Very few major-league Hollywood stars have suffered such an abrupt and precipitous hair decline as James Stewart, and it all happened during his service as a bombardier squadron leader during World War II.

Before the war the rail-thin, tousle-haired Stewart looked fairly boyish; when he returned in ’45 he had developed widows’ peaks and stress fissures, and soon after (probably during filming of It’s A Wonderful Life or certainly before Call Northside 777) began to wear toupees. By the mid ’50s his hair was mostly gray and barely hanging in there.

Without the rug the older Stewart looked like an aging middle-management businessman or an Air Force General (which he was); with the rug he definitely looked younger but also like an actor wearing a rug.

Why didn’t Stewart take care of things “in Prague” via micro scalp implants? Because the technology didn’t really come into being until the ’90s or the early 21st Century.

Ayo Edebiri to Nikki Haley: “I was just curious, what would you say was the main cause of the Civil War? And do you think it starts with an S and ends with a lavery?”

Haley to Edebiri: “Yep, I probably should have said that the first time.”

Yesterday HE gifted Sutton Wells with a 30-inch, red-and-white kids guitar — made by Master Play, Fender Stratocaster-resembling, etc. A totally decent little axe, and inexpensive to boot.

During the drive down from Connecticut HE was hit with an engine problem. The engine was coughing, struggling. I found a friendly West Orange garage. Everything’s fine now, but the total damage is/was $570.00.

HE is more or less down with this Joe Rogan rant.

Rogan on 70% of HE commentariat: “They know who and what they are…they won’t admit it but they’re in a cult…the very definition of a cult…they’ll attack you.”

The historic, first-time-ever arrival of the Beatles on U.S. soil happened on Friday, 2.7.64 — just shy of 60 years ago. They had left London Airport, which wasn’t renamed Heathrow until September 1966. early that morning, and arrived at the recently rechristened Kennedy Airport, known for decades as Idlewild Airport until l2.24.63, or only six weeks earlier. The Beatles flight, Pan Am # 101, touched down around 1:40 pm.

Ten minutes later they were inside a small press lounge inside the Pan Am terminal and answering a series of taunting, goof-off questions from local journalists (print and broadcast). Most of us have seen the footage (as burned into the mind as newsreel capturings of the JFK assassination chaos, which had happened only ten weeks prior), and heard the group’s wise-ass responses. You can feel the irreverent energy and giddy vibes. Something fresh and shifty was happening. Whatever was left of that gloomy, lingering hangover from the shock of Dealey Plaza…all of that was suddenly gone.

Earlier today I was looking for some restored news footage — HD, 4K, perhaps even a 60 fps makeover or at least deliciously restored with enhanced sound — that I was sure someone had created. To my gradual surprise I was surprised to discover that except for some cruddy-looking colorized footage nobody has done squat. The same footage that was broadcast later that day on local news channels is all you can find. Strange. You’d think someone along the way would have done something to intensify those iconic sounds and images, but no.

Carl Weathers has passed at age 76. Apollo Creed in the first four Rocky films (1976–1985), Colonel Al Dillon in Predator (1987), Combat Carl in the Toy Story franchise, Det. Beaudreaux in Street Justice (1991–1993), etc. He had a recurring role as Greef Karga in the Star Wars series The Mandalorian (2019–2023). Good man…sorry.

Don Murray, who died today at age 94, peaked in the ’50s and early ’60s (Bus Stop, A Hatful of Rain, The Bachelor Party, The Hoodlum Priest, Advise and Consent, Baby The Rain Must Fall).

Murray had a certain intensity — he knew how to convey anxiety, inner turmoil, uncertainty. His heroin-addicted Johnny Pope in A Hatful of Rain was his best moment. He was Oscar-nommed for Bus Stop, but that performance annoyed me.

The now-admitted-to relationship between Fani Willis and Nathan Wade has no bearing at the charges against Donald Trump and his co-conspirators, but it’s mind-boggling that Willis and Wade calculated that no one (particularly Trump investigators) would discover that they went on trips together and would use this info to weaken Willis’s authority and legitimacy …their stupidity was radiant.

Over the decades the old saga of the self-destructive musical genius or famous performer — grew up gnarly, found fame with a great gift, burned brightly for a relatively brief time and then died from drug or alcohol abuse — has been told many times.

Jimi Hendrix, Hank Williams, Brian Jones, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Charlie “Bird” Parker, Edith Piaf, Bix Beiderbecke…a story as old as the culture of recreational drugs and “yeah, man” indulgence itself.

Sam Taylor-Johnson‘s Back to Black (Focus, 5.24), a biopic about the doomed Amy Winehouse, is the latest. Marisa Abela as Amy, Jack O’Connell as the jaded Blake Fielder-Civil plus Eddie Marsan, Lesley Manville and Juliet Cowan.

From Truman Capote‘s “The Duke In His Domain,” published in The New Yorker on 11.2.57…excellent writing, phrased just so, based on a Marlon Brando interview in Kyoto’s Miyako hotel during location filming of Sayonara:

“The maid had reëntered the star’s room, and Murray, on his way out, almost tripped over the train of her kimono. She put down a bowl of ice and, with a glow, a giggle, an elation that made her little feet, hooflike in their split-toed white socks, lift and lower like a prancing pony’s, announced, ‘Appapie! Tonight on menu…appapie.’

“Brando groaned. ‘Apple pie….that’s all I need.” He stretched out on the floor and unbuckled his belt, which dug too deeply into the swell of his stomach. ‘I’m supposed to be on a diet. But the only things I want to eat are apple pie and stuff like that.’

“Six weeks earlier, in California, [director Joshua] Logan had told him he must trim off ten pounds for his role in Sayonara, and before arriving in Kyoto Brando had managed to get rid of seven. Since reaching Japan, however, abetted not only by American-type apple pie but by the Japanese cuisine, with its delicious emphasis on the sweetened, the starchy, the fried, he’d regained, then doubled this poundage.

“Now, loosening his belt still more and thoughtfully massaging his midriff, he scanned the menu, which offered, in English, a wide choice of Western-style dishes, and, after reminding himself ‘I’ve got to lose weight,’ ordered soup, beefsteak with French-fried potatoes, three supplementary vegetables, a side dish of spaghetti, rolls and butter, a bottle of sake, salad, and cheese and crackers.

“’And appapie, Marron?’

“He sighed. ‘With ice cream, honey.’

“Watching him now, with his eyes closed, his unlined face white under an overhead light, I felt as if the moment of my initial encounter with him were being recreated. The year of that meeting was 1947; it was a winter afternoon in New York, when I had occasion to attend a rehearsal of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, in which Brando was to play the role of Stanley Kowalski.

“It was this role that first brought him general recognition, although among the New York theatre’s cognoscenti he had already attracted attention, through his student work with the drama coach Stella Adler and a few Broadway appearances — one in a play by Maxwell Anderson, Truckline Café, and another as Marchbanks opposite Katharine Cornell’s Candida — in which he showed an ability that had been much praised and discussed.

“Ten years ago, on the remembered afternoon, Brando was still relatively unknown; at least, I hadn’t a clue to who he might be when, arriving too early at the Streetcar rehearsal, I found the auditorium deserted and a brawny young man stretched out atop a table on the stage under the gloomy glare of work lights, solidly asleep. Because he was wearing a white T-shirt and denim trousers, because of his squat gymnasium physique — the weight-lifter’s arms, the Charles Atlas chest (though an opened ‘Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud’ was resting on it) — I took him for a stagehand. Or did until I looked closely at his face.

“It was as if a stranger’s head had been attached to the brawny body, as in certain counterfeit photographs. For this face was so very untough, superimposing, as it did, an almost angelic refinement and gentleness upon hard-jawed good looks: taut skin, a broad, high forehead, wide apart eyes, an aquiline nose, full lips with a relaxed, sensual expression. Not the least suggestion of Williams’ unpoetic Kowalski.

“It was therefore rather an experience to observe, later that afternoon, with what chameleon ease Brando acquired the character’s cruel and gaudy colors, how superbly, like a guileful salamander, he slithered into the part, how his own persona evaporated — just as, in this Kyoto hotel room ten years afterward, my 1947 memory of Brando receded, disappeared into his 1957 self.

Pamela Paul‘s 2.2 N.Y. Times article about trans-surgery pushback, “As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans — They No Longer Do”, suggests that people are tiring of the vaguely hysterical trans surgery theology and that the insanity may we winding down.

Sasha Stone‘s reader reply, posted by the Times: