Things I Wish I Hadn't Read

I realize people can and do have lives entirely separate from what we might see from them as performers. They are not necessarily the characters they portray. They usually are completely different.

Take George Reeves as Superman, that man of steel that came on my television with regularity between 1952 and 1958. In fact, there's a good friend of mine who, with his brother, can recite the dialog and plots of every Superman episode given the tiniest clue. Something like 'Name That Tune,' just given an obscure, short set of notes. One of these brothers is having the time of their life re-watching every Superman episode that comes on a cable station that they get, and I don't: 'Decades.' It should be called the Peter Pan station, because it truly is aimed at those who have spent little time growing up.

Then there was Lois Lane, the pesky reporter who was always trying to find out who really was Superman. She was played by two actors over the years, Noel Neill, and Phyllis Coates. If the show weren't set in the 1950s, Lois would have successfully seduced Clark Kent on screen and found the cape and leotards in the closet. Clark would be exposed.

Of course there was the star of the show, Superman, "who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for The Daily Planet..." played by George Reeves. George in real life didn't have Superman's qualities. He couldn't bend steel in his bare hands, and he wasn't faster than a speeding bullet, especially in the final moments of his life when he either committed suicide, or was murdered. Much has been made of that, and as a kid, that was a complete shock to my boyhood senses.

Rounding out his cast, for all the episodes was Jimmy Olsen, the somewhat dim cub reporter and photographer, played by Jack Larson.

Jack Larson recently passed away at 87. I never knew Mr. Larson was gay. My Peter Pan friend did know that years and years ago, but considering the attention he gives to all things media, I'm not surprised.

Jimmy Olsen, in real life as Jack Larson, was an accomplished playwright. I can easily accept that Mr. Larson had a life other than the one I remember him playing on the screen, when the boob tube in our house was not in the shop being repaired in the 1950s.

Thank goodness I never ran into a wise guy character like Sonny, played by Chazz Palmiteri in 'A Bronx Tale' who tells Robert De Niro's young son that Mickey Mantle couldn't care less about him, or his father, a hard working Bronx bus driver. It would have been way too much for me to have heard a sneering adult tell me Jimmy Olsen was "queer."

There's an aspect about growing older that leaves you with very clear memories of what to others would seem like events from the Stone Age. Take the 'Friday File' feature in the NYT that hauls up entertainment stories from the archives.

This past Friday, '52 Years Ago' is devoted to telling us about the Singing Nun. I'm realizing that 52 years ago does not place an event outside my personal memory.

I do remember the Singing Nun, and I always liked her song 'Dominique.' So what if she was a one-hit wonder, she was a nun for God's sake. They even made a dreadful movie of her story starring Debbie Reynolds.

Think Sally Field in 'The Flying Nun' with a guitar, and you've got Sister Sourire (Smile), a 30 year-old Dominican Belgian nun who became so popular she appeared on Ed Sullivan's show, sold half a million recordings of her song within months of its release, and stood atop the American charts as No. 1, all shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy in November of 1963.

That 'The Singing Nun' and the JFK's fate are so clear to me and have it be 52 years ago must make me appear to be someone who probably remembers Lincoln being taken out by John Wilkes Booth.

There was a storefront on the north side of 14th Street that in the 1950s and 1960s blared the most popular song of the day, continuously, for all outside the store to hear. I don't remember if it was really a record store, or what it was, but I distinctly remember hearing Johnny Cash's 'The Little Drummer Boy' ad nauseam every time I came out of the subway following a flower delivery. In fact, you could hear whatever this store was playing before you popped your up to street level, it was that loud.

So, of course Sister Smile's Dominique got the No. 1 treatment. It wasn't until I reached Irving Place and headed for 18th Street that I stopped hearing that song.

The Times, being thorough, can't resist telling the complete story of Sister Smile. Turns out she left the convent and turned down the attentions of an male friend she knew for years. She apparently lived with another woman for decades, before the two of them, both broke and depressed, mutually committed suicide in 1985.

I didn't need to know when she stopped smiling, or why.


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