Our Brave Betty: Lauren Bacall Leaves Us at 89

Lauren Bacall, the actress who stood up to that American witchunt known as McCarthyism at a time when communism and pot smoking were equated, has died at age 89.

I had occasion to post a picture of the 19-year-old actress, born Betty Bacall, on Very Important Pothead Hoagy Carmichael's page. She was equally amazing in this 2012 photo.

Among her roles, she played the working-class, cigarette-rolling girlfriend of Gary Cooper in 1950's "Bright Leaf," about the industrialization of tobacco farming in the south and worked with Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire. She appeared (as "Slim" again) in VIP Robert Altman's Pret-a-Porter (1994) won a Golden Globe for her powerful performance as Barbra Streisand's mother in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996).

Of course, Bacall was famously married to Humphrey Bogart, he of "don't Bogart that joint" fame. I contend that reference is from The Big Sleep (pictured), in which Bogart is tied up and Bacall lights a cigarette for him that he dangles from his lips for what seems like forever, unable to use his hands to take it from his mouth.

Bacall told Terri Gross on Fresh Air in 1994 that director Howard Hawks was looking for an actress as insolent as Bogart for the 1944 film that became her debut, To Have and Have Not. Hawks found her in Bacall, but her career suffered when she agreed not to shoot on location after she married. After Bogart died when Bacall was 32, she went to Broadway and won Tony Awards for Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981). In 2009, she was awarded an honorary Oscar.

According to her NYT obit, she and Bogart, "flew to Washington as part of a group known as the Committee  for the First Amendment, which also included Danny Kaye, John Garfield, Gene Kelly, John Huston, Ira Gershwin and Jane Wyatt. 'I am an outraged and angry citizen who feels that my basic civil liberties are being taken away from me,' Bogart said in a statement."

I just saw Bacall on CNN's The Sixties special, wondering how the country would find its soul after the RFK assassination. What a rare, wise woman. 

TCM will remember Bacall with a marathon on September 15 & 16.

RIP Robin Williams: The Craziest, Most Wonderful One

Robin Williams as Albert Einstein, creator of the nuclear bong. 

I must report here the extremely sad news that Robin Williams is dead, of an apparent suicide.

Williams liked to call himself "legalized insanity." He told a joke about Nixon and pot in "Good Morning Vietnam," and was the inspiration for Bob Rivers' parody song "What If God Smoked Cannabis" for his bit about God and the platypus. Noting that the act of creating causes an endorphin rush, he speculated about Einstein developing the nuclear bong ("When the smoke clears, everyone's happy and very hungry").

I always wanted to contact the Northern California resident and Comic Relief co-host about doing a benefit for marijuana reform; then I would realize that since he had problems with cocaine and alcohol, he thought he had to be "sober" at all times. As he noticed, being called to testify before the grand jury that investigated John Belushi's death pushed him in that direction.

Williams faking a toke. 

"When you clean up your act, you either get married or go to court," he joked recently on VIP Craig Ferguson's show, where he was wearing a pot leaf motif tie but said he couldn't smoke it because it made him laugh too much (which it seems like would have been a good thing for him).

In his latest riff on pot, Williams jokes about California wildfires being extra dangerous because, "Those parks are full of weed!" He says if they legalize it they're going to have to label it with a Surgeon General's warning saying, "This will make your music AWESOME!"

Taking a toke in "World's Greatest Dad" 

Williams smoked weed and ate pot brownies onscreen in 2009's "World's Greatest Dad" (to the tune of, "When I get high/This world's so nice"). In the film, written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, Williams's teenage son dies by autoerotic asphyxiation, and his father covers it up by writing his son's suicide note and making it look like a hanging. Only after the outpouring of sanctimonious grief that follows does the truth come out.

Asked by Time magazine in 2011, "Is addiction the price of fame, or is it the price of talent?" Williams replied, "It's the price of drugs, actually. Most of the time with drugs, if you're famous, they give them to you. It's good for business to say that they get you high."

Williams, who was set to reprise his role as Mrs. Doubtfire, starred in the "The Crazy Ones" on CBS, but the series was cancelled in May. Two of the more remarkable roles he left us with are in the Oscar-nominated movie "Awakenings," directed by Tokin' Woman Penny Marshall and based on a book by VIP Oliver Sacks, and "Moscow on the Hudson," directed by VIP Paul Mazursky. Williams said his voicing of the Genie in "Aladdin" was influenced by VIP Lord Buckley. In his youth, he worked at a busboy at Sausalito's Trident restaurant, owned by VIP Frank Werber. And don't get me started on Popeye. 

The Robin Williams Tunnel in Marin County, CA. 

A wise woman recently opined to me that the youth aren't feeling the spiritual effect of marijuana because of their preference for the less mind-expanding strains like the OGs; the couch-lock varieties Williams called "California catatonic." I've encountered a lot of younger men who were fed Ritalin in their youth and seem to need something like that to take the edge off. And it's too bad the father in the "World's Greatest Dad" felt he had to hide his marijuana use from his troubled son.

If anyone could be said to be hyperactive, it was the brilliant comedian Robin Williams. I couldn't help thinking: if he'd been able to puff a little Blue Dream now and then, perhaps he wouldn't have been so depressed. Our great loss.

VIP Barack Obama issued a statement on Williams' passing.

UPDATE: Turns out, Williams had early stage Parkinson's disease, something cannabis can be helpful with. The annual, huge 4/20 Festival at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco is now being held at Robin Williams Meadow. 

Ava Gardner and Ganga

A new book, Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations, reveals that the sultry star tried marijuana with co-star Robert Mitchum around 1951, when the two were filming My Forbidden Past.

"I adored him. He was outrageous," Gardner told Peter Evans about Mitchum. "On the set, in front of reporters, he'd call to his makeup man: 'Hey, bring me some of that good shit, man.' He didn't give a fuck.

"Out in the Valley working on location one day, he said, 'Sugar, have you ever tried this stuff?' He was smoking a joint. I said no, I never have. There was plenty around when I was with Artie [Shaw] but he wouldn't let me touch it. He said I got high enough on booze. Anyway, Bob said, 'I've got some really great shit, really great. I want you to try it.' So we went to this old van where they carried all the equipment. I smoked a couple of sticks. Bob taught me how. You take a little air with the hit, deep, deep down and you hold it and hold it and hold it....

"Anyhow, I didn't feel a goddamn thing, nothing whatsoever. Bob was flying. He was fine and dandy. On the way home we stopped at a bar—dry martinis were the thing in those days—and once I'd had a martini, I felt as if I was sitting two feet above the stool. Everything I reached for was a little off, a little to one side. It took the martini to bring on the feeling of the pot. Bob did his best to convert me to marijuana. I tried, but I never got into it." (Perhaps, like me, she thought she was supposed to feel tipsy after she first smoked, instead of being attuned to the subtle effect of an expanded consciousness.)

Macy Gray Gets Stoned

Macy Gray has brought her distinctive voice and style to a new single, "Stoned," now available on iTunes, from her forthcoming album "The Way."

Born Natalie McIntyre in September 1970 in Canton, Ohio, the 6-foot-tall black girl didn't fit in with her mainly white classmates at her Ohio prep school. She moved to Los Angeles and was a mother of three with a rocky marriage when she catapulted to fame on the strength of songs like "I Try," for which she won the Best Female Pop Vocal Grammy in 2001.

The singer admittedly didn't handle her fame well, indulging in excesses but denying rumors she used hard drugs. She told one interviewer that drugs play an important part in her creativity. "I think everybody needs a little oblivion. It is important to get out of your mind sometimes so you meet a different side of yourself. I have had some really incredible revelations on drugs but at the same time they can do horrible things to you, like make you have to spend a lot of money on rehab."

The "Stoned" video shows Gray smoking and giggling while looking at online pictures of other famous stoners, including Tokin Women Miley Cyrus, Martha Stewart, Marilyn Monroe, Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga and Rhianna. And it looks like she's seen VeryImportantPotheads.com because the video picks up the Bob Marley and Bill Gates photos from their pages there:


Gray has been diagnosed as bipolar, a condition for which many report relief from cannabis, although studies show mixed results. A 2012 study found marijuana can improve cognitive functioning in those with bipolar disorders.

Gray covered The Toyes song "Smoke Two Joints" in 2012. In 2013 she was named in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by a security guard from Universal, alleging rampant marijuana use at the company's headquarters.

Starring recently in The Paperboy (2012) with Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey and Nicole Kidman, Gray also has a successful acting career. In Little Lake for first-time filmmaker Jasmin Sharon, she plays a "hippie psychic" who assists a young girl's coming of age.

Gray is touring in California starting at the end of August, then nationwide. Read more.

CelebStoner names Gray's "Stoned" video in its Top 10 Stoner Songs of All Time.

Amy Tan's Wild Past with Pot

Novelist Amy Tan on NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" spoke about the time, at the age of 16, she was arrested in Switzerland for marijuana. "Everybody smoked pot and hash over there," she said. "I thought it was legal."

To get out of jail, "I had to promise I would listen to my mother and always obey her," she said. Her mother promptly narced out Amy's 24-year-old boyfriend and "he and all my friends were arrested and deported." Still, she joked, she was relieved "because I really did want to break up with him."

Playing "Not My Job" on the show, Tan answered the first quiz question wrong, because, she reasoned, "A lot of people like to get high."

Of course, there were many jokes and a question about the New York Times's endorsement of marijuana legalization this week.

"Unstoppable" Ralph Nader Highlights Drug War Reform

Ralph Nader in Action at Berkeley Post Office Protest Photo: Berkleyside.com

Seemingly tireless consumer rights crusader Ralph Nader spoke on July 30 to a packed, appreciative house at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley that gave him three standing ovations. At the age of 80, Nader is showing no signs of slowing down, having appeared earlier in the day at a protest to save the Berkeley post office building from the rapacious clutches of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's developer husband.

Nader's new book Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State advocates for finding common ground between groups on issues, despite differing ideologies on others. It's a strategy that's worked for him in the past, starting with the "strange bedfellows" coalition of environmentalists and fiscal conservatives that halted Tennessee's Clinch River Breeder Reactor in 1982.

