The Greater Gatsby

Carey Mulligan as Daisy in The Great Gatsby

Rather than listen to the critics who think they know what The Great Gatsby is supposed to be about, I saw for myself Baz Luhrman's interpretation and I must say: I was blown away. The opening sequences, and much else, were breathtaking in their use of 3D technology, and the viewer is immediately transported into Fitzgerald's New York of the 1920s (even though, yes, it was filmed in Australia).

Not only is the new adaptation true to the book, it breathes new life into the story and relates it squarely to the excesses of today. Bryan Ferry's version of Roxy Music's "Love is the Drug" with 20's style horns smooths the transition to a modern soundtrack that actually works (and features Fergie and Luna del Rey).

I can't help comparing this Gatsby to the duller-than-dirt 1970s version with Robert Redford sleepwalking through the title role. The golden girl Daisy, released from a tepid Mia Farrow portrayal, is here played with spark and intelligence by a luminous Carey Mulligan. I didn't think I could like her more than I did Alison Pill, who played Zelda (Daisy's inspiration) in Midnight in Paris, but Mulligan was everything she should be, and more. DiCaprio didn't move me much, he's just pathetic–like Redford's portrayal. He's best in scenes when masterfully provoked by Joel Edgerton as Daisy's husband Tom.

Isla Fisher as Myrtle.

Myrtle the Temptress also benefits from better casting: instead of the always-annoying Karen Black, we're treated to Isla Fisher, who played Mary Jane in the Scooby Doo movie. The scene orchestrated by Myrtle wherein Nick learns to party makes splendid use of Fitzgerald's words describing mind alteration:

I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

This sounds to me a lot more like getting high than being drunk. In fact, it rather sounds like Jack London's description of smoking hashish.

Remember, Gatsby is set in the 20s, when pot was still legal and sold in pharmacies, as cigarettes or tinctures. A musician in Lehrman's Gatsby is unmistakably modeled on Cab Calloway, who's "Are You Hip to the Jive?" was the "Are You Experienced?" of his day. (Calloway recorded "Minnie the Moocher" and "Reefer Man.")

Everyone from Stephen Colbert to the BBC World Service book club missed the core of the novel: Gatsby is an American hero because he makes his money by illegal means, which necessarily involves thuggery. When this was mentioned on the BBC, it merely drew the usual mock astonishment and chuckles from the esteemed panel, which included Jay McInerney.

Amitabh Bachchan as Meyer Wolfsheim

So I guess I'll have to be the one to tell you the news: The Great Gatsby is the first modern novel about a drug dealer.

To hammer home the point, one of Gatsby's associates, Meyer Wolfsfheim, is modeled on Arnold Rothstein, the first international drug smuggler and gambler (who famously fixed the 1919 World Series).

Gatsby is said to own a chain of drug stores at which it's said that anything, including bootleg liquor, can be bought. He speaks of "a little business on the side ... a rather confidential sort of thing" and offers the narrator Nick a piece of the action in exchange for setting up a meeting with Daisy.

After Gatsby sends a servant to mow Nick's lawn in anticipation of the meeting, Nick tells him, “The grass is fine.”

“What grass?” asks Gatsby. “Oh, the grass in the yard.”

Where else would grass be?

Grass is again strangely mentioned in Fitzgerald's last novel, The Last Tycoon. In it, movie producer Monroe Stahr takes love interest Kathleen to his house, where he has had a strip of grass brought in from the prop department. Kathleen laughs and asks, “Isn’t that real grass?” Stahr replies, “Oh yes—it’s grass.”

When Stahr goes to Kathleen’s door, she says, “I’m sorry I can’t ask you in. Shall I get my reefer and sit outside?” (A reefer is also the name of a sailor’s coat.) Stahr first sees Kathleen floating on the head of Siva, when a flood dislodges it from a movie set. To this day, worshippers in India drink bhang (a drink made with cannabis) to celebrate Siva’s marriage to the goddess Parvati.

Now that Lurhman has rescued Gatsby from obscurity, it's time for a brilliant remake of The Last Tycoon (also made in the 70s, and also flat, despite Robert DeNiro as Stahr).

Fitzgerald was named for his relative Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to "The Star Spangled Banner," and his family was considered keepers of American virtue.

The protagonist of his novel The Beautiful and Damned has this exchange with a friend:

"Did they ban cigarettes? I see the hand of my holy grandfather." 
"He's a reformer or something, isn't he?" 
"I blush for him."

Anthony Patch, who stands in for Fitzgerald in the story, is the grandson of Adam J. Patch, a reformer in the mold of Anthony Comstock (for whom Patch is named). In 1873 Comstock created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public. [Wikipedia] Patch speaks disdainfully of the "shocked and alarmful eyes" of "chroniclers of the mad pace of America."

Why does no one ask the obvious question: where does the name "Gatsby" come from? His real name is "Gatz" which is the next down the alphabet from "Fitz" in "Fitzgerald." Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald lost his desired debutante, when Zelda broke their engagement to be married. In reality or fantasy, did Scott win Zelda back by getting rich dealing in grass? Was he critical of reformers because he was himself a rebel? Can you live outside the law and still be a hero? Are moralists missing something in life? (Oh yes, and why is Gatsby's first name "Jay?" Why was the light he sought green in color?)

