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."