Opening with the Aldous Huxley quote, "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored," Nader said we must smash the myths that control us and end the "divide and rule" strategy.  He argues for hiring full-time advocates to lead the charge, starting with auditing the defense department, ending corporate bailouts, tying the minimum wage to inflation, breaking up big banks, and reining in the "electronic child molesters" who bombard children with commercialized TV.

"It all starts with the quality of citizenry," he said, adding, "It's all about self respect and sharing credit. Seeking justice is a major source of human gratification." He noted the email campaign that halted a potential war with Syria as an example of the power of citizen action. He pointed to Eric Cantor's stunning defeat, despite being outspent by 27:1, and said the Koch brothers are losing in their push for a surtax for solar panels. "Money doesn't vote," he reminded the crowd, urging them to get out and knock on doors to get out the vote. "It's called work," he said.

Nader notes that both the left and the right have been critiquing the War on Drugs for years, from William F. Buckley, Jr. and Milton Friedman to Kurt Schmoke and Kevin Zeese. "The classification and prosecution of drug use as a crime has activated and corrupted law enforcement, encouraged a truly self-defeating form of big government, endangered urban neighborhoods and many thousands of lives, and drained billions of dollars a year from taxpayers," he writes. He notes that many of the reforms recently proposed by AG Eric Holder are similar to those enacted by Texas Governor Rick Perry, and that a dozen Democrats and Republicans joined forces on a bill to legalize the growing of industrial hemp in Congress.

Nader mentioned in his talk that 15 states have passed juvenile justice reforms with left-right support. That day, Rand Paul and Corey Booker introduced such reforms at the federal level, citing drug war issues. Nader said concern for our children is a unifying issue; 80 organizations have now called for an end to the drug war in order to protect children.
 
Ralph Nader is a big reason I'm an activist today, and  I got to meet him once, at a party at Tony Serra's law office. Prompted by CalNORML director Dale Gieringer to ask whether or not he favored marijuana legalization, Nader responded, "Not legalization. Regulation."

The unstoppable Nader guested HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher on August 1.

UPDATE: SF Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders asked Nader for his views on drug legalization.

NORML founder Keith Stroup writes in his new book that he worked for Nader and partied with Nader's Raiders back in the day.

Biography Calls Hillary An "Enthusiastic" Pothead

National Review's blog reports that Weekly Standard Online editor Daniel Halper's new book Clinton, Inc., which hits bookshelves today, quotes an unnamed friend and law-school classmate of Hillary Clinton who says: "If she hasn`t acknowledged it everybody else will tell you: She was an enthusiastic pot user."

According to the Washington Post, when asked by Halper how often Clinton smoked, the answer was, "I don't know, I'm not in the position to say that. But it was just, she was known to be one of the people. And please don't cite me on this by name ... if you talk to other people who knew her reasonably well in law school they will tell you that most people at that time, an undergraduate or in law school, would have been pot users, ranging from the casual and social to the enthusiastic. I think she would have been more enthusiastic, certainly more than Bill."

At least two earlier biographies of Clinton peg her as a pot smoker. Clinton denied ever smoking pot in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour last month.

Clinton did an interview with Larry Mantle of KPCC public radio in Southern California on July 22, where she said when asked about marijuana legalization:

"Honestly, I don't think we've done enough research yet to say what the effects are and what they could be on different people with different physical or psychological issues, different ages — yes, medical first and foremost, we ought to be doing more to make sure that we know how marijuana would interact with other prescription drugs and the like. But we also have to know how even medical marijuana impacts our kids and our communities.

"But the states are the laboratories of democracy, and we're seeing states pass laws that enable their citizens to have access to medical marijuana under certain conditions, so we have the opportunity to try to study those. And then Colorado and Washington have proceeded to permit recreational use. And at the same time, we're seeing the beginnings of important criminal justice reforms.

"So I'm a big believer in acquiring evidence, and I think we should see what kind of results we get, both from medical marijuana and from recreational marijuana before we make any far-reaching conclusions... I think the feds should be attuned to the way marijuana is still used as a gateway drug and how the drug cartels from Latin America use marijuana to get footholds in states, so there can't be a total absence of law enforcement, but what I want to see, and I think we should be much more focused on this, is really doing good research so we know what it is we're approving."

RIP James Garner, Actor and Marijuana Lover

Ladies, if you're looking for the perfect man, you needn't go much further than James Garner. Tall, dark, and handsome with a sexy, soothing voice and a laid-back style, it turns out the actor, who has died at the age of 86, was "a life-long user of marijuana, celebrating its emotional support and physical help with his arthritis."

Know for his TV roles in Maverick and The Rockford Files, and for films like The Great Escape, Garner made an "explosive revelation" in his 2011 autobiography The Garner Files: that he has smoked marijuana for much of his adult life.

Garner wrote: “I started smoking it in my late teens. I drank to get drunk but ultimately didn’t like the effect. Not so with grass. It had the opposite effect from alcohol: it made me more tolerant and forgiving.

“I did a little bit of cocaine in the Eighties, courtesy of John Belushi, but fortunately I didn’t like it. But I smoked marijuana for 50 years and I don’t know where I’d be without it. It opened my mind and now it eases my arthritis. After decades of research I’ve concluded that marijuana should be legal and alcohol illegal.”

Still, he said: “I’ve had to work hard at that easy-going manner you see on screen.” (I think the marijuana helped.) He's also being called "witty," "wise cracking" and "understated" in his obits.

Those are three more pothead traits, as was his political activism: In 1963 he marched on on Washington for civil rights along with Diahann Carroll and Paul Newman (pictured), and he said his favorite role was in the anti-war film The Americanization of Emily.

During an interview with Charlie Rose, Garner talks about being a "card carrying liberal" and says he met his wife Lois Clarke while working on the Adlai Stevenson campaign. Rose concludes, "There is something uniquely and to-his-bone American about James Garner." (He was right: Garner's grandfather was a full-blood Cherokee.)

Sally Field said Garner was "hands down" the best kisser she worked with; reportedly Doris Day and Julie Andrews said so too. Jean Simmons once said she wished her husband, a heavy drinker, was more like Robert Mitchum, another laid-back actor who was also a lifelong marijuana smoker and enthusiast. Like Mitchum, Garner—born James Bumgarner as the son of an Oklahoma carpet layer—was on his own at an early age, drifting through various jobs until he was discovered by an agent while working as a gas station attendant.

On a 1974 "Rockford Files" episode with guest star Shelly Fabares, Garner as Rockford searches his couch cushions for his car keys, and instead pulls out what looks like a pipe. Glancing furtively at his client (Fabares), he pockets the pipe and puts his hand back into the couch, pulling out a bra instead.

"What's My Line" panelist Arlene Francis pronounced Garner the most-liked actor ever, and a 1985 profile called him "immensely likable." Loved by the ladies, he was also a man's man: a three-time pace car driver at the Indianapolis 500, he served in the Army during the Korean War and earned two Purple Hearts. As an actor, he earned many more hearts.

Paul Mazursky, Who Brought Marijuana to The Movies

Before Easy Rider portrayed marijuana smoking on film, and long before American Beauty, Peter Sellers played an uptight Jewish lawyer whose life is pried open by Leigh-Taylor Young's pot brownies in 1968's I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!

It was the breakthrough film for Paul Mazursky, who wrote and nearly directed the cult classic. Mazursky died yesterday, and all his obituaries linked him with marijuana because of that film.

Growing up in New York, Mazursky worked as an actor, appearing in the seminal Blackboard Jungle (1955). Venturing into stand-up comedy and writing, he wrote for Danny Kaye before moving his office to the Sunset Strip, where the hippies he saw inspired his Toklas screenplay. He followed up with his directorial debut, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), based on experiences he had at Esalen. In that film, unlike Easy Rider, the women (Natalie Wood and Dyan Cannon) also get in on the pot-smoking fun.

In his 1999 book Show Me the Magic, Mazursky describes going to the jungle to take Ayahuasca, and mentions that a shamanic healer used tobacco smoke, "not weed," during the journey. Although he describes himself as a "Greenwich Village hipster" (and his mother as "a hipster, a gypsy, a beantik, a hippie"), he doesn't mention that he smoked marijuana himself. Perhaps it went without saying.  Or maybe he preferred psychedelics.

In the book, he describes a very interesting exchange with famed director Federico Fellini, when Mazursky was planning a trip to Italy and wanted to know whether to visit Florence or Venice. "Do you want marijuana or LSD?" Fellini asked. "Firenze is like marijuana. You will be very happy there. Venezia is not like any place you have ever experienced. She is like an acid trip." "I think I'll take Venice," Mazursky replied.

George Segal and Kris Kristofferson, playing the new boyfriend of Segal's ex-wife, smoke together and form a goofy bond in Mazursky's 1973 film Blume in Love. In his feminist-minded An Unmarried Woman (1978), a 15-year-old girl (Lisa Lucas) matter-of-factly states, "I smoke pot sometimes" upon meeting her mother's new boyfriend, played by Alan Bates. "I do too," he responds. "Got any?" she asks.

Among the remarkable films Paul Mazursky left us are: Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Moscow on the Hudson, Harry and Tonto, Enemies: A Love Story and Moon Over Parador. He even took a stab at Shakespeare in Tempest  (1982).

Mazursky's voice opens the movie Antz (1999), playing the psychiatrist who diagnoses the dissatisfied ant Z (Woody Allen) as the insignificant creature he is. But Paul Mazursky was more like what Z becomes, the little guy who broke the mold. 

The 2019 movie The Last Laugh, wherein Andie McDowell turns Chevy Chase onto marijuana and more, and Richard Dreyfus tokes and jokes his way through, is dedicated to Mazursky.

Julie Christie Joins Fellow Brits in Calling for Drug Peace

Actress Julie Christie, who portrayed the iconic Lara in Dr. Zhivago and was once Warren Beatty's favorite leading lady, has signed an open letter to UK Prime Minister David Cameron calling for his administration to review their drug policy in advance of a special UN meeting in 2016 on the topic. 

The letter's June 26 release coincided with a worldwide protest in 100 cities.

Baroness Molly Meacher, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform, said in the press release from the human rights group Release that organized the effort: “The UN Office on Drugs and Crime recognizes that drug addiction is a health problem and not a crime. I urge the UK Government to heed the UN position and to decriminalise the possession and use of drugs. This policy has been shown to work and to reduce drug addiction among young people.” (See Meacher on video.)

