Pop Song of the Week: "Jump Around"

The week after St. Patrick's Day, almost everyone is Irish. At least in their dreams.

R.I.P. Maureen O'Hara

Irish-born American actress Maureen O'Hara -- most famous for her starring roles in such movies as The Quiet Man and the original version of Miracle on 34th Street -- made her last exit on October 24, 2015, at age 95 .

She will be missed.

¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Charlie Sheen!

AKA Carlos Irwin Estévez.

Born September 3, 1965.

He is one of my favorite cousin's favorite actors and one of the best parts of Machete Kills. Come to think of it, my middle brother and at least one female friend of mine were big fans of his otherwise dubious TV show Two and a Half Men.

He is not exactly one of my favorite actors but there is no denying the fact that he has made a big impact on the industry. I just wish it was a positive one.

¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Ana Ortiz!

Born January 25, 1971.

She is the daughter of a Puerto Rican father and an Irish American mother. She is also an American actress who is best known for her role as Hilda Ortiz on the ABC TV series Ugly Betty. She has also appeared on such shows as ER, Everybody Loves Raymond, Commander in Chief and Boston Legal. Her first regular role was in the 2001 NBC sitcom Kristin, opposite Kristin Chenoweth. She is currently appearing as Marisol Suarez in the otherwise dubious Lifetime TV series Devious Maids.

To Thine Own Celt Be True

Aye and begorrah! If it isn't everyone's favorite swashbuckler* Tyrone Power playing the part of one Stephen Fitzgerald in the 1948 film The Luck of the Irish. And is not it just great that Fitzgerald just happens to be an Irish-American freelance journalist -- not to be confused with one F. Scott Fitzgerald -- who has gone back to the old sod on his way back to New York from Europe? And who should he come across in this odd enchanted land save a not so wee member of the wee folk (played by Cecil Kellaway). A leprechaun, that is, who looks uncannily like the guy who played Veronica Lake's father in I Married a Witch.

Fortunately, Power's adventures with the supernatural prove a lot more benign in this movie than Fredric March's were in I Married a Witch. If anything, one may say they prove too benign. Fitzgerald wins over the trust and affection of a centuries-old shoemaker so quickly that one might be tempted to dismiss the whole affair as a load of cobblers.

But then Fitzgerald meets Nora (played by Anne Baxter), a local colleen whose charm is such that she may be a supernatural being as well. Unfortunately, Fitzgerald is also engaged to a rich American girl named Frances (played by Jayne Meadows) and has promised to take a job with her father David Augur (played by Lee J. Cobb), a powerful newspaperman seeking to make a run for the Senate. Fitzgerald does not agree with many of David Augur's political stands but he finds the combination of Frances' glamour and her father's money to be a powerful temptation.

Of course, one does not have to have seen many American movies to guess whom Fitzgerald will choose when he is forced to decide between the poor and humble Nora and the not-so-poor and not-so-humble Frances. But I must admit I found the way to that decision to be quite interesting. However, I did find it unusual to see a movie made in the Yankee Doodle Dandy era which actually encouraged the audience to cheer on a fellow who ultimately chose to emigrate back to his ancestral homeland rather than to stay and make a go of it in America -- moreover, one which encouraged the audience to applaud his decision to pass over a nice red-blooded American girl in favor of some foreigner.

Then again, if I had a certain bright-eyed colleen waiting for me in the Emerald Isle, I would be tempted to make the same choices Stephen Fitzgerald ultimately made -- and I would not need any supernatural intervention to help me make up my mind.

* Apart from Errol Flynn, natch.

That's Funny. She Doesn't Look Latina: Parte XVII

Mariah Carey (1969 or 1970 - ). Daughter of an Irish American opera singer and a black Afro-Venezuelan engineer. Despite having dabbled in movies like Glitter and Precious, she is best known for her musical career.

That's Funny. She Doesn't Look Latina: Parte XI

Joanna Kerns (1953- ). American actress who is the daughter of a Mexican-American father and an Irish-American mother. Her original name was Joanne Crussie DeVarona. She is best known for playing Kirk Cameron's mother on the TV series Growing Pains. More recently, she appeared in the 2007 movie Knocked Up.

That's Funny. She Doesn't Look Latina: Parte VIII

Lynda Carter (1951- ). American actress who is the daughter of a father of English and Irish descent and a mother of Mexican and Spanish ancestry. Her birth name was Linda Jean Córdova Carter but she was best known to TV viewers in the late 1970s as Diana Prince aka the title character in the TV series Wonder Woman.

I remember having a big crush on her back in the day, and as this picture indicates, said crush can't be entirely blamed on her Wonder Woman outfit.

Hey, I Remember This Show: Ryan's Hope

On a lighter note, here's the 1976 intro for one of my sister's favorite soap operas.

Quote of the Week

I am obviously not arguing that discrimination against the Irish or the Italians or the Poles is or was anything like that which our black brothers have had to endure, but I am suggesting that bigotry is by no means a lower-class phenomenon and that compassion among the elites is by no means universal. And yet, an attitude of compassion towards one group mixed with bigotry towards another group is, in the final analysis, intolerable -- intolerable on moral grounds because it is hypocritical and intolerable on political grounds because it is self-defeating. The intellectual who “loves” the blacks and the “poor” but has contempt for the Irish or the Italians or the “middle class” is in the final analysis every bit as much a bigot as the blue-collar worker who “hates niggers,” for both are asking, “Why Can’t They Be Like Us?” And to this titular question in this book there can be but one satisfactory answer: “Because they don’t want to be and in the United States of America, they don’t have to be.”
--Andrew M. Greeley, Why Can’t They Be Like Us?: America’s White Ethnic Groups

That's Funny. She Doesn't Look Latina: Parte III


Raquel Welch (1940 - ), born in Chicago as Jo Raquel Tejada, the daughter of a Bolivian father and an Irish-American mother.

Of course after her appearances in the TV series American Family and the 2001 movie Tortilla Soup, her Hispanic identity is no longer that big a secret but still...

That's Funny. She Doesn't Look Latina: Parte II


Rita Hayworth (1918 - 1987), born in New York City as Margarita Carmen Cansino, the daughter of a Spanish flamenco dancer and a showgirl of Irish and English descent.

She probably seems like an obvious choice to most hardcore film buffs but there was actually a time in the late 1980s when she didn't seem so obvious. Back then I had written a story about one of my Mexican-American aunts for a night school course and because said aunt had once been compared to a movie star, I was tempted to compare her to Rita Hayworth, only to change my mind because I did not consider Ms. Hayworth to be a Hispanic actress.

Heh. Irony.

TV Quote of the Week

I love being Spanish as much as I love being Irish, and I *really* love being Irish.
--Martin Sheen, Inside the Actors Studio