EP281: Invention of Time Zones, Paw Summers: Storyteller and My 48 Hours with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly

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Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year. And UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare Annual Enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th.

If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage. It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare.

Helping people live healthier lives. Hello. This is Hey Dude Shoes. This is an ad. But not for your ears, for your feet.

Are they listening? Good. Hey Dude Shoes are the squishiest, airiest, lightest go-to shoes you'll ever have the pleasure of introducing your toes to. So light, a butterfly could steal them. So soft, kittens seethe with jealousy. So cushy, your hands will curse your feet for all the love and attention.

Toes, you fit the jackpot of comfy. Hey Dude, good to go to. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your stories. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com.

They're some of our favorites. And next, here's Greg Hengler with a story of how time zones came to America. What time is it?

It's a seemingly easy question. But depending on what time zone you live in, your time will be different. The development and spread of the railroads across the United States in the 1800s brought a wave of changes to American life. It's a heroic chapter in American history, but the most interesting transformation is least known. Each town in the United States had its own time, depending on when the noonday sun was directly overhead.

Here's American popular science author Steven Johnson. So you know what it's like taking a train ride today. You can kick back, read a book, listen to some music. But imagine what it would have been like in 1870 trying to take a train. Let's say we're traveling from New Haven to New York. And so I get on the train at 12 o'clock New Haven. And it takes us two hours to get to New York. So we should be arriving in New York at 2 o'clock. But in fact, in New York time, that's technically 1.55. But the train we're on is actually running on Boston time. So that means we're actually pulling into the station in New York on Boston time at 2.17. But then we're like making a connection to a train to Baltimore that's running on Baltimore time. So that train is actually leaving the station at 2.07, which seems to be in the past. I mean, you have to be a math major to figure out what time it is. So how did the nation settle on uniform time zones?

Some may think that the government brought order out of this chaos. But this was not the case. It was the railroads that spearheaded the move to a time zone system because the varying times in different towns created hazards for traveling trains. A miscalculation of one minute could mean a collision. As the Foundation for Economic Education president Lawrence Reed noted, east to west travel was rough. Predicting the time a train would arrive at any particular stop was no small feat in the days before standard time. Fearing government intervention, railroad managers commissioned transportation publisher William Frederick Allen to devise a simple plan. He proposed four time zones divided vertically 15 degrees apart by lines called meridians. Those meridians came close to hitting the cities of Philadelphia, Memphis, Denver, and Fresno. In October of 1883, a general time convention held in Chicago set up by various railroads approved of noon November 18, 1883 as the date when railroad time would replace local time.

The railroads didn't bother with legislation or with Congress. Here's historian Michael O'Malley, author of Keeping Watch, A History of American Time. They just say we're doing it and you can get on board. They call it the day of two noons, that's the nickname. The railroad announced it's a Sunday. Then at noon on this day, November 18, they're just going to stop all operations. Wherever the train is, it's just going to stop and it's going to wait however long it takes to catch up with what the new standard time will be. And in cities, any city that agrees to go along with it, and most of them do, they stop the clocks or they suddenly move them ahead. And in major cities in America, people get wind of this and they gather around the clocks wondering sort of anxiously what's going to happen. You know, it's a puzzling thing. There's, you know, jokes that if you slip on a banana peel at the right moment, you'll take 15 minutes to fall.

And then it happens, you know, and people look at each other and they shrug and nothing much happens. Since these new time zones were a private undertaking, they had no force of law. Only railroad employees had to obey the new times. But in fact, people began to set their watches by railroad time and the change was widely accepted. Some government officials were apparently annoyed that such a change could take place without their playing any serious role.

According to H. Stewart Holbrook in The Story of American Railroads, the traveling public and shipper too quickly fell in with the new time belt plan and naturally found it good. But Uncle Sam wasn't ready to admit the change was beneficial. A few days before November 18th, the Attorney General of the United States issued an order that no government department had a right to adopt railroad time until authorized by Congress. So when did Congress authorize the change?

Thirty-five years later on March 19th, 1918 during World War I. At this point, Congress passed the Standard Time Act and made official what everyone else had put into practice. Time zones were now legally part of American life.

Here again is Michael O'Malley. What Standard Time did is it changed the nature of community. Before Standard Time, the time of day was what the local sun was doing and it was noon in your valley.

On the other side of the mountain, it was not quite noon yet. But Standard Time, if everybody adopted it, put people in new forms of relationship to each other. So after 1883, from Portland, Maine to Atlanta, everybody's on Eastern Time.

Eight o'clock in the morning means eight o'clock in the morning regardless of what the sun is doing. If you think of North-South as being one of the great divides of American life, this obliterates North-South and it makes North and South the same all along the Eastern seaboard. Whereas before, North and South were very different. It makes East and West a more meaningful difference and it unites a whole Western region from Texas up to Minnesota in a single time. So it does rearrange the kind of priorities for community. Today let's celebrate time zones by remembering the constitutional role of government to enforce laws and provide national defense.

Beyond that, a free people can create solutions to a multitude of problems. They did so in 1883 when they created time zones. I'm Greg Hengler and this is Our American Stories.

And a great job as always on the production by Greg Hengler. The story of how time zones came to America here on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation, culture and faith, are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that are good in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.

Go to hillsdale.edu to learn more. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year and UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare Annual Enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.

It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit uhcmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop, but for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot, and I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious, and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So, if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try all free clear mega packs. All free clear mega packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All free clear mega packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs, which my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So, the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that all free clear mega packs, they have your back.

Purchase all free clear mega packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. And we return to our American stories. Up next, a story from our regular contributor, Dennis Peterson. Dennis is an author and historian who specializes in southern history. Today, Dennis shares with us a story about his grandfather entitled, Paw Summers Storyteller.

Take it away, Dennis. Part of the southern Appalachian heritage is the skill of storytelling and whenever that topic arises in a conversation, my mind automatically returns to memories of Frederick Newman Summers or Paw, as we grandchildren called him. To me, he was the quintessential storyteller, a natural who probably never realized his own skill.

During all of my lifetime and until his death in December 1972, Paw lived in the rocky hill country of the rural community of High School Tennessee between Knoxville and Clinton. But he moved around considerably during his 82 year lifetime. He had also held a variety of jobs. Before my time, he had been a well driller and a house painter.

He even sold mason shoes on the side and I'm sure that he enjoyed every minute of it, even if he never made much profit. Paw was the proverbial jack of all trades, master of nine, unless you count storytelling. He was an avid student of politics, politicking as a precinct worker for innumerable elections.

His yard always seemed to have one or more campaign signs in it. Paw also had some fame, at least locally, as a musician. In fact, he and my grandmother met and fell in love at a rollicking barn dance at which he was playing and singing. Carl Bean, a distant relative and a frequent performer at the now world famous Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee, remembered recording Paw's singing The Name Song, which mentions about every name imaginable. I faintly remember Paw's playing his guitar and singing that song and a lot of other humorous ballads, but I more clearly recall his singing old fashioned hymns. For years, he led singing in Little Mount Harmony Baptist Church in High School.

There, at his funeral, the mourners sang his favorite hymn, When I've Gone the Last Mile of the Way, before we laid him to rest in the family plot in the cemetery behind the white clapboard church. Perhaps it was his breadth of experience, his length and variety of life, that provided grist for Paw's story mill. Many of his stories involved himself. Others were about people he had known or had worked with or for. But some of his stories were renditions of stories he had heard others tell, but always with his own interpretations and embellishments thrown in to give them a homey, personal flavor.

As a kid, I used to sit with him on his blue painted wooden porch on many warm afternoons staring out across Raccoon Valley Road toward the southern railroad tracks and listen to him tell stories to whoever would listen. He sat in a homemade rocking chair that was held together by innumerable layers of paint and stared off into the distance, rather than looking at me or whoever else might be happening by for a visit, as he spun his tails. He was perpetually moving, incessantly tapping his foot on the porch planks. Occasionally, he patted the wide arm of the rocker with his hand for emphasis. Sometimes his feet, as though moved by an uncontrollable urge, burst forth with energy, tapping out a brief but lively buck dance routine.

When the urge for motion had apparently been satisfied, his feet got still for a while. An occasional car often passed, and Pa threw up his hand in a friendly wave. Who was that, Pa?

I would ask. Oh, that was so-and-so, he responded. He knew more people and more people knew him than I've even met. Seeing the person who had just passed reminded him of a story, and off he went with another tale. Infrequently, someone whom he didn't know would pass. To my query about who it was, Pa usually responded, I don't know him.

He must be from off somewhere else. Pa dropped out of school in the fourth grade. We were working on short division, he explained to me one day, and the teacher said that tomorrow we would start on long division.

I took one look at those problems and never went back. In spite of his limited formal education, Pa was an intelligent man. He read a lot and had a vocabulary that surprised me as a college student. On the end table beside his chair, which sat behind the front door of his house, was always a magazine or two.

The Knoxville Journal, perhaps a copy of The Watchdog, grocer, politician, coon hunter, Kaz Walker's political scandal sheet, and a big, worn Bible. Although Pa probably never read Mark Twain's instructions on how to tell a good story effectively, he was an expert at doing exactly what Twain advised. Like Twain, Pa made a big deal out of insignificant minor details in his stories. For example, during a story, he would worry over what day of the week the event about which he was telling actually happened, what the weather had been that day, what year it was, or whether the event had happened in Clinton or in Kingsport or on Chestnut Ridge or beside Bull Run Creek. He quite often diverged innumerable times during a story, burying stories within stories, but finally finding his way back to complete the original story just when listeners were beginning to think he had lost his way entirely. Yet, he somehow always left his listeners wanting to hear more, or he would use the just finished story as a springboard into the next story. Invariably, a train would come through during one of Pa's stories. He stopped his story in mid-sentence and rocked silently amid the rumble of the diesel locomotives and the click-clack of iron wheels on shiny rails, counting the freight cars as they went by.

When the caboose had passed from view down the track, he picked up right where he had left off without missing so much as a word. Sometimes Nanny was sitting with us. She too sometimes entered into Pa's storytelling, usually to argue with him over one of the many insignificant details of his story. Sometimes, discerning the story that Pa was about to tell just as he began it, declared, Good Lord, Fred, you know better than to tell that. Because he knew so many people, Pa had a lot of visitors, especially on Sunday afternoons. I suspect that many of those visitors came not so much to talk to Pa as to listen to him tell stories. I think that he was totally unaware of his own storytelling prowess.

He was just being himself. Perhaps that is what the very quality that makes Appalachian storytellers unique. Like Pa, they just do what comes natural. Storytelling is an important way in which my generation and countless ones before it learned of its heritage. And it is a part of our heritage that must be preserved and fostered, a skill that must be passed on to our children and to their children for generations to come.

The story of Pa here on Our American Stories. . Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year. And UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.

It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit uhcmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare.

Helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop. But for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot.

And I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious. And there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done.

I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So, if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try All-Free Clear Mega Packs. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs. Which, my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So, the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that All-Free Clear Mega Packs, they have your back.

Purchase All-Free Clear Mega Packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. And we continue with our American Stories. Previously on our show, we've heard from Steve Stolier, who, as a UCLA student in the mid-70s, convinced Universal Pictures to re-release the classic Marx Brothers movie, Animal Crackers. It's a terrific story, by the way.

Go to OurAmericanStories.com and take a look. Stolier would then go on to be Groucho Marx's personal assistant and historian for the final years of the legend's life. Today, we hear from Steve again, still in show business, but excited as ever to be surrounded by stage and screen legends.

Here's Steve. Groucho Marx was just at the top of my pantheon of most admired entertainers. But running a close second was Fred Astaire, Frederick Ousterlitz of Omaha, Nebraska. He doesn't seem as if he would have come from middle America like that because he's known for the top hat and white tie and tails. But in fact, he's one of those erudite fellows that came from Nebraska, along with Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett and Marlon Brando and a number of other people.

I would have given anything to be able to meet him. And in fact, when I was working at Universal Studios in the late 70s, after Groucho died, I got a job working in the steno pool from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day. And I would be typing episodes of The Rockford Files and Kojak and Beretta and so on. But I loved working at Universal because on lunch breaks or before or after work, I could go wandering around. There wasn't much security at the time.

It isn't like now. Plus, I was an employee. And I was always nosing around because of the history of the place. I loved the Universal horror films and all that sort of stuff. The classics, My Man Godfrey. So I would keep track of who was guest starring on different shows and if they were filming on the lot.

And if I was lucky, sometimes I would be able to cross paths with them. And then of all the unlikely things, I found out that Fred Astaire was going to be guest starring on Battlestar Galactica. Apparently, his grandson, his favorite TV show was Battlestar Galactica. And he said, Grandpa, will you be on that?

That would be cool. And so Astaire figuring, well, I can't deny my own grandson a request like that. So he got in touch with the producers and they wrote a part for him where he played Dirk Benedict's con man father on a lunch break. I wandered over to the set and I watched him shoot a scene inside the spacecraft.

And then during a break, he was just sauntering around the soundstage with his hands in his pockets. And I happened to have with me an original still of him in Swing Time, 1936 film. And so I went over and introduced myself. And I said, I just I want to thank you for all of the magical moments from flying down to Rio to A Family Upside Down and everything in between.

Family Upside Down was a TV movie he had just done, co-starring opposite Helen Hayes. So at the time, that was sort of like thanking him for his whole film career. And he said, oh, well, my goodness, thank you. And he was happy to sign my photo. And so for one brief shining moment, I got to meet, you know, one of my all time heroes. So that was in 78. In 1983, five years later, I had moved to New York the previous year to write for Dick Cavett, whom I met through my Groucho connection and who hired me away from Universal to write for him at HBO on a short-lived show called HBO Magazine.

But then I continued to live in New York and write for Cavett and other things. Astaire and Gene Kelly had both been honored by the Kennedy Center. You see the edited down specials on TV where they have someone from dance and music and literature and they salute them. And the Kennedy Center had a policy where after you've been saluted, they would appreciate it if you would sit down for an interview, not to be released or broadcast, but just for their library, for the Kennedy Center's official library, to have that for people to be able to access. So Astaire said that would be fine with him, but only if Dick Cavett does the interview because he had had good experiences when Cavett had his ABC show and he felt comfortable conversing with him. I was friends with and writing for Cavett and he knew what an Astaire fanatic I was.

As was he. And the Kennedy Center sent Cavett the list of questions they wanted him to ask. And luckily he gave those to me to rework because they were asking thesis questions on compare and contrast the development of tap as an art form from the Irish clog through vaudeville and the influence of the African American experience. And I knew from previous experience that Astaire is a tough interview subject and he hates analyzing his art. He was very much a I just do it kind of guy.

So what I did was I very carefully chopped up their essay questions into more conversational bites so that Cavett could ask him and get information. You know, his answer on how a certain sequence happened, the dance director Hermes Pan would come up with an idea I'd try it out in front of a mirror and sure, great. That would be how he would discuss how a dance step came to be. Kelly, because he was a director and choreographer, Kelly was the opposite. If you said hi, Gene Kelly would say dance is a three dimensional medium and film is a two dimensional medium. So as a director or choreographer, you have to take in that distinction and frame the image such that the two dimension, you know, he gave those kind of dissertation answers. But for Astaire, it was just, well, sure, great. Let's do it.

Which doesn't make for, you know, compelling listening. I flew out to L.A. with Cavett to interview both Astaire and Kelly. We were in a limousine.

I was in the front seat with the chauffeur, which is just as well because I tended to get nauseated sitting in the back of limousines. And we stopped by Astaire's house on San Ysidro in Beverly Hills. He got in the car and Astaire looked at me and he said, have we worked together before? You look familiar.

