I recently made a little video for YouTube called Bubulah in which I tell a Jewish joke my Jewish grandmother Goody told me when I was a teenager. Friends responding to the video inspired me to send them a couple pictures I had of Goody and I thought it would be fun to share those pictures with you.
This first picture of Goody is one I took when she was in her late seventies. She died when she was eighty. Born in the Detroit Jewish ghetto in 1900, an aspiring actress and singer who became a mother and housewife instead, she read from Psalms every day, wrote rhyming poetry, and had a wonderfully wry sense of humor.
Goody wrote the lyrics to a song I wrote music for called First Sign of Trouble and I later changed the title to Goody’s Song. When I first played the song for Goody, her eyes grew wide with excitement and she said, “Oh if we can just get this to Johnny Mathis, all our troubles will be over.” When I suggested the song was not really the kind of song Johnny usually recorded, Goody replied, “Then that other guy who’s always on Merv Griffin.” (Merv Griffin being a favorite television show of hers.)
Here is a link to one of my recordings of Goody’s Song on YouTube. For a better quality recording you can stream or download the song from iTunes or Amazon.
This next picture is of Goody from, I’m guessing, the late 1930s, early 1940s, flanked by the very young Red Skelton and a young William Bendix (Life of Reilly). How and why was Goody photographed with them? Goody and her husband, my grandfather Casey, were attending a Hollywood party at the home of Frieda and Jay Sandrich. Frieda was Goody’s close friend and Jay was a famous movie director. Their sons Mark and Jay Sandrich Jr. would both grow up to be successful television sit-com directors.
Goody explained that at big Hollywood bashes in those days, the hosts would hire photographers to be on hand to take pictures of guests with the stars and celebrities, and that is how this picture came to be.
As it happens, much later in her life when Goody and Casey were living in Palm Springs, Red Skelton would walk his dog on the street where Goody and Casey lived, and Goody and Red would occasionally exchange niceties.
This last picture is of young Todd very happy to be with his grandfather Casey on a visit to Los Angeles one summer.
