From an E-mail with the Title, “100 Quotes from “The Secret”

“When the voice and vision on the inside become more profound and clear than the opinions on the outside, then you have mastered your life.”

“The Newman Chronicles”, about Paul Newman in Vanity Fair magazine, September, 2008 edition

….about the first film he directed, Rachel, Rachel, starring his wife Joanne Woodward

“…he told Playboy…it is about something that needs to be said. ‘It singles out the unspectacular heroism of the sort of person you wouldn’t even notice if you passed him on the street…little people who cast no shadow and leave no footprints. Maybe it can encourage the people who see it to take those little steps in life that can lead to something bigger…The point of the movie is that you’ve got to take the steps, regardless of the consequences.’ “

Pacific Northwest, Seattle Times Sunday Magazine, August 31, 2008,

“Q”, about Quincy Jones, the quintessential music man

“The story has often been told how Jones and (Ray) Charles met—probably at the Black Elks Club—and it makes for a fine celebrity tale. But what usually gets lost in the telling is that Ray Charles wasn’t the world-famous soul singer then. He was a completely unknown, blind, 16-year old musician from Florida named R. C. Robinson, playing bebop piano and alto sax and singing like Nat King Cole. How a 14-year old kid would think to approach such a person speaks volumes about just how determined Jones was to learn his craft.

‘I asked him”, says Jones, ‘How in the hell do eight brass players play at the same time and not play the same notes?’ And he said, ‘Easy’, and bang! He hit a Bb7 in prime position and a C7. That was the bebop sound. That opened the door. Because I learn quick, you know.’ ”

From the book, Edison, by Neil Baldwin

(Emphasis added with Italics)

“Film historian Charles Musser, the authority on this pivotal era, pinpoints the beginning of the end of Edison as film mogul with his firing of Edwin S. Porter and William Gilroy in 1909.

Although Porter’s production values—one track scripts, harsh lighting, zealously applied makeup, stilted acting—came under criticism, the underlying reasons for his dismissal resided more in the corporate realm as Edison, Frank Dyer, and the T.A.E. Inc. management team diminished Porter’s directorial authority and he ceased to enjoy the creative freedom of the auteur.

Porter moved on to work with Adolph Zukor and profit from the trend toward full-scale feature films, while Edison remained entrenched in the narrow world of vaudevillian one-reelers, preachy vignettes, and didactic ‘home library’ subjects.”

From the book, Edison, by Neil Baldwin

“After a banner growth year, demand for the phonograph was soaring as never before. . . .

Thomas Edison stoked this demand with one of the most ingenious modern marketing ploys he ever concocted: The Tone Test . . . (he) dared to take the dramatic, theatrical chance of placing a live opera star beside a functioning phonograph, performing before an audience, and challenging them to distinguish to whom or what they were listening.

. . . But the revenue streams that resulted from the Tone Tests before more than 200,000 people nationwide in 1915 and 1916 proved that they sold Diamond Discs (Edison’s recording media)—which was Edison’s purpose, after all, to meld the pretense of music appreciation with blatant commercialism.”

From an E-mail with the Title, “100 Quotes from “The Secret”

“Happy feelings will attract more happy circumstances.”

Lena Blakemore, Junior Wells’ mother in the movie “Don’t Start me Talking: The Junior Wells Story

Junior went on to become one of the top three blues harmonica players of all time.

“When I found out Junior was about 12/13 years old and I found out he was playing the harmonica…I’d think he’s in school and he’d be down there under the El train (in Chicago) blowing his harmonica.”

(I could) “…lose my job at that time if you didn’t see that your kid was in school, they’d arrest you.”