He wrote and directed Caddyshack (1980), National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), and other films. Before those movies, he was one of the screenwriters for National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978). I think of these movies when I think of Ramis, but reading his obituaries made me realize that I had forgot that I grew up watching him on a television show.
Prior to working on Animal House, Ramis appeared on (and became head writer of) the comedy television series Second City Television (SCTV) during its first years in the late 1970s. The Canadian television show, which started in 1976 and spun off from Toronto’s Second City stage show, centered around a fictional small TV network. In addition to Ramis, the series featured John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, and Dave Thomas. Thomas recently talked to the Huffington Post about working with Ramis.
Ramis’ characters on SCTV included Mort Finkel, here advertising his “Do-It-Yourself-Dentistry” kit.
On the show, Ramis provided public service announcements as Officer Friendly.
Ramis also starred in SCTV‘s presentation of the western movie “A Fistful of Ugly.” And he accepted phone calls from “viewers” as SCTV station manager Maurice “Moe” Green.
In the days after he died, a number of colleagues (including Bill Murray who had a famous “feud” with Ramis) said wonderful things about Ramis as a director, screenwriter, actor, and human being. We wish he were still around to give us more great work, but we are happy we can watch these SCTV clips and the movies. And I will keep watching Groundhog Day every year too, even though next time it will be with a little extra sadness. RIP.
What is your favorite Harold Ramis movie or character? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Inside Llewyn Davis opens with one of the film’s best musical moments. The camera simply focuses on the title character, played by Oscar Isaac, singing “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” at the Gaslight Cafe. Isaac’s performance of the song is mesmerizing. He immediately draws the viewer into the time and setting of the movie.
Hang me, Oh hang me, and I’ll be dead and gone; Hang me, Oh hang me, I’ll be dead and gone; Wouldn’t mind the hangin’, but the layin’ in the grave so long; Poor boy, I been all around this world.
The song stayed with me long after the movie ended. One might argue that no other performance in the film matches it. Check out Isaac’s opening performance from Inside Llewyn Davis.
Versions and Sources of “Hang Me”
The movie performance made me curious to find out more about the song. The Coen Brothers movie is loosely based on the life of Dave Van Ronk. So the obvious first step for anyone interested in the film is to check out Van Ronk’s version of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.”
Van Ronk’s version is a wonderful recording and worth tracking down. Van Ronk’s ex-wife Terri Thai wrote in The Village Voice that one of the best things about the movie is that it will lead people to check out Van Ronk’s music.
You may find Van Ronk’s version of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” on the CD Inside Dave Van Ronk. Check it out below.
Van Ronk did not write the song. If you look for further information, many places just list it as “traditional.” The song “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,” however, has a long history that takes a number of twists and turns.
There are different variations on the song with different titles. These title variations include “I’ve Been All Around This World,” “The Gambler,” “My Father Was a Gambler,” and “The New Railroad.” Sometimes, the song is called “Cape Girardeau,” from the song’s line “I been all around Cape Girardeau.” Another version specifies the location of the singer’s last stand in “Up On The Blue Ridge Mountains.”
The Grateful Dead used the variation “I’ve Been All Around This World.” The band sang the song in a 1980 New Year’s Eve performance at the Oakland Auditorium.
A Grateful Dead fansite notes that the origin of the song is somewhat unclear. The first commercial recorded version of the song appears to be a 1946 single by Grandpa Jones, who later starred on Hee-Haw. But the song goes back further to a 1937 Library of Congress field recording.
A trip to the Library of Congress website leads to information about this first known recordings of the song. One early version of “I’ve Been All Around This World” (AFS 1531) is by Justis Begley. Alan and Elizabeth Lomax recorded Begley singing the song at Hazard, Kentucky in October 1937.
The Library of Congress lists another version of the song supposedly “sung” by a person named Dr. David McIntosh with a recording date of May from the same year, although I have yet to find more information about that version. McIntosh seems to have been a collector of folk songs, authoring books called Folk Songs and Singing Games of the Illinois Ozarks and Singing Games and Dances (1957). (Thanks to Elijah Wald in the comments for pointing me to the McIntosh listing.)
Interestingly, Begley, the man who made the other 1937 recording of this song about a man about to be hanged, served as the sheriff of Hazard. You may hear another Sheriff Begley recording on YouTube, “Run Banjo.”
Begley’s version of “I’ve Been All Around This World” is below courtesy of archive.org and thanks to Stephen Winick at the American Folklife Center for the link. At the end of the song, you can hear the legendary folklorist Alan Lomax referring to Begley as the “composer” of the song.
The line “hang me” probably derived from the American ballad “My Father Was a Gambler.” That song is about an unnamed murderer who was hanged in the 1870s. Like many other versions, the narrator in “My Father Was a Gambler” claims he has been all around the world as he states, “hang me, oh hang me, I’ll be dead and gone.”
Below is a YouTube video of someone playing “My Father Was a Gambler.” The song title reflects a paternal gambler theme also found in “House of the Rising Sun” (“My father was a gamblin’ man / Down in New Orleans.”). A gambling father also appears in the Allman Brothers’ song “Ramblin’ Man” (“My father was a gambler down in Georgia”).
What Hanged Man Inspired the Song?
Unfortunately, sources do not disclose the name of the condemned man or men who inspired the various versions of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.” The book Outlaw Ballads, Legends & Lore (1996) by Wayne Erbsen claims that the song was inspired by a man hanged in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Some versions of the song mention that location.
Apparently the hanged man’s name has been lost to history. But the book claims that the execution occurred sometime during the decade of the 1870s. The author notes that the famous hanging judge Judge Isaac Charles Parker might have pronounced the sentence because he served as judge at that location during 1875-1896.
One may speculate further about the person who inspired “My Father Was a Gambler” and the “hang me” lyric. Examining a list of people executed in the Arkansas, one finds a large number of men hanged for murder in Arkansas in the 1870s. Most were black men or Native Americans (also illustrating the discriminatory way the death penalty is used).
If we try to narrow down the time period, the famous execution may have occurred sometime during 1873-1876. During that period, executions at Fort Smith were open to the general public. For these public executions, thousands of people could hear the condemned person’s last words.
But even if we narrow down the song’s inspiration to the years of public executions, it is still challenging to determine the name of the condemned man who inspired the “hang me” lyrics. For example, one may guess that the song could be about Sidney Wallace. As something of a folk hero, Wallace and his execution may have captured people’s imagination.
Or maybe the song is about Daniel Evans. He had connections in Missouri, which might have inspired the song’s reference to Cape Girardeau. Evans also joked about his execution, which might have made it memorable to a potential songwriter.
Or maybe the song is about either William Leach or William Whittington. Both of those men gave final speeches to a crowd blaming their vices and discussing their reform. Further, Leach’s lingering 10-minute hanging may have prompted extra attention. (See Roger Harold Tuller, “Let No Guilty Man Escape”: A Judicial Biography of “Hanging Judge” Isaac C. Parker.)
A good guess is that John Childers may be the inspiration for the song because of his final request to be hanged. Childers spoke for sixteen minutes on the scaffold in 1873. Then his request came after the marshal made him an offer.
The marshal explained that he would spare Childers if the condemned man would reveal the names of his accomplices. Following his own code of honor not to rat on others, Childers swept his hand and asked, “Didn’t you say you were going to hang me?” After the marshal answered in the affirmative, Childers replied, “Then, why in hell don’t you!”
The Childers execution continued to attract attention after Childer’s death. Some claimed that Childers escaped. Others claimed that after Childer’s body fell through the trap, a bolt of lightening from a storm cloud struck the scaffold.
But we may only guess how much of the song we know today is based in fact. For example, singers may have added the gambling reference in some versions as a morality lesson for listeners.
The Song and Hangings Today
Other versions may contain clues about the origins or may just feature additional details added long after the execution. One of the versions called “Working on the New Railroad” refers to railroad work. Below, Crooked Still performs their version of “Working on the New Railroad,” which also has some of the “hang me” lyrics.
There are a number of other good versions of “Hang Me” and the various variations, including ones by Amos Lee and Yonder Mountain String Band. Also, reportedly, Bob Dylan performed the song during the 1990 leg of his “Never Ending Tour.”
The Deep Dark Woods made a lively version of the song the title track of their 2008 album, Hang Me Oh Hang Me. I like what they do with the song. Check it out.
While hangings may seem a relic of the past, hanging is still an option for executions in Delaware, New Hampshire, and Washington. In many ways, other current methods of killing prisoners also seem barbaric vestiges of the past.
States now have lethal injection as their primary method of execution. But such executions still are not civilized, as shown by a recent 26-minute execution in Ohio.
Whether or not we will ever see a song about lethal injection that rivals “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” may depend on how much longer some states continue to kill prisoners.
What is your favorite version of “Oh Hang Me”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
A new video takes us to the locations of some of the famous scenes from the movie Groundhog Day (1993) in Woodstock, Illinois.
The events in the film take place in the location of the famous annual groundhog event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. But the town used in the film was actually Woodstock, Illinois.
In this video from the Onion A.V. Club, Sean O’Neal visits the locations for much of Groundhog Day, which was directed by Harold Ramis and starred Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell.
Check out the video:
For more on the origin of the holiday and more on how the movie created a feud between Ramis and Murray, check out this story.
Groundhog Day was not the first time that Woodstock, Illinois was featured in a film. Woodstock’s jail and courthouse appeared in Planes, Trains, And Automobiles.
What is your favorite scene in Groundhog Day? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Her, the new film starring Joaquin Phoenix and written and directed by Spike Jonze, is garnering very good reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes currently gives the film a 93% critics rating (and 87% audience rating). The movie was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. It does address an interesting concept and I enjoyed much of the story, but I was not as overwhelmed as the critics.
Her takes place in the not-to-distant future where we know it is the future because people do not wear belts but they do wear mustaches. Phoenix stars as a writer named Theodore Twombly going through a divorce who falls in love with the advanced operating system on his cell phone, voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
I have admired movies by Jonze since Being John Malkovich (1999), and he does an excellent job here of capturing a world that is recognizable but slightly different from ours. The film also raises interesting questions about artificial intelligence and human relationships, addressing more immediate problems raised by computers than what we see in other science fiction films like Terminator. I enjoyed the characterization by Phoenix and the voice work by Johansson. And Amy Adams does a great job here too. But my one complaint about the film was that there was not enough there to keep me entertained for two hours. I never became invested in Phoenix’s character enough to stay entertained. For me, the movie could have told the same story in ninety minutes or less.
Conclusion? Most people are enjoying this film, so maybe you will too. For me, I enjoyed a lot of the movie but it could not keep me from looking at my watch several times. Still, Her raises some interesting issues that might lead you to further discussions with your friends.
Bonus Parody: This weekend on Saturday Night Live, host Jonah Hill (with a little help from Micheal Cera) did a funny parody with the preview for the movie Me.
Did you like Her? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Much has been made of Bruce Dern’s performance in the movie Nebraska (2013) and his well-deserved nomination for the Academy Award Best Actor Oscar. The poster for the film even features only a silhouette of his face. But the film is more than a Dern vehicle, with solid performances all around and great direction once again from Alexander Payne.
Nebraska , by screenwriter Bob Nelson, tells the story of Woody Grant (Dern), an aging man who believes he won a million dollars after receiving a magazine seller’s announcement about a sweepstakes. After Grant tries repeatedly to make the journey from Montana to Nebraska to claim his prize, his son, played by Saturday Night Live alum Will Forte, agrees to take him on the trip. Along the way, the family is reunited in Woody’s former hometown, where the past connects to the present and Grant’s son learns more about his family.
I am a fan of Payne’s movies like Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002), Sideways (2004), and The Descendants (2011), and this black and white film portrays themes of family and aging in a genuine heartfelt way. Having grown up in Nebraska, Payne is able to find the humor and the heart of life in these “fly-over” states in a way that is respectful and honest. Having myself grown up in a small Midwestern town and having lived in various places, I always enjoy when a film honestly features a location outside of New York or Los Angeles. Even the names of the characters in Nebraska reflect the solidness of the heartland: Woody Grant, David Grant, Kate Grant, Ed Pegram, Aunt Martha, etc.
The often overlooked Dern gives a career performance here, but June Squibb as his foul-mouthed wife steals a number of scenes, earning her own Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Will Forte shows that he is more than a comic actor, and it is great to see Stacy Keach on screen again too.
Like Payne’s recent movie The Descendants, much of Nebraska centers on the connection between a family and the influence of money or property. While The Descendants showed off the beauty of Hawaii in glorious color, in Nebraska Payne and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael are able to reflect the beauty of the West and the plains only using black and white. As in most of his recent movies, Payne is also able to find a big heart at the middle of a mess.
Conclusion? Do not underestimate Nebraska as a small film because it is in black and white and because the reviewers focus on one performance. Nebraska may have the biggest heart of any movie released in 2013.
What Other Critics Are Saying Because Why Should You Trust Me? Rotten Tomatoes currently gives Nebraska a 91% critics rating and an 88% audience rating. Dan Jardine at Cinemania is one of the few critics who did not love the film, calling it likeable but “awfully formulaic on too many levels.” Chuck Koplinski at the Illinois Times claims that the director and Dern find “modest nobility” in the film.
What did you think of Nebraska? Leave your two cents in the comments.
We were sad to hear when writer-director-actor Harold Ramis passed away from autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis. Only a day earlier, I had watched one of my favorite movies, Groundhog Day (1993), which Ramis directed and co-wrote. I first saw Groundhog Day in the movie theater when it came out in 1993. At the time, I liked the movie but it was with repeated viewings over the years that made it a classic for me. Some previous Chimesfreedom posts discuss Groundhog Day, and for other fans of the movie, make sure to check out this touching tribute to Ramis by Stephen Tobolowsky, who played Ned Ryerson in the movie.
. Check it out below.
(1996) by Wayne Erbsen claims that the song was inspired by a man hanged in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Some versions of the song mention that location.