Other prominent women adding their signature to the letter are:

• Green Party leader Caroline Lucas

• Franstine Jones, the first woman to head the UK's National Black Police Association

• Welsh-born actress Carys Eleri Evans, who's been active in advocating granting the Welsh language official status in the UK

• Baroness Afshar of Heslington, a Muslim activist and professor

• Baroness Lister of Burtersett (CBE), a prominent member of Parliament and Professor of Social Policy.

• BBC Journalist and HIV activist Louise Hulland

• Professor of Comparative Politics Julia Buxton

• Prosecutor Nicola Hill, President of the London Criminal Courts Soliticors' Assn.

• Barrister Kathryn Cronin, Joint Head of Garden Court Chambers

• Barrister Amber Marks, who has conducted research about the use of sniffer dogs in criminal cases and is the daughter of notorious ex-smuggler Howard Marks

• Solicitor Karen Todner, managing director of one of the the largest criminal defense firms in the country

• Author and journalist Candida Lycett Green

• Dr. Polly Taylor, one of several academics who quit her government post in protest in 2010 when Prof. David Nutt was  fired from his chairmanship of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, after he published data about the relative harms of cannabis, alcohol and other drugs. Nutt also signed the letter, as did Sting, Russell Brand, and Richard Branson. 

Not all of UK's women are so enlightened. In February 2009 Nutt was criticised by then-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for stating Ecstasy was statistically no more dangerous than an addiction to horse-riding. Smith has admitted to a youthful dalliance with pot.

Actress Jean Simmons (OBE) was a signatory on a similar 2005 letter addressed to Tony Blair. American women and men sent a letter to President Obama in 2013 calling for an end to the War on Drugs.

Pussy Riot bravely joined the protest in Russia. 

Read more.

Feds Drag Feet on Cannabis Studies While States Legalize It and Comics Joke About It

I just caught a 2006 Saturday Night Live episode in which Seth Myers reads a story about a study finding cell phones don't cause cancer.

"Yee haw!" shouts a giggling Amy Poehler, who proceeds to put her cell phone in her mouth, attempting to light it with a cigarette lighter.

In case there was any question about which non-cancer-causing substance Poehler was celebrating, the story that followed was about a 125-year-old Indian woman named Fulla Nayak, who claimed that smoking cannabis every day was her secret to long life.

A headline on the latest NORML press release might have been, "Yet Another Study Shows Marijuana Smoking Not Associated With Increased Risk Of Lung Cancer." NORML 's Paul Armentano reports that an international team of investigators from Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States recently analyzed data from six case-control studies involving over 5,000 subjects from around the world. Authors concluded, “Results from our pooled analyses provide little evidence for an increased risk of lung cancer among habitual or long-term cannabis smokers.”

Brooke Baldwin of CNN, who so fully exposed Nancy Grace's mania about marijuana, has posted another good interview, this time with Sanjay Gupta focusing on why research isn't being done on medical cannabis in the US. The issue came to the forefront on Friday when NIDA chief Nora Volkow admitted to a congressional committee that it was easier to study heroin in this country than it is to get an approved protocol for marijuana. However headlines that the FDA is considering rescheduling cannabis at the behest of the DEA are rather overblown, since they are only doing so as required by yet another rescheduling lawsuit.

Now that 23 states have legalized medical marijuana, and Washington state is about to follow Colorado with legal recreational pot stores on July 8, few seem to be waiting for more government studies before they indulge. Case in point: Actress Aubrey Plaza from Poehler's new show Parks and Recreation appeared on Getting Doug with High in March. The show, in which comic Doug Benson brings people on to get high with him, held a special live event at Largo in LA last night with Tokin Woman Sarah Silverman, Ngaio Bealum and others. Benson's 2007 film Super High Me rather proved the point that marijuana's purported harms are overblown.

Meanwhile, it's no laughing matter that Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres has died at the age of 54 from salivary gland cancer, brought on by chewing tobacco (a legal substance).

Jack Benny's Mary: Living Stoned

Mary Livingstone in 1940.

Jack Benny's beloved wife Mary Livingstone (née Sadie Marks), who he often mentioned in his act, was apparently a fan of Mary Jane.

According to Henry Bushkin's biography of his friend Johnny Carson, Livingstone attended Ronald Reagan's first inauguration in 1981, and afterwards at a party for Carson at an Italian restaurand, she lit up "a joint of marijuana" and passed the "fat doobie" to Janet De Cordova, wife of NBC executive Fred De Cordova.

The story lends some credence to the tale told in Kitty Kelley's biography of Nancy Reagan in which Alfred Bloomingdale passed around a joint at a dinner party attended by "the Jack Bennys and the George Burnses" as well as then-Governor Reagan and Nancy. Kelley tried twenty years later to verify the story with Janet DeCordova, but she (lied and?) said it hadn't happened at any dinner party she attended. She and Mary were at a second pot-fueled dinner party, according to Joan Benny, Jack and Mary's daughter.

Born June 23, 1905 in Seattle and raised in Vancouver, Sadie Marks's father was a Jewish immigrant from Romania whose family name had been Markovich (Wikipedia). She first met Benny (né Benjamin Kubelsky) when Zeppo Marx invited him to a Passover seder at her home when she was 14. At the age of 17, she moved to Los Angeles and took a job at the May Company department store, where Benny courted her (as replayed on Benny's TV show years later). She married him in 1927 and appeared with him on the vaudeville stage, proving to be a natural comedienne.

After Benny started performing on radio in 1932, Sadie was brought in as a last-minute replacement to play a character named Mary Livingstone for a single episode. As legend has it, NBC received so much fan mail that the character became a regular feature on the Benny show. "Livingstone soon displayed her own sharp wit and pinpoint comic timing, often used to puncture Benny's on-air ego, and she became a major part of the show." (Wiki). She became so well known as Mary that she legally changed her name to match her character's.

It makes you wish that Mary had co-starred with Benny in the original movie To Be or Not to Be, as Anne Bancroft did with husband Mel Brooks in the 1983 remake. Instead Carole Lombard starred opposite Benny, just before the plane crash that ended her life.

Like Bob Hope, Benny reportedly told a few pot jokes and admitted to trying it. True to the racist nature of our drug laws, it was the son of the actor who played Benny's black valet Rochester who was popped for pot in 1952.

Mary Livingstone died on June 30, 1983 at the age of 78, hours after receiving a visit from Nancy Reagan.

BTW, the Pope is no Nancy Reagan, says the Seattle Times.

Thanks to the well-read Louisa May All-Pot for this tip.

Susan Sarandon On "Ancient Herbal Tripping Drugs"

I just got a dream assignment: writing a profile of Susan Sarandon for CelebStoner, where she has been voted Top Stoner. 

There was much to include, from Sarandon's impressive career, her activism, and her honesty about her own drug use. She was celebrated here on International Women's Day for her contributions to a safer and saner policy for all. 

Below she speaks of taking "ancient herbal tripping drugs, vines and things" on Letterman of late:  

Saradon's new movie Tammy came in #2 in the box office over the 4th of July weekend at $21.2M, behind Transformers at $36.4M. Sarandon plays a drunk in this one, instead of a pothead, as did Barbra Streisand in the movie she made with Seth Rogen (The Guilt Trip). Seems when pot smokers step out of their type casting, they like to play drunks. Jeff "The Dude" Bridges even got an Oscar (and nearly every other award) for his walk on the watery side in Crazy Heart. 

When will a pothead role win an Oscar again? (It hasn't happened since Annie Hall I don't think...and that movie got Best Picture, Writing and Directing too.) 

Hillary Open to State Experiments with Marijuana Legalization - But Not To Her Own Past?

The presumed Democratic front-runner for the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton, claimed she would be  "committing radical candor" when asked by CNN's Christiane Amanpour about marijuana legalization tonight.

But Clinton gave stale old answers to the question. On medical marijuana, she went for the fall-back "we need more research" position (despite thousands of existing studies). To her credit, she did call the states "laboratories of democracy" on full legalization, but again said she wanted to study the results rather than embrace them.

Amanpour wins the Tokin Woman prize for being the first to ask Hillary if she'd smoked herself, as I've been calling for. Clinton claimed she hadn't smoked it in her youth and wouldn't be smoking it now.

But was that a candid answer?

At least three biographies of Clinton say she enjoyed pot during her college days, when she dressed like a hippie (heck, she named her daughter for a Joni Mitchell song). Her former boyfriend David Rupert told Gail Sheehy (in Hillary's Choice) that the couple joined a protest march on Washington where, "'Some of us were inhaling,' he says with a you-know-what-I-mean smirk. The obvious question is, did Hillary inhale too? 'I don't have to go there,' says Rupert, 'but you can read between the lines.'"

According to Edward Klein (in The Truth About Hillary), she met Bill at a commune called Cozy Beach where Ken Kesey's Magic Bus riders were said to be regular visitors. "During their remaining time at Yale, Bill and Hillary often grooved the night away at Cozy Beach, spinning the latest Jefferson Airplane platters and eating hashish brownies." (Source: Horn, Rebels in White Gloves.) Maybe this is why Bill could correctly state he didn't inhale -- unless inhaling brownies counts. 

On a 2011 Real Time with Bill Maher episode Merle Haggard said Clinton came onto Willie Nelson's tour bus, adding, "And I think she inhaled."

Clinton may have more questions to answer leading up to 2016, when California and other states are expecting to have a legalization measure on the ballot, following what looks like a successful "laboratory experiment" in Colorado. She should know how damaging a marijuana bust can be to a young person: like me, she worked for George McGovern's 1972 presidental campaign; his daughter Teresa's life was derailed by a pot bust in 1968. Evidence enough?

Read more about Hillary and marijuana, including her ties to pharmaceutical companies.

Also see: Hillary's Uninspiring Drug Reform Plan from her 2008 campaign.

UPDATE July 2014: Biography Calls Hillary an Enthusiastic Pothead

UPDATE April 2015: Clinton announces Presidential candidacy, with "tepid for a Democrat" stance on legalization.

"Meme Queen" Susan Blackmore on Cannabis

UPDATE 10/15: Blackmore is included in the new book Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.

I just got clued in (by the erudite Alec Dixon of SC Labs) that VIP Susan Blackmore is even cooler than I knew. A well-known psychologist and author of the bestselling book The Meme Machine, Blackmore now has over 600,000 views for her TedTalk on "Memes and Temes."

Dr. Blackmore appeared at the 2005 Cheltenham Science Festival to discuss whether drugs can teach us anything about ourselves. A version of her talk was published in the Daily Telegraph on May 21 of that year. In it, she says:

"Some people may smoke dope just to relax or have fun, but for me the reason goes deeper. In fact, I can honestly say that without cannabis, most of my scientific research would never have been done and most of my books on psychology and evolution would not have been written. . . . Some evenings, after a long day at my desk, I'll slip into the bath, light a candle and a spliff, and let the ideas flow - that lecture I have to give to 500 people next week, that article I'm writing for New Scientist, those tricky last words of a book I've been working on for months. This is the time when the sentences seem to write themselves. Or I might sit out in my greenhouse on a summer evening among my tomatoes and peach trees, struggling with questions about free will or the nature of the universe, and find that a smoke gives me new ways of thinking about them." [Sounds similar to Carl Sagan's experience.]

"In just about every human society there has ever been, people have used dangerous drugs – but most have developed rituals that bring an element of control or safety to the experience," Blackmore continued. "In more primitive societies, it is shamans and healers who control the use of dangerous drugs, choose appropriate settings in which to take them and teach people how to appreciate the visions and insights that they can bring. In our own society, criminals control all drug sales. This means that users have no way of knowing exactly what they are buying and no-one to teach them how to use these dangerous tools. . .

"It's an old metaphor, but people often liken the task to climbing a mountain. The drugs can take you up in a helicopter to see what's there, but you can't stay. In the end, you have to climb the mountain yourself – the hard way. Even so, by giving you that first glimpse, the drugs may provide the inspiration to keep climbing."

Blackmore has recently published Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction and is a patron of the UK Drug Policy Reform organization Transform. See a collection of her writing in support of drug legalization.

Naturally, I had to make a meme for Blackmore.

RIP Tokin Woman Maya Angelou

Artwork: BreezyKiefAir http://kiefair.com/
Photo: G. Paul Bishop

Read about Maya Angelou and marijuana

Russian Hemp Honored in Statues and Stories (Yet, Still Repressed)

I've been informed that in between sheaves of wheat depicted on the Peoples Friendship Fountain in Moscow are sunflowers and cannabis leaves (shown). (Read more in Russian). The fountain was built between 1951 and '54 and features 16 golden women representing Republics of the Soviet Union, as well as the three plants chosen to represent Russia's agricultural bounty.

Nonetheless, when activists chose the fountain as a meeting place for a pro-pot rally in May 2008, they found the site barricaded and one peaceful protestor was beaten by police.

Russian hemp is historically important, according to Jack Herer's The Emperor Wears No Clothes, in which he theorizes that the War of 1812 was fought because Napoleon was trying to blockade the country's hemp crop before it reached Britian's navy.

Russian writer Leon Tolstoy mentions a "high-growing, fragrant hemp-patch" in Anna Karenina (1873), and Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) writes of hemp fields, seeds and oils in his stories. Hashish makes a surprising appearance in a dinner party conversation in playwright Anton Chekhov's “A Woman's Kingdom” (1895).

Hemp is still being grown in Russia but a Siberian experiment to grow "drug free" hemp has failed. Meanwhile, Canadian hempseed food producer Naturally Splendid has just signed a distribution agreement with Sonray Sales to distribute their products in the US. Sonray also has customers in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia and Switzerland.

And yes, in case you're wondering, there's a statute for Ukraine at the fountain. I'm guessing the Ukranians aren't exactly feeling the friendship right now. It's a shame we're always waging wars on people, and plants.

Cole Porter, Bruce Villanch, Elsa Maxwell, Betty Grable and Marijuana

"Come and see my collection of Turkish hookahs."

So states a female character in Cole Porter's play "Du Barry Was a Lady," now on stage in San Francisco in a delightful adaptation starring Bruce Vilanch.

Packed with Porter's witty lyrics and beautiful melodies, the play was first produced on Broadway in 1939 starring Bert Lahr, Ethel Merman, and WWII pin-up girl Betty Grable as the character who uttered the hookah line. Lucille Ball starred with Red Skelton, Gene Kelly and Zero Mostel in the 1943 movie version.

Vilanch—who's written comedy bits for Bette Midler, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Roseanne Barr and Lily Tomlin, among many others—is something of a modern wit and bon vivant in the tradition of Porter and Coward. "He's given more great lines to celebrities than a Hollywood coke dealer," quipped Nathan Lane in Get Bruce, a 1999 documentary on Vilanch now playing on Netflix.

Graduating from Ohio State with degrees in theatre and journalism during the turbulent 60s, Vilanch was brought out to Hollywood by studio executives looking to shape the new direction of film during the Easy Rider daze. "Everyone was wearing beads and paisley shirts," Vilanch recalls in the documentary, adding, "We were all sitting in a room together smoking dope and talking about the movies and I thought, 'This is a business I really want to be in.'"