A final note: the theatre where I'd hoped to see Gatsby in 3D, the Grand Lake in Oakland, isn't showing it in 3D, but rather had Iron Man 3 with Robert Downey Jr. Downey's now a good little Hollywood boy playing in nice, violent films with big box office and (snore) sequel potential. I'd much rather have seen him as Gatsby.

Anne Hathaway: Toking a Victory Lap?

Anne Hathaway in Havoc (2005)

UPDATE 4/20/2017 - Hathaway, instead of pleading the 5th, calls herself "not a little" pothead—and doesn't quite realize it's legal—on "Watch What Happens Live." 

According to various celeb sites, Anne Hathaway is the second 2013 Oscar winner (after Jennifer Lawrence) who is taking a toking victory lap.

The National Enquirer has reportedly announced that its May 6 print edition will contain photos of Hathaway and husband Adam Schulman smoking pot. While the Enquirer found friends who lamented Hathaway's partying proclivities and blamed them on Schulman, other sites are supportive.

Fanshare.com opined, "More than likely, she and her husband were just chilling out, and someone managed to get pictures of them smoking pot. Anne is still young, and she has her whole career ahead of her. Much like Jennifer Lawrence, if this report is accurate, it's unlikely it will affect her or generate any backlash." We've come a long way, baby.

Hathaway toked onscreen in 2005's Havoc (pictured), where she plays a fancy LA girl taking a walk on the wild side. (And yes, you can see her boobs in the film too.)

Schulman played a bumbling police officer in a 2007 TV "Dukes of Hazzard" prequel with Willie Nelson as Uncle Jesse. Many will remember the ending of the 2005 Dukes movie in which the bad guys and dignitaries spent the last scene in Jesse's smoky trailer. Willie just turned 80, and many birthday tributes included mentions of his love for pot and its role in his longevity. (By contrast, the hard-drinking George Jones just died at 81.) Justin Bieber seems to have gotten the message: pot (and a taser) were found on his tour bus in Sweden.

In other Enquirer news, it's reported that John Boehner's daughter is giving him something to really cry about: she's marrying a pothead. It's not unheard of for Republican daughters to marry into marijuana: William LeBlond, the first husband of Dorothy Bush (Shrub's sister), was arrested in 1989 for drunken driving and marijuana possession.

According to the Los Angeles Free Press (9/5/1969) then-Vice President Spiro Agnew's daughter Elinor Kimberly Agnew was arrested for marijuana in June 1969 after being caught at a pot party with classmates at the National Cathedral School in DC. As part of his campaign against films and music that promoted the "drug culture," Agnew pressured the FCC to ban Brewer and Shipley's "One Toke Over the Line" (but not before it was sung on Lawrence Welk's show). Apparently he was also able to use his clout to squelch the story about his daughter. Another political daughter, Teresa McGovern, didn't fare as well.

Jane Fonda: What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Misunderstanding?

Jane Fonda as Grace in Peace, Love & Misunderstanding

It's the role of a lifetime for Jane Fonda. No, not Nancy Reagan. It's the hippie grandmother Grace in 2011's Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding, now being shown on The Movie Channel.

Fonda plays the mother of uptight attorney Diane, played by Catherine Keener. Diane brings her two teenage children to her mother's house after their father demands a divorce, and it turns out to be a healing journey, as well as a cultural clash.

Grace, whose home reeks of pot, deals a little on the side and introduces her grandkids (Elizabeth Olsen and Nat Wolff) to the wonders of the weed. It's done intelligently, with Grace resorting to it before losing them to an evening of them closing down (as so many teens do). Afterwards, she gives them sage advice: stay away from the brown stuff (heroin) and nothing up the nose (cocaine).

It's the first Fonda has toked on film since 9 to 5, where she plays an innocent who finds her inner strength with the aid of weed and some gal pals. Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding is part Harold and Maude, part Pineapple Express and although some would say it's a bit contrived or heavy-handed, it's well worth seeing for Fonda's performance.

Jane was observed smoking some weed at a recent Oscar party; in 1969 asked Rex Reed, "You don't mind if I turn on, do you?" before he interviewed her the year she won a well-deserved Oscar for They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

She's still vilified as "Hanoi Jane" even though she spent the war advocating for veterans. Fonda's thoughtful film about the Vietnam War, Coming Home, was trounced at the Oscars in favor of the controversial The Deer Hunter. Recent controversy is about Jane playing Nancy Reagan in a forthcoming film, and there's a note about Reagan in Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding.

The child of a famously stoic movie icon father and a beautiful mother who killed herself when Jane was 12, she played out her relationship with her father onscreen in On Golden Pond while getting her body bikini ready. She was also terrific as Lillian Hellman in Julia and in her current turn as a network executive on TV's The Newsroom.

She's still getting roles at the age of 75, and we're looking forward to more insight and enlightenment from Lady Jane.

UPDATE 8/14 - Fonda was honored with an AFI Life Achievement Award at a splendid ceremony with tributes from Lily Tomlin, Michael Douglas, Meryl Streep, Ron Kovic, Jeff Daniels, Peter Fonda, Troy Garity (her son with Tom Hayden, pictured) and many more. Fonda commented that it was good to see the award go to a woman; earlier winners were Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, Barbara Stanwick, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep, and Shirley MacLaine.

UPDATE 12/14: Fonda, in one of her last appearances on HBO's The Newsroom, utters the line, "I sold my clothes, dealt a little pot.....Just kidding, I didn't sell my clothes," when her character Leona is trying to come up with funds to buy back her network. The role was doubtlessly informed by her marriage to CNN's Ted Turner. Recently we uncovered an exchange between Fonda and Bill Maher where Bill tries to get her to out Turner as "a big pothead" and Fonda gets an admission from Bill instead.

12/19: Fonda has been named Tokin' Woman of the Year for 2019. 

Prominent Women "Woman Up" for Drug Law Reform in Letter to Obama that Addresses Children's Concerns

Actress and Obama campaign co-chair Eva Longoria

What do Eva Longoria, Roseanne Barr, Margaret Cho, Rosario Dawson, Cameron Diaz, Scarlett Johannson, three Kardashians (Kim, Khloe and Kourtney), Demi Moore, Sarah Silverman, Susan Sarandon, Ani Difranco, Missy Elliott, Jennifer Hudson, Natalie Maines, Nicki Minaj, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and authors Michelle Alexander and Naomi Klein have in common with John Hamm, Ron Howard, Richard Branson and Mike Tyson?

They've all signed an open letter to President Obama calling for an end to the injustice of the war on drugs. Also signing were civil rights leaders and advocates, members of the faith community, business leaders and athletes, all members of a coalition 175 strong lead by Russell Simmons and the Drug Policy Alliance.

The letter says:

"The greatest victims of the prison industrial complex are our nation’s children. Hundreds of thousands of children have lost a parent to long prison sentences for non-violent drug offenses, leaving these children to fend for themselves. Many of these children end up in the criminal justice system, which comes as no surprise as studies have shown the link between incarceration and broken families, juvenile delinquency, violence and poverty....

"Many of those impacted by the prison industrial complex are among your most loyal constituents. Your struggles as the child of a single mother allow you to identify with millions of children who long to be with their parents. We request the opportunity to meet with you to discuss these ideas further and empower our coalition to help you achieve your goals of reducing crime, lowering drug use, preventing juvenile incarceration and lowering recidivism rates. We stand with you, ready to do what is just for America." 

The letter also asks Obama to form a panel to review requests for clemency that come to the Office of the Pardon Attorney. 

Justin Bieber didn't sign but made news when he tweeted support. And the NAACP president told the US to man up and reform the WOD, tweeted the Marijuana Majority. In response to a tweet with a link to this article, MM responded that Ben Jealous also said "woman up" in his excellent interview (well worth a look).

Annette Funicello: Beauty with a Beastly Disease

Annette Funicello, the Mousketeer that Roared, has died at the age of 70 of complications from Multiple Sclerosis. Before she died, she had lost her ability to speak and had long withdrawn from public life since learning she had MS in 1987.

Studies show that a large percentage of MS patients use cannabis for their symptoms. I'd heard a rumor years ago that Funicello was one of them, but was not able to confirm it.

Researchers have been finding for decades that cannabinoids hold promise for treating MS. "In addition to symptom management," wrote one team of researchers in 2003, "cannabis may also slow the neurodegenerative processes that ultimately lead to chronic disability in multiple sclerosis and probably other disease." Source (p. 52).

MS attacks women more often than men. Another beloved actress, Teri Garr, also suffers from MS. She and Funicello worked together on beach movies when Garr was a dancer. Dawn Wells, who played the wholesome, dark-haired Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island (a role possibly modeled on Funicello), was caught with pot in her car in 2008.

Meanwhile, UCSF researcher Dr. Donald Abrams, who has studied cannabis in AIDS patients, won approval and funding for a clinical study on sickle cell disease and cannabis. The study was based on a successful mouse study that found cannabis not only is helpful with symptoms of sickle cell, it can halt the progression of the painful disease.

The study was to begin April 1st, but is now a victim of the federal budget sequestration.

There has been a paucity of studies on cannabis and sickle cell. A PubMed search yields only one:  a British team found in 2005 that 36% of young adults with sickle cell in their study had used cannabis in the previous 12 months to relieve symptoms associated with SCD. "We conclude that research in the use of cannabinoids for pain relief in SCD would be both important and acceptable to adult patients," the researchers wrote.

In the United States, approximately 1 in 500 African-Americans and 1 in 1,200 Hispanic Americans are born with SCD. Sister Somiyah, a longtime activist from LA, was a sufferer who was repeatedly harassed by LAPD over her medical marijuana garden.

In recent years, reports NORML, health regulators in Canada, Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom have approved the prescription use of cannabis extracts to treat multiple sclerosis. But in the US, we are letting our sisters suffer, especially those brave enough to provide medicine.

In Tuolomne County, Sara Herrin, RN, and her sisters are being persecuted for operating an above-board medical marijuana collective called Today's Health Care. Sara has been a registered caregiver for over 30 years and was Tuolomne County's Director for the Visiting Nurse Association and Hospice of the Sierra for 7 years. Their bank accounts have been seized and Sara has lost her home of 22 years. They are in desperate need of funding for their legal defense. Go to fundly.com and search for "Save the Sisters."

UPDATE: May 5, 2013 - Charges were dropped against the Tuolomne sisters!

And then the sad news that Chrissy Amphlett of the DiVinyls has died at age 53. Amphlett also had multiple sclerosis, and when she came down with breast cancer, couldn't avail herself of radiation treatments due to her MS. Known for their monster hit "I Touch Myself," one of the Divinyls' later songs, 1996's "Human On The Inside," was covered by VIP Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders. Amphlett appeared with a cane at the 2011 ARIA Awards.

In a recent report, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the Federal government's National Institutes of Health (NIH), stated that marijuana "inhibited the survival of both estrogen receptor–positive and estrogen receptor–negative breast cancer cell lines." The same report showed marijuana slows or stops the growth of certain lung cancer cells and suggested that marijuana may provide "risk reduction and treatment of colorectal cancer."

UPDATE 5/25:
Hemp Seed Oil Associated With Improved Clinical and Immunological Parameters In Multiple Sclerosis Patients

Happy Women of Weed Day

Since I wrote a round-up of Famous Female Cannabis Connoisseurs in 2010, I’ve added a few notables to the list. Here they are, in honor of International Women's Day and Women's History Month.

After Elizabeth Taylor died, I googled and found a biography of her that said she smoked pot with Christopher Lawford. It’s interesting now because Lawford has joined with Kennedy cousin Patrick to start an organization aimed at forcing marijuana users into treatment. That the Kennedys would be considered expert on such a topic is, of course, laughable and lamentable. Watch a video of Liz smoking. 

For my Black Herstory posting last month, I decided to google Josephine Baker and sure enough, found evidence that she too had imbibed. (Baker is one of the women featured on the US government's Women's History Month website.)

Sadly, I added Teresa McGovern, daughter of the late Senator George McGovern, whose pot bust at the age of 18 helped turn her short life into a tragic one. Also, I found evidence that Lucille Armstrong, wife of trumpeter and mj enthusiast Louis Armstrong, was busted for carrying pot in 1954.

  

Lady Gaga smoked an enormous joint onstage, and she and Rhianna, who puffed pot in Hawaii and Tweets about it often, both dressed as “marijuana” on Halloween 2012. But it's Fiona Apple who's facing hashish charges in Texas. 

Lisa-Marie Presley expressed a desire to one day go off the grid and “become a big pothead.” VIP Laura Nyro was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, introduced by Bette Midler. Madonna smoked the SuperBowl halftime show and Amy Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning, causing many of her fans to wish she’d stuck to pot instead.

Lily Tomlin “outed” herself as a pot smoker on the cover of Culture magazine. Joan Rivers toked up on her reality show saying, back in the day she smoked it with Betty White, George Carlin, Woody Allen and Bill Cosby. Roseanne Barr appeared at Oaksterdam University while campaigning for President on the Peace & Freedom Party ticket.

Jane Fonda was caught puffing at a post-Oscar party in 2012. Heather Donahue of The Blair Witch Project released a book about growing medical marijuana in Northern California. Miss USA 2011 Alyssa Campanella said she supports medical marijuana; so does the reigning Miss Universe (although both say they're against recreational use). 

In fiction, secretary-turned-copywriter Peggy Olson puffed pot on Mad Men. Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris depicted Alice B. Toklas and (possibly) Beatrice Hastings. Patti Smith’s award winning book Just Kids describes how she saw pot more as an aid to her work than a social drug. 

A video of Whoopi Goldberg surfaced in which she admits she was high when she picket up her Oscar for “Ghost.” Capping it off is Jennifer Lawrence, this year’s Oscar-winning Best Actress who, days later, was photographed smoking pot in Hawaii.

Jennifer Lawrence: I Just Won an Oscar! I'm Going to Hawaii to Smoke Pot

"As if we needed another reason to love Jennifer Lawrence," said Michael Hogan of The Huffington Post after photos of Lawrence apparently puffing pot on a balcony in Hawaii appeared days after she picked up the Best Actress Academy Award for Silver Linings Playbook. 

Lawrence tripped up the steps in her big puffy gown, and was game enough to joke about it. After admittedly having a shot of booze before talking to reporters backstage, she righteously flipped one the bird when he asked the stupid question, "Have you peaked too soon (at 22)?" 

What's not to love about this woman? "She's a 22-year-old cool person," effused Hogan, and that persona was enough to win her Hollywood's top prize (probably because she should have won it for Hunger Games.) 

When Spin magazine asked her in March 2012, "What were you listening to the first time you smoked pot?" She wisely replied, "I so cannot answer that question. I'm in a franchise." (Which, you will notice, is not a "no.")

Astute observer/historian Michael Aldrich, among others, predicts that Lawrence won't suffer from the pot-parazzi pix, unlike stars of the past. "I'm remembering back to the days when any starlet (say, Lila Leeds) caught with a reefer was condemned to 'Be contrite, confess, and crusade' against the drug," said Aldrich. "These days I have a feeling there will be no contrition or confession, and if there's any crusade it's among the bloggers who have followed this on Twitter, unanimously saying 'Legalize It!'" (Leeds looks rather like Lawrence in this shot, right, from the 1947 film Lady in the Lake.)

Meanwhile, Lawrence dyed her hair back to black just after the ceremony, making her look more like someone touted as her rival, the pot-loving Kristen Stewart. Stewart didn't have a good Oscar night, appearing on crutches on the red carpet after cutting her foot two days earlier. But the previews of On the Road,  starring Stewart and another pot lover, Kirsten Dunst as Carolyn Cassidy, look like the movie, based on the Jack Kerouac novel, just might make people forget Jennifer Lawrence for a time. 

Even while Hollywood embraces pot in its stars and plots, how many other cool young chicks, and dudes, aren't as lucky as Lawrence and Stewart when the chemical McCarthyism of drug testing means they lose their job. That is, unless they work in Silicon Valley. 

See the true Hunger Games. 

Read more about the Oscars. 

Of Shamans and Charlize: Pot at the Oscars

Once more the Oscar ceremonies seemed to be dominated by weed lovers, starting with host Seth MacFarlane. Noted for his "Family Guy" series with segments like "Bag o' Weed," MacFarlane did better with his musical numbers than he did with his jokes.

Charlize Theron shone in a dance number at the show's opening, nearly rescuing MacFarlane—as she did a security guard who had a seizure on the red carpet. Theron was caught on camera smoking pot out of an apple in 2002. [Update 2018: Theron now admits she was "a wake-and-baker for most of my life."]

Jane Fonda, who was spotted last year smoking pot at a post-Oscar party, wowed everyone at the age of 75 in her sleek Versace gown. She co-presented with Michael Douglas, who urged the U.S. to consider legalizing the use of marijuana in 2009.

Another bright spot was the surprise appearance of Barbra Streisand, singing "The Way We Were" in a tribute to the late Marvin Hamlich. According to David Crosby's book Stand and Be Counted, her role in that movie was dependent on her appearing at a 1972 McGovern rally planned by Warren Beatty, at which she appeared to take a toke from a joint onstage.

Anne Hathaway, who smoked pot onscreen in "Havoc" (2005), took home a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress trophy for Les Miserables.  As is now de rigueur, she thanked everyone including her publicist, but failed to recognize the story's author Victor Hugo, a member of Le Club des Hashishins.

Daniel Day Lewis did give a nod to Abraham Lincoln, who inspired his Oscar-winning performance. Depicted in that movie were Lincoln's secretary John Hay, who took cannabis while a student at Brown and went on to become Secretary of State; and Mary Todd Lincoln, the daughter of hemp farmers in Kentucky. (Reports remain unconfirmed that Abraham Lincoln smoked a hemp pipe, although he did play a harmonica.)

Ang Lee, who won Best Director for "The Life of Pi," said he'd tried marijuana while being interviewed in Cannes for his movie "Taking Woodstock" in 2009. Quentin Tarantino, who took Best Original Screenplay for "Django Unchained," recently compared the drug war to slavery. He's pictured on the Craig Ferguson show wearing a Lifted Research Group T-shirt with pot leaves. (See Lifted's Ladies T: Don't Do Drugs, Smoke Weed.)

Presenting the Best Picture prize of the night was the incomparable Jack Nicholson, who says he still smokes weed, and Michelle Obama, who's married to a former enthusiast. It went to "Argo," co-produced and directed by Ben Affleck, who graduated from stoner movies like "Dazed and Confused" and "Chasing Amy." George Clooney, also a producer, has said he liked acid and mushrooms in college.

"Every day through engagement in the arts, children learn to dream big," said our First Lady. "If a film crew is a tribe, the cinematographer is the shaman," said Robert Downey Jr. It seems like there are a whole lot of shamans in Hollywood, and we're all the tribe.

The entire ceremony is now online.

Two Tokes for Sister Sara

I just viewed the 1970 film Two Mules for Sister Sara with Shirley MacLaine in the title role. I'm not the first who wonders if it was pot she was puffing in a scene where she steps away to have a smoke. After deeply inhaling, she gets a beatific look on her face and has another toke. She wears a wonderful smile when she walks back to co-star Clint Eastwood.

MacLaine admits to trying pot brownies provided by VIP Robert Mitchum (with whom she had an affair) in one of her books, where she also says she tried smoking pot in a London hotel room.

Two Mules was filmed in Mexico and written by director Budd Boetticher, who lived there. According to Wikipedia, Boetticher had planned on using Mitchum as the male star of the film, and the part of Sister Sara was originally offered to Tokin' Woman Elizabeth Taylor.

Directing the movie was Don Siegel, who directed the 1949 movie The Big Steal, the first film Mitchum made after his bust for marijuana. It was also filmed in Mexico, where co-star Jane Greer reported locals were always trying to foist joints on Mitchum.

The Two Mules film score was composed by Ennio Morricone, who's named as a pot smoker on the web, although I have not found confirmation. Since he's the brilliant composer of "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" as well as "The Mission" and other masterpieces, it would be nice to know!

In 1960, Boetticher departed from Westerns to make The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, a film loosely based on the lives of Jack Diamond and Arnold Rothstein, the US's first major drug dealer (who appears in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby as well as Damon Runyan stories). Boetticher had a role in the 1988 Robert Towne movie Tequila Sunrise, starring Mel Gibson as a man who has a connection with a Mexican dealer (Raul Julia).

MacLaine played an Indian widow rescued from death on a funeral pyre by the heroes of the 1956 film version of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days (pictured). In the book, the woman is stupefied to her sorry fate with fumee d'opium et de chanvre  (smoked opium and hemp). 

Shirley is now playing the American grandmother going toe-to-toe in Downton Abbey with matriarch Maggie Smith (who starred in Travels with My Aunt, based on Graham Greene's story about an eccentric woman with a marijuana connection).

Also recently seen: Bunny O'Hare (1971), starring Bette Davis as a widow who heads to Mexico on the back of a motorcycle driven by Ernest Borgnine as the two pose as hippies to pull off a string of bank robberies. Ernest puffs in the movie and Bette refuses when offered, but asks some intelligent questions about it. She gets the last word, and it's a doozy.

Justin Bieber mentions his pot bust on faux Miley Cyrus interview on SNL

Black Herstory Month

In honor of Black History month, Tokin Woman celebrates some African American women who celebrated marijuana. First and foremost is Bessie Smith (left), who smoked and sang about "reefers" throughout her career.

Born to a large, poor family in Chatanooga, Tennessee, Bessie joined a traveling minstrel show at age 14. Bessie was soon performing on stages all over the country as The Empress of the Blues. In 1933, Smith recorded "Gimmie a Pigfoot," featuring Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden, for John Hammond's Okeh record label. In the last verse Smith sings, "Gimmie a reefer" in this video.

"[S]he was more than merely famous, she was a living symbol of personal freedom: she did what she liked; she spoke her mind, no matter how outrageous her opinion; she flouted bourgeois norms and engaged in alcohol, drugs, and recreational sex," wrote Buzzy Jackson in A Bad Woman Feeling Good (2005, W.W. Norton & Co., New York).

On September 26, 1937, weeks after the Marijuana Tax Act made marijuana effectively illegal in the US,  Smith was in a traffic accident on US Highway 61 and died from her injuries. Some say Smith was turned away from a "whites only" hospital for treatment. Her funeral was held in Philadelphia on October 4, 1937 and was attended by about seven thousand people.

VIP Louise Cook, nicknamed "Jota" or "Snake Hips," was an exotic dancer in Harlem who appeared in Oscar Micheaux's breakthrough 1931 film The Exile. She also turned comedian Milton Berle onto marijuana.

Louis Armstrong wrote of her, circa 1929, "I shall never forget her, and her Dance. She was so wonderful in her 'Shake dance she would take 5 and 6 Encores."

In his 1974 autobiography, Berle says of Cook, "She was known as one of the greatest belly dancers in the world, and her act was sensational, with everything going like a flag in a hurricane. She was one of those rare women that men had only to look at to want. And that was even standing still. She was slender, and light-skinned like the color of coffee with too much cream in it, and she had her hair in an Afro, which wasn't standard gear then. When she worked, she covered her body with oil that made it shiny and sexy-looking." Cook is the featured dancer in this clip. 

World-famous dancer and activist Josephine Baker indulged in marijuana, according to Josephine: The Hungry Heart by Jean-Claude Baker and Chris Chase. Phillip Leshing, who was then a 23-year-old bass player in Buddy Rich's orchestra, recalls in the book, "I remember once Josephine invited several of us to come to her dressing room and try some very good reefer. I went down with Harry 'Sweets' Edison, the trumpet player, and Buddy Rich, and we smoked pot with Josephine Baker...but the marijuana didn't affect her performance. Never." (p. 295) 

According to Leshing, Baker "had this gorgeous gold loving cup made for Buddy and the band, a trophy, like an Academy Award, with our names engraved on it. And it was filled with marijuana. She gave it to us after the last performance at the Strand [the New York club at which they were appearing in March 1951]." The authors speculate that Baker may have first smoked marijuana with her lover Georges Simenon, who used to mix hashish with tobacco in his pipe, or with the Prince of Wales in Paris, in the days when he would come to Le Rat Mort had to be taken out "feet first every night--dead drunk and stoned," according to another lover, Claude Hopkins.

Baker adopted more children than Angelina Jolie and was decorated by France for her work for the Resistance. See a video of Baker's famous banana dance.

Two other African-American dancers who rose to prominence and are associated with marijuana are Lucille Armstrong and Maya Angelou (pictured). Singers Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday were marijuana fans, and Ella Fitzgerald recorded "When I Get Low, I Get High" in 1936.

Modern Tokin' Women include Michelle Obama, Kamala Harris, Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Grace Jones, Rihanna, and Queen Latifah. And when dancer Carmen de Lavallade was bestowed a Kennedy Center Honor in 2017,  Stella Abrera performed "Soul Bossa Nova/Dear Quincy" (with pipe) in tribute.

Why the US is More Gosford Park Than Downton Abbey

The Colbert Report has picked up on Fox News's absurd praise of Downton Abbey and its job-creating serf system.

But that system was prettied up mightily for TV. The 2001 movie from which the series is based, Gosford Park—also written by Julian Fellowes and, unlike the sanitized TV version, directed by VIP Robert Altman—paints quite a different picture of the aristocracy. 

An upstairs/downstairs story set in the same time period as Downton, Gosford Park also stars Maggie Smith as the blunt and bossy matriarch and also has three daughters--two beautiful, one not--plus a shy, stringy haired and obsequious servant intrigued by a nasty blue-eyed valet; a slim and stately blonde servant who knows her place; and a comely, earnest daughter with a brunette bob involved in an inappropriate clandestine affair. Even the sets are nearly identical, down to the candlesticks.

In Gosford, the Lord is rather a monster who so mistreats his help that he gets his comeuppance at their hands, doubly so. The Lady is not, in any sense of the word, a lady. Smith's character enjoys dishing with the servants, and uses them for spies. The help truly dislikes their overlords, knowing full well that they are unfairly treated workers.

Gosford Park won nearly every Best Director award worldwide and Fellowes picked up an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Co-producer was Bob Balaban, who plays the American movie director in the film, and also did a cute guest spot as a medical marijuana doctor on HBO's Entourage. The TV version of Gosford, with aristocrats who care about their servants, is a PBS fundraising monster praised for its authenticity of set and costume design. 

Americans have a warped view that all of us will be rich someday: boys want to be Michael Douglas in Wall Street and girls still believe in Prince Charming (hell, they're all dressing like slutty princesses now). Even during the Great Depression, the favorite board game was Monopoly, in which the winner takes all, to hell with the rest of the players. As I learned on Netflix recently, Monopoly was first invented by Lizzie Phillips in 1923 as The Landlord's Game, to illustrate the downside of concentrating land in private monopolies. If you doubt the inequities of our system, you can also see the 2006 documentary The One Percent on Netflix.   

Remembering Janis

In a gentler world, Janis Joplin would have turned 70 today.

I just came across a Dick Cavett episode filmed only two months before her brightly burning candle burned out. Janis gives an astonishing performance of "Half Moon," showing she's in full control of her tight-as-a-drum band, the aptly named Full Tilt Boogie.

Afterwards, she stands up for pot to fellow guest Gloria Swanson, talking about repression in the 1920s when Swanson was making movies. "Back then you couldn't drink because they didn't like it. Now you can't smoke grass," Janis said. "Back then you couldn't be a flapper because they didn't like it, and now you can't play rock and roll ...It seems to me that people who went through all that prohibition and flapper times should realize that young people are always crazy, and to leave us alone." The audience applauded their agreement.

Just afterwards, Cavett promises his audience a lift from the following Pepsi commercial. Nowadays Beyoncé, whose daughter with Jay-Z was honored with a medical marijuana strain named for her days after she was born, has taken criticism for pushing Pepsi at the upcoming Superbowl. Too bad she can't promote something actually uplifting.

Joplin was at her blues-belting best in this song about Mary Jane, sung it in the style of her idol Bessie Smith. The song laments the high cost of pot: "When I bring home my hard earned pay / I spend my money all on Mary Jane." Sadly for Janis, heroin and Southern Comfort—whose maker reportedly gave her a fur coat in appreciation of her endorsement—were cheaper.

I saw this iconic picture of Janis at a Mill Valley record store once years ago, in front of which was planted a little girl demanding to know who she was.

At the 2005 Grammy Awards Joplin was honored by VIPs Joss Stone (who looked the part) and Melissa Etheridge (who sounded it). There will never be anyone, anywhere, like Janis, but her torch has been passed to a new generation.

UPDATE 2017: Hot Auction Going For Janis Joplin Pic With Michelle Williams

Did Richard Nixon Finger Louis Armstrong's Wife Lucille for a Pot Bust?

Louis and Lucille

On the evening of January 16, 1954 Louis Armstrong sat at the Alexander Hamilton Hotel at 631 O’Farrell Street in San Francisco and wrote what has been called “one of the most stunning documents Armstrong ever composed.”

"Mr. Glaser, you must see to it that I have special permission to smoke all the reefers that I want to when I want or I will just have to put this horn down, that's all," the letter says, addressing Armstrong’s manager. "I can gladly vouch for a nice, fat stick of gage, which relaxes my nerves, if I have any...I can't afford to be ...tense, fearing that any minute I'm going to be arrested, brought to jail for a silly little minor thing like marijuana."

The incident that prompted Louis to write about his love for marijuana was the arrest of his wife Lucille on marijuana charges in Hawaii on New Year’s Day, 1954. Lucille was nabbed by federal narcotics agents at the airport where a US Customs inspector found one cigarette and two stubs, totaling 14.8 grams of marijuana, in her eyeglass case.

The bust was a big deal: Louis almost lost a charity gig for the March of Dimes and was nearly barred from performing in Hawaii. Lucille posted $300 bail and appeared at a day-long hearing on January 5 with Louis sitting in the spectators’ section.  She pleaded guilty for expediency, she said, but protested her innocence. It's been widely speculated that it was Louis's stash, but the small amount of pot found in Lucille's personal belongs makes me wonder if she was a Tokin' Woman herself.

The judge reduced Lucille’s fine to $200 owing to her husband's good works. "At the start of 1954, he was at the peak of his popularity and was already being touted as an ‘Ambassador of Goodwill’ due to his tremendous popularity overseas," wrote Ricky Riccardi, who details the incident in his book What a Wonderful World.

An often-told story relates that Armstrong once prevailed on Richard Nixon to carry his valise containing pot through an airport for him. LA-based trumpeter Jack Coan, who toured the Midwest with Louis and Pat Boone in 1967, told me in October 2012 that that Satchmo laughed heartily every time he told the story, pinpointing the locale as Japan.

Both Armstrong and then-VP Nixon toured Japan in late 1953, just before Lucille’s arrest. The courier caper most likely would have happened on December 14, the day Nixon left Japan and three days before Louis's first concert there. 

The timing begs the question: Did Nixon or someone in his entourage figure out the Vice President had been used for a drug mule and fail to see the humor in it, leading to Lucille's arrest?

Louis hadn’t been in trouble with the law since 1930, when he was arrested outside the Cotton Club in LA while smoking a joint. That incident and his subsequent jailing ultimately lead to Joe Glaser, an Al Capone acolyte, taking over Armstrong’s career, and later suppressing his writings about marijuana.

Lucille Armstrong in 1983

A former dancer at Harlem's Cotton Club, Lucille Armstrong became a community activist after Louis's death, drafted by Gov. Rockefeller. Deciding drug rehabilitation wasn't her thing, she chose an appointment on the NY Committee on Aging. 

