What does a writer do when he's got a family that includes a
blacklisted member of the Hollywood Ten, the brains behind Tony the
Tiger and the Marlboro Man, a trio of gay puppeteers, the world's
leading birdwatcher, sixties hippies, a Dutch stowaway who served
in an all-black regiment during the American Civil War, a mother of
unusual compassion and understanding, and a convicted murderer? He
tells their stories and secrets, illuminating 150 years of American
life along the way. Dan Bessie begins the journey through his
family history with his great-grandfather in the cargo hold of a
ship bound for New York on the storm-tossed Atlantic. What follows
are stories of his grandfather's various entrepreneurial schemes
(including a folding butter box business), a grandmother who was
voted "New York's Prettiest Shop Girl" (and who resisted the
recruitment efforts of various city madams), and his uncle Harry's
Turnabout Theater in Los Angeles (a renowned puppet theater drawing
patrons as diverse as Shirley Temple, Ray Bradbury, and Albert
Einstein). Through inherited journals and literary effects, Bessie
comes to a new understanding of his father, Alvah. An actor and
writer, he fought in the Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil
War. When he returned to the States, he headed to the Warner back
lots to begin a screenwriting career. But as congress began
investigating radicals in the film industry, Alvah was blacklisted
for his Communist sympathies and was soon sent to jail as one of
the Hollywood Ten. His grandmother's cousin, Sidney Lenz, wrote
Lenz on Bridge, a classic guide to the game of contract bridge.
Bessie describes what was billed as the Bridge Battle of the
Century, a 1931 match between Lenz and an upstart opponent that was
covered by journalists from all over the world. Bessie's
brother-in-law Wes Wilson designed rock and roll posters for the
Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco during the 1960s, living a
counterculture existence vastly different from the bridge-mad
Depression Era. Cousin Michael was heir to the compulsive
storytelling characterizing many of the Bessies. He found his niche
in publishing, co-founding the Atheneum Press and shaping books by
people such as Anwar Sadat, Edward Albee, and Aldous Huxley. With
an equally impressive career, Uncle Leo built the country's fifth
largest advertising agency. A passion of a different sort led
cousin Phoebe Snetsinger to travel from Webster Groves, Missouri,
to the far corners of Africa and Asia. The world's leading birder,
she sighted 8,400 different birds-nearly 85 percent of the species
known to exist. An extraordinary strain of creativity runs through
the Bessie and Burnett clans, and Rare Birds celebrates the
colorful diversity of a remarkable and accomplished family. While
their choices and professions run the gamut of the American
experience in the twentieth century, the history of the nation can
be traced in these people's lives. Bessie's passionate birds of a
feather gather to sing their unique song across decades and
generations. Dan Bessie has been a film writer, director, producer,
and animator since apprenticing on Tom and Jerry cartoons at MGM in
1956.
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