And I don't know whether he was confusing me with someone else or if he really did remember from when I met him on the set of Galactica. But so on the way to the studio, I'm listening to Cavett and Astaire talking. And Astaire said, Dick, did you look over these questions?

And I'm thinking, he, he, he, he, he. And Astaire said, some of them are asinine. What was I doing in vaudeville? I mean, for heaven's sakes, that was 50 years ago.

I mean, it's ridiculous. And I'm, you know, mentally slinking down in the front seat thinking, oh God, you should only know what these questions were like before I made them sanitized for your easy digestion. And you've been listening to Steve Stolier talk about his brush with greatness again when we come back.

More of the story of Fred Astaire and Steve Stolier here on Our American Story. It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare.

Helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop. But for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot.

And I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious. And there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done.

I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So, if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try All-Free Clear Mega Packs. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs. Which my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So, the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that All-Free Clear Mega Packs, they have your back.

Purchase All-Free Clear Mega Packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. And we're back with our American stories and Steve Stolier's story of the time he had the privilege of meeting and working with Fred Astaire. Steve was working for Dick Cavett at the time and Astaire had just been selected to be honored by the Kennedy Center. Cavett was going to interview Astaire and had asked Steve to rewrite the Kennedy Center's questions and even so, Astaire still found Stolier's versions of the questions exonine.

Let's get back to Steve. So, I was sort of on edge after that because I thought it was going to be this wonderful time and now he's attacking the questions and all that and I didn't let on that I'd had anything to do with them because I didn't want to be the target of his annoyance. But we got to the studio and as a favor to Astaire to show respect, they had him go into the makeup room first before Cavett to get ready for the cameras. So then he came out in makeup and then it was Cavett's turn and the director said to me, will you sit down with Fred and talk to him until Dick is ready?

And I thought, oh, dear, um, er, yeah, sure. The next thing I knew, I was sitting in a director's chair next to Astaire in his director's chair and trying to make pleasant conversation with someone who had just torn apart the questions I had carefully crafted and who was, you know, notoriously difficult to draw out. But one of the things I brought up was, you know, this was in 83. It was the same year that the musical My One and Only had opened on Broadway and I had seen that with Tommy Tune and Twiggy and Honey Coles and it was basically a loose reworking of the Gershwin show Funny Face, which Fred and his sister Adele had starred in in 1927. And I loved it and I felt like seeing Tommy Tune do some of those intricate tap numbers was as close as I was going to get to seeing Astaire dance. And I mentioned that even though the show was filled with a lot of standards, the song My One and Only was semi-obscure, but I knew it because I had a record of Astaire and Adele singing that from Funny Face. And I said, so it's interesting because now that song is getting well-known by the average public because of this new Broadway show. So we started talking about new releases of classic songs and we got around to putting on the Ritz and he mentioned, he said, last year there was that version by that German fellow and I must say I didn't care for it. The German fellow was a guy named Taco and it was sort of a synthesized, mechanized version of putting on the Ritz that got a lot of airplay in 1982. But Astaire said the way he does it is just boom, boom, boom, putting on the Ritz, boom, boom, putting on the Ritz.

I didn't care for it. He said, now when Irving wrote it, meaning Berlin, he wrote it like this. And Astaire started tapping his foot. And I'm thinking, Fred Astaire is tapping and singing, putting on the Ritz, to me, only me, this special moment just from me, I would say dancing as fast as I could verbally to keep him occupied until Cavett came out. But it ended up being this wonderful little pocket of conversation. And then Cavett came out and they started taping and actually between my having cut the questions up and Cavett's brilliance as an interviewer and conversationalist, he was able to draw Fred Astaire out in that interview and actually got him to talk about a lot of things that were essentially things that I had wondered about that I would have asked Fred Astaire if I ever had the chance. So I put them through Dick Cavett's mouth.

And he ended up, you know, at one point he said something like, gosh, Dick, you're making me remember things I hadn't thought about in 40 years, which I took as very gratifying because it was unlocking some of these old memories. One of my questions was, did he ever have an understudy? Because you think about Broadway shows and how unique Astaire was, was there someone who, if he was sick, would have gone on? And the way Cavett asked it was, he said, for instance, if you were under the weather, did the manager come out before the show and say, we're very sorry, Mr. Astaire can't be here tonight. Instead, please enjoy Leonard Crunchman.

That was the name he came up with on the spot, Leonard Crunchman. And Astaire said, oh, no, I never had an understudy. I just, no matter what, you just went on, you know. And it was that kind of that trooper mentality. And he said, I remember one time in London, I had a boil removed from my head and the doctor bandaged it, but I still went on that night and I had my top hat and this bandaged head and nobody explained anything. And I guess the people in the audience were thinking, oh, I suppose the old fellow broke his skull or something. And every time I put the top hat back on top of my head, it hurt. But, you know, you just went on.

So it turned into this really fascinating conversation. I mean, Astaire was in his mid-80s at the time and just beginning to slow down a bit. I mean, he wasn't as lively as he was on the ABC Cavett shows. And, you know, there was no audience.

There was no band. It was just this conversation. Then the following day, we went over to Gene Kelly's house and he was the absolute opposite because he was able to dissect and come at his films and the dance sequences and the combination of ballet and tap and the athleticism and the choreography. Because I had researched him when I was in New York, HBO at the time was located in the Time Life building. So I had access to Time and Life magazine's archives. And they would have bulging manila folder files with stretched out rubber bands trying to keep them from exploding. And inside would be old clippings and old photos and stuff. You know, it was like a morgue of old newspaper and photographic things from previous stories. This was, you know, I hastened to add before Google, so you couldn't just go to IMDB or Wikipedia or something.

But I had this rare access. And in the file for Gene Kelly was a story about when he was working on the 1942, oh, Cover Girl with Rita Hayworth. The music was by Jerome Kern. So there was one news story that said that after filming was completed, Jerome Kern presented Gene Kelly with a silver plate and that was engraved to GK from JK in honor of Cover Girl. And so after Cabot had finished interviewing Gene Kelly, I thought, this will floor him that I know this bit of trivia. And so I said, do you still have that plate that Jerome Kern gave you after Cover Girl? And I expected him to laugh or something.

And instead, he's got this scowl on his face. And he said, where did you hear about that? That was stolen from me some years back. And I've never seen it. There was a theft at my house.

How do you know about that? And all of a sudden I was sitting in a chair with the cops going over me with a third degree and a bright light. And I said, it was in your file at the Time Life archive of the thing. And I think he was placated, but it was a strange note to end on because I don't know that he ever completely got over that trace of suspicion. The one thing I brought up that I thought would put a smile on his face instead triggered his Irish anger. But it was still a great afternoon to be sitting at the feet of Gene Kelly and listening to him talk about his career. And only one day after spending the afternoon with Fred Astaire. So I had, in one visit back to LA from New York, I had managed to spend time with two of, obviously two of the greatest dancers that have ever appeared on film. And great job as always by Robbie on the production and everything else. It's a terrific story. And Steve Stolier, my goodness, what a great storyteller.

Steve Stolier's story, his two brushes with greatness, here on Our American Story. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year. And UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.

It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives.

What up, it's Dramos. You may know me from the recap on LA TV. Now I've got my own podcast, Life as a Gringo, coming to you every Tuesday and Thursday. We'll be talking real and unapologetic about all things life, Latin culture, and everything in between from someone who's never quite fit in. Listen to Life as a Gringo on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by State Farm.

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This is the start of a new era. We have an opportunity to build a better future for everyone. Combining the best of humanity in the technology, we will unleash our imagination. Everything that can be connected, will be connected. We as an industry must dare to dream. So we find ourselves at a critical juncture in human history. See, touch, and experience the very latest in technology. Meet us at MWC Las Vegas September 28th through the 30th.