Riccardi, who is the archivist at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens, credits Lucille with preserving Armstrong's letter to Glaser, and his taped audio version.  

"Can you imagine anyone giving Lucille all of those headaches and grief over a mere small pittance such as gage, something that grows out in the backyard among the chickens and so forth,” Louis emoted in his letter. “I just won't carry on with such fear over nothing and I don't intend to ever stop smoking it, not as long as it grows. And there is no one on this earth that can ever stop it all from growing. No one but Jesus--and he wouldn't dare. Because he feels the same way that I do about it."

The San Francisco hotel
where Louis wrote about gage.

Gage “ain't nothin' but medicine," Louis concluded, words that will resonate with medical marijuana advocates in the city where he wrote them. The medical marijuana movement began in San Francisco, where activist Dennis Peron rallied the HIV/AIDS community to fight for their rights in the early 1990s. The state Proposition 215 followed in 1996, making California the first state to legalize marijuana for medicine.

Those events and others will be marked by a conference happening January 26 & 27 at Ft. Mason Conference Center in San Francisco, sponsored by California NORML. The conference will take place at the 100th anniversary of cannabis prohibition in California. 

It’s high time to end the Hundred Year Weed War that has harassed and imprisoned so many of our citizens, including some of our best and brightest.

How Paulette Goddard Turned on Fred Astaire?

I just learned that Petula Clark "outed" herself and co-star Fred Astaire as smoking marijuana during the filming of 1968's Finian's Rainbow. "There was a lot of Flower Power going on," she told the BBC.

The movie, directed by pot-puffing Francis Ford Coppola, is set on an agricultural cooperative where a character played by Al Freeman Jr. attempts to develop a pre-mentholated tobacco. The plot has co-star Don Francks trying hard to get a hand-rolled cigarette to produce smoke, and ends with the whole cast blissfully doused in smoke.

The Canadian-born Franks—a jazz singer, poet and Native American—used to perform a song called Smokin’ Reefers. "A smoker of weed in his younger years, he was a fan of the plant. He gave up drinking when he was 21, using the First Nations term 'firewater' when referring to alcohol." Source.

Hermes Pan with Ann Miller in "Kiss Me Kate"

I can't find any other reference to Astaire and marijuana, but the choreographer most closely associated with him, Hermes Pan, is described in a biography as offering both tobacco and marijuana cigarettes to guests at a 1949 dinner party at his home in Coldwater Canyon.

Astaire called Pan his "ideas man" and the two began their collaboration on "The Carioca" number for "Flying Down to Rio" (1933) (probably the most humorous dance duet ever). Pan also suggested Astaire dance with a hat rack in "Royal Wedding," and advised him how to do it. He continued to collaborate with Astaire right up until his last musical picture, Finian's Rainbow.

Pan's career began with an appearance as a chorus boy in the Marx Brothers' 1928 Broadway production of "Animal Crackers." At that time, marijuana was still legal, and Chico Marx told an interviewer in 1959 that Groucho took his name from the "Grouch bag" they'd wear around their necks in their Vaudeville days, adding, "In this bag we would keep our pennies, some marbles, a couple of pieces of candy, a little marijuana, whatever we could get...because, you know, we were studying to be musicians."

Pan was also close to VIP Diego Rivera, who may have turned him on to pot in Mexico, if Errol Flynn's account of his own experience with Rivera serves. Pan and Rivera met at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco in 1940, introduced by actress Paulette Goddard, who appeared in Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" and "Modern Times" as well as "The Women."

In 1943, Pan visited Rivera at his home in San Angel near Mexico City where Rivera asked Pan to pose for him dancing, so that he could work out techniques for depicting motion in his paintings. He also painted a portrait of Pan. 

Flynn wrote in his autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways that he visited Rivera in 1935, introduced by another actress, Dolores Del Rio (who also appeared in "Flying Down to Rio"). Rivera offered Flynn marijuana, which he smoked, and afterwards he could hear the paintings singing.

"Pan found life in Hollywood even more superficial and insignificant after his return from San Angel," wrote his biographer John Franceschina. Maybe the two-week posing process included puffing something mind expanding and if so, he shared some with his friend Fred.

Detail from Rivera's "Pan American Unity" mural
seems to depict a love triangle with Frida Kahlo,
himself and Goddard before the Tree of Life.

Goddard traveled to Mexico in 1940 for Look magazine ("Paulette Goddard Discovers Mexico"), where she reportedly met Rivera while living in the San Angel Inn across from his studio. She was "pursued" by Rivera and was a model for a mural he painted on San Francisco's Treasure Island. She accompanied him to California when he fled Mexico following death threats and attacks on him for his political activities. (Source: Pete Hamill, Diego Rivera, 1999.) A follow-up story in Look (July 20, 1940) is titled "Adventure and Mexico – Paulette Goddard helps Diego Rivera." The FBI soon put the actress under surveillance to investigate her political opinions and activities.

UPDATE 9/20 - Rivera's mural "Pan American Unity" was scheduled to be exhibited at SFMoMA in late 2020, but it seems that has been delayed although the museum will soon be reopening. UPDATE 11/22 - The mural is now viewable for free at SFMOMA through 1/23. 

As for Kahlo, a retrospective of her work was recently held at San Francisco's DeYoung museum. This drawing of hers from a letter that may indicate a medical use. More on Frida.