Cole Porter and Elsa Maxwell

Likewise, Porter and his set were no strangers to various delights. Starting in 1923, Cole and his wife Linda rented palazzos in Venice, including the Palazzo Rezzonico once inhabited by Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

Joining them there was the famed hostess Elsa Maxwell, who invented the scavenger hunt and other enticements that brought the rich and famous together. With Maxwell spreading the word, prominent figures like Tallulah Bankhead, Noel Coward and Fanny Brice came to Venice's Lido shoreline to enjoy its daytime amenities and nightly parties.

"Hard drinking was commonplace at these festivities, as was the use of drugs of all kinds, including opium, cocaine, and hashish," wrote Porter's biographer Charles Schwartz, who added, "A greater sensualist than most of his friends...Cole never hesitated trying drugs or practically anything else for kicks while socializing." Indeed, Porter's song, "I Get a Kick Out of You" has the lyric "I get no kick from cocaine" (sometimes sung as "champagne").

The Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice

The party was over in 1927 when police raided the Palazzo and found several local young men, including the son of the police chief, parading about in Linda Porter's dresses. Later, the principality of Monaco employed Maxwell's services to put it on the map as a tourist destination as she had done for the Lido. "Her imprimatur of social acceptability carried so much weight that the Waldorf Astoria gave her a suite rent-free when it opened in New York in 1931 at the height of the depression, hoping to attract rich clients because of her." (Schwartz)

While living in Los Angeles in 1944, Porter dated Bob Bray, a Marine from Montana who was friendly with Porter's longtime amour, choreographer Nelson Barclift. Porter's biographer William McBrien wrote that Bray and Barclift "were always high on marijuana" and that both came often to Porter's Brentwood home for lunch. According to McBrien, Porter's song "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To" was written for Barclift.

In 1956, Porter contributed music and lyrics to "High Society," the musical version of "The Philadelphia Story" that opened with VIP Louis Armstrong and starred his pot-smoking buddy Bing Crosby.

Betty Grable in Three for the Show (1955)

As for Grable, her last musical was Three for the Show (1955) about a woman who must choose between two husbands, played by Jack Lemmon and Gower Champion. It featured a production number starting with Grable dressed in an Arabic costume smoking a hookah and dreaming of having a harem of husbands.  

For Nymph Errant, a 1933 musical about a young English lady intent upon losing her virginity that received its US premiere in 1982, Porter penned "Experiment," sung by Man We Love Kevin Kline as Porter in De-Lovely:

Before you leave these portals 

To meet less fortunate mortals 

There's just one final message 

I would give to you 

You all have learned reliance 

On the sacred teachings of science 

So I hope, through life you never will decline 

In spite of philistine Defiance 

To do what all good scientists do 

Experiment 

Make it your motto day and night 

Experiment 

And it will lead you to the light 

The apple on the top of the tree 

Is never too high to achieve 

So take an example from Eve 

Experiment 

Be curious 

Though interfering friends may frown, 

Get furious 

At each attempt to hold you down 

If this advice you'll only employ 

The future can offer you infinite joy 

And merriment 

Experiment 

And you'll see

Seshat – Goddess of Knowledge and Cannabis

UPDATE 10/15: Seshat is included in the new book Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.

Seshat (also spelled Safkhet, Sesat, Seshet, Sesheta, and Seshata) was the ancient Egyptian goddess of mathematics, creative thought, knowledge, books and writing (her name means "she who is the scribe"). Sister to Bast and daughter/sister/wife to Thoth or the moon god Djehuti, the Egyptians believed that she invented writing, while Thoth or Djehuti taught writing to mankind.

Often depicted in coronation ceremonies wearing a leopard-skin garment, Seshat's emblem is a seven-pointed hemp leaf in her headdress. Pharaoh Tuthmosis III (1479-1425 BCE) called her Sefket-Abwy (She of Seven Points). See more pictoral evidence.

In this relief (below), she wore her Seven Pointed Leaf to perform the equivalent of laying the cornerstone of the Great Pyramids – "stretching the cord" to mark the direction of true north, calculated by the stars, with a rope made from hemp. It is perhaps hemp's psychoactive effect that is acknowledged in the saying that, "Seshat opens the door of heaven for you."

Ancient Egypt is considered to be an advanced civilization in medicine and many other realms. As far back as 2350 BCE, the stone tablets known as the Pyramid Texts used the hieroglyphic symbol smsm.t—or “shemshemet”—referencing “a plant from which ropes are made,” thought by Archeologist W.R. Dawson to be hemp. The Ebery Papyrus from 1550 BCE, and likely copied from earlier manuscripts, mentions introducing shemshemet ground in honey into the uterus, possibly as an obstetric aid. "It has parallels to therapeutic applications of cannabis as a vaginal suppository in the 19th century to treat gynecological disorders and migraine," writes Ethan Russo in a 2007 paper. 

Seshat and the Pharaoh "Stretch the Cord"

Seshat was associated with Isis in the Late period, and was scribe to Hatshepsut, the female Pharoh of the 18th dynasty (c. 1479-1458 BCE). The Greeks demoted the Goddess to a muse, and in Phaedrus, Plato gives over to Thoth the invention of arithmetic and letters.

Seshat's name has been given to the Global History Databank at the Evolution Institute and Sesheta.net is the name of the African Women's Autobiography project.