39th wedding anniversary for Mark & Sara Dawidziak

Click on photo montage to enlarge it

 

 

Former BJ and PD TV critic Mark Dawidziak and Sara Showman Dawidziak are celebrating their 39^th wedding anniversary today.

 

Mark and Sara met when they were both in the cast of Neil Simon’s “The Good Doctor” in Tennessee. A year later, there was a Mark-Sara wedding in Johnston City, Tennessee, where Mark was working on the Kingsport Times-News.

 

To cement the courtship Mark showed “Psycho” during a film series he ran while they were dating. By comparison with Norman Bates it made Mark look so good that Sara took the bait.

 

Mark and Sara have been performing together, on stage and in private, ever since including with their Largely Literary theater company that takes on Edgar Alan Poe, Mark Twain, etc.

 

They have a photographer extraordinaire daughter, Becky.

The BJ plucked Mark in 1983 as irascible David Bianculli’s replacement for TV critic. Mark was best TV writer I had during my 16 years as TV editor and I had 3 good ones!

Before the BJ & the PD, Mark's career took him to the Kingsport Times-News in Tennessee,
the Bristol Herald Courier in Virginia, the Associated Press’ Washington bureau and Knight-Ridder Newspapers’  Washington bureau.

Mark is justifiably in the Cleveland Press Club’s Journalism Hall of Fame and writes books more often than he changes underwear, which is NOT a comment on his hygiene.

Mark was born in Huntington, New York (think Long Island), on September 7, 1956, a son of World War II Army Air Corps captain/navigator Joseph Walter Dawidziak, buried in Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island, and Claire Dawidziak. Later, Joe married Bernie Dawidziak.

Mark’s siblings are Joe, Jr., a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran; Jane, Aileen and Michael.Click on photo montage to enlarge it

Former BJ and PD TV critic Mark Dawidziak and Sara Showman Dawidziak are celebrating their 39^th wedding anniversary today.

 

Mark and Sara met when they were both in the cast of Neil Simon’s “The Good Doctor” in Tennessee. A year later, there was a Mark-Sara wedding in Johnston City, Tennessee, where Mark was working on the Kingsport Times-News.

 

To cement the courtship Mark showed “Psycho” during a film series he ran while they were dating. By comparison with Norman Bates it made Mark look so good that Sara took the bait.

 

Mark and Sara have been performing together, on stage and in private, ever since including with their Largely Literary theater company that takes on Edgar Alan Poe, Mark Twain, etc.

 

They have a photographer extraordinaire daughter, Becky.

The BJ plucked Mark in 1983 as irascible David Bianculli’s replacement for TV critic. Mark was best TV writer I had during my 16 years as TV editor and I had 3 good ones!

Before the BJ & the PD, Mark's career took him to the Kingsport Times-News in Tennessee,
the Bristol Herald Courier in Virginia, the Associated Press’ Washington bureau and Knight-Ridder Newspapers’  Washington bureau.

Mark is justifiably in the Cleveland Press Club’s Journalism Hall of Fame and writes books more often than he changes underwear, which is NOT a comment on his hygiene.

Mark was born in Huntington, New York (think Long Island), on September 7, 1956, a son of World War II Army Air Corps captain/navigator Joseph Walter Dawidziak, buried in Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island, and Claire Dawidziak. Later, Joe married Bernie Dawidziak.

Mark’s siblings are Joe, Jr., a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran; Jane, Aileen and Michael.

 

 

Current PD and former BJ pop culture critic Mark Dawidziak will be in Elmira, New York on Saturday, October 8 for a symposium based on "Mark Twain and Youth: Studies in His Life and Writings" at the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College.

A dazzling, dizzingly doozy dozen of America’s greatest Mark Twain scholars will be featured, which explains why Dawidziak is there with the most appropriate first name among the scholars, although I suspect Dawidziak’s parents were thinking more of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John than Twain when they named him.

