Song This Morning, Rabbit Hole This Evening

Tweet

Oh, the things that send me into those rabbit holes. It’s part of my nature, of course. How many times do I go on a trip and travel all over the place, based on what those brown informational signs point to? This morning I posted the theme/story song from the 1965 film Cat Ballou. Lee Marvin won an Oscar for his portrayal of both “steel-eyed Kid Shelleen” and his intended victim, Tim Strawn. It started innocently enough: I watched Marvin’s Academy Award speech (which was basically him shaking his head and thanking the horse in the movie ). Then I read his Wikipedia entry. Ah, he was in M Squad. Before my time, but I remember seeing a rerun or two of it when I was a kid. So off I went to the M Squad entry. Well, it turns out that Lee Marvin was responsible for movies not being filmed in Chicago for a number of years! M Squad was set in Chicago, with Marvin the lead detective. One episode featured a storyline of the M Squad investigating a Chicago cop who was taking a bribe. Mayor for Life Richard J. Daley didn’t take too kindly to that notion (because we ALL KNOW that Chicago has always been the bastion of morality in politics and policing ), and he turned a very cold shoulder to Hollywood when they wanted to film a movie there. With the exception of Brannigan, which Daley allowed because he liked John Wayne movies (and that movie was set more in London than in Chicago), the next movie that was filmed in Chicago was The Blues Brothers, some three years after Daley’s death. Whodathunkit? They left all of this out of the song “The Ballad of Cat Ballou,” of course. Wonder where tomorrow’s song will take me? Lee Marvin’s Academy Award victory for Cat Ballou: