Expecting Rain

At Bobdylan.com Sean Wilentz wrote in "The Roving Gambler at Scenic Newport":

In 1957, Andy Griffith starred in the Budd Schulberg-Elia Kazan film A Face in the Crowd, playing Lonesome Rhodes, a convicted hobo and country singer who, thanks to a shrewd producer (played by Patricia Neal) becomes a nationwide T.V. celebrity and reactionary demagogue -- a forerunner of Rush Limbaugh and Bob Roberts.

Bob Dylan saw A Face In The Crowd, and, reportedly, was more shaken by it than by any film he'd seen since Rebel Without a Cause. At a crucial moment in the film, Griffith's character realizes he's going to make a fortune and starts singing an exuberant and menacing version of "The Roving Gambler."

On August 24, 1997, Bob Dylan -- who had cheated death weeks earlier and was now on the verge of releasing an album, Time Out Of Mind, that would reclaim his career -- played a concert in Vienna, Virginia. The songs included "The Roving Gambler," which Dylan and his new band had added to their set list a few months earlier. (They would eventually alternate it with "Duncan and Brady.") Three songs later, after "Blind Willie McTell," Dylan introduced his band and acknowledged the presence in the audience of one of the men "who unlocked the secrets of this kind of music," Alan Lomax. (At Newport, in 1965, Lomax along with Pete Seeger led the old guard that objected to the blasts of white-boy electricity, including Dylan's. Now all seemed forgiven.) Then, with a mischievous audible chuckle, Dylan and the band kicked into a roaring "Highway 61 Revisited," a consummate Dylan rocker of the kind that had so enraged Lomax in 1965. "This kind of music," indeed - except that "Highway 61" includes the following verse, with ominous undertones of both ancient folk music and "A Face in the Crowd":

Now the rovin' gambler he was very bored
He was tryin' to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it can be very easily done
We'll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61.

On July 19, 2002, two weeks before what the New York Times would soon be hyping as Bob Dylan's triumphant return to Newport, Alan Lomax died. But something of his spirit, and that of the recently dead Dave Van Ronk, and also those of Tennessee Ernie Ford, Don and Phil Everly, Robert Mitchum, Lonesome Rhodes, and Tony Glover, hit the stage running when Dylan, in a cowboy hat, a fake beard, and a wig that made it seem, from five rows back, as if he'd sprouted enormous flowing orthodox Jewish ear locks, opened his set with the Brothers Four's arrangement of "The Roving Gambler."




If you've never seen Kazan's film it's dropped-jaw startling, as if someone had made a documentary about the reinvention of George Bush the First back in 1957. Griffith is incredible as a genuinely evil Will Rogers sort of character.

Thank you, I'll look for this! This is why we pay you the big bucks.

When you've seen it, please report back.

Most of Kazan's films are "dropped-jaw startling".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042832/ This is one of my favorites. Jack Palance is incredible.

I saw Face in the Crowd a long time ago, but I still remember the spine-chilling effect it had on me, probably because America's favorite dad very convincingly turns into Satan before your eyes.

As for there being an intentional connection between the movie and Hwy 61 or Newport, doubtful, but still an interesting theory.

It is pretty startling with "Andy of Mayberry" stuck in your head. It was Griffith's first big role and when you watch it you can almost imagine the career he might have had, he's brilliant. He also followed that film with playing the film version of the role he won accolades for on stage, WIll Stockdale in "No Time For Seargents." There his enormous talen for comedy shines through (it is, I think, the genesis of Gomer Pyle USMC).

His TV success gave him fame and a regular paycheck and I'm guessing allowed him to have a stable family life, unlike a movie career.

I didn't know Dave Van Ronk died. I didn't know Bob sang with a beard and a hat. And I certainly didn't know Andy Griffin COULD play Satan. What a lot I've learned in the last 5 minutes! thanks?

btw, is there any footage or any photos of Bob with beard?

There he is in all his manly glory.

The "beard" that outraged Edward Abbey.

now we know THE REST OF THE STORY

[quote="Long John"]When you've seen it, please report back. /quote]

I dropped in a store to rent this movie, but they don't have it anymore and none of their other stores had it either. I'll keep looking. So last night I watched another old movie, The Lion In Winter, with Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn. Rough stuff in that kingdom.

This is such a funny movie. "S-A-A-L-U-T-E!!" and then the toilet seats go up and down.

I went to that concert in Vienna Wilentz writes about. Lomax was about 15 rows ahead of where I was, down front on the right. So I went up to him after the show and asked what he thought of it. He said with great sincerity that he loved it as his family beamed. All seemed forgiven indeed.

If my memory serves me well, Todd Haynes uses a long quote from "Face in the Crowd" in the boy Woody's boxcar monologue in "I'm Not There."