After all, Mark’s brothers include New Yorker and Mark’s twin Michael (as in the Archangel who chased the Devil to Hell) and Californian Joseph (as in the guy who accompanied the Virgin Mary to the stable for Christ’s birth). Another brother, Scott, is deceased.

As famed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns once wrote: “Nobody gets Mark Twain the way Mark Dawidziak does.” I agree.

In a weird twist that out-does the Dorian Gray portrait in the attic in a good way, Dawidziak looks more and more like Mark Twain as he ages and performs the fantastic humorist on stage in the Akron area and around the country, including in Twain’s final resting place of Elmira (I’ve visited Twain’s grave, alongside his family members, in Elmira, just as I’ve visited grave sites and former work places of nearly 100 authors around the world in my travels to 55 countries and 44 states).

Kevin MacDonnell and R. Kent Rasmussen, editors of the 2016 book, "Mark Twain and Youth," will co-chair the event. Jon Clinch, author of “Finn” and “Kings of the Earth,” is the keynote speaker.

Dawidziak’s Twain twack includes “Mark Twain’s Guide to Diet, Exercise, Beauty, Fashion, Investment, Romance, Health and Happiness,” "Mark Twain in Ohio," "Mark My Words" and "Mark Twain on Writing." 

PD/BJ Mark was at the Elmira Twain Studies in January to celebrate the Mark Twain Commemorative Coin Program where he became Twain again with yet another performance.

He also plays Twain at the drop of an unlit cigar in Northeast Ohio and around the country. He gives Hal Holbrook a run for his money when it comes to Twain impersonation.

Dawidziak came to the BJ from Tennessee in 1983 and grew up on New York City’s Long Island. He is married to Sara Showman Dawidziak, who often performs with Mark when they’re not at their Cuyahoga Falls home.

I’ll let Samuel Langhorne Clemens have the last word, as usual:

“There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.”

Mark Dawidziak is among the thinner crowd. I am proud to have him call me his friend. And thrilled to have worked alongside him at Ol’ Blue Walls.

PD and former BJ pop culture critic Mark Dawidziak continues his dizzying carousel of books and performances with "The Shawshank Redemption Revealed: How One Story Keeps Hope Alive," which Rowman & Littlefield’s Lyons Press will publish September 1 after an August 16-18 premiere at the Mansfield reunion.

Mark’s latest effort got an enthuastic endorsement from Bob Gunton, who played the warden in “The Shawshank Redemption.”

Mark also is renown for his books and performances tied to humorist Mark Twain. Dawidziak was in Elmira, New York for a symposium based on "Mark Twain and Youth: Studies in His Life and Writings" at the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College. Dawidziak has performed Mark Twain in Elmira, where Twain is buried. I’ve visited Twain’s grave there.

Dawidziak’s Twain books include “Mark Twain’s Guide to Diet, Exercise, Beauty, Fashion, Investment, Romance, Health and Happiness,” "Mark Twain in Ohio," "Mark My Words" and "Mark Twain on Writing." 

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns wrote: “Nobody gets Mark Twain the way Mark Dawidziak does.”

Mark gives Hal Holbrook a run for his money when it comes to Twain impersonation.

Dawidziak began reading Twain as a pre-teen.

Other Dawidziak books – I lost count at a dozen -- include “The Columbo Phile: A Casebook,”  “The Night Stalker Companion,” “The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dracula” and "The Barter Theatre Story: Love Made Visible," about the famous Virginia theater that took anything – including food -- for audience members who didn’t have cash for admission.

Sara and Mark also perform “Shades of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War”; “Ghosts By the Tale,”  spooking their audiences;  “Twain By Three,” a two-act adaptation of humorous sketches by Mark Twain;  “The Tell-Tale Play,” a two-act collection of poems and stories by Edgar Allan Poe; their version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”; and  “The Mystery of Dashiell Hammett,” the author of Sam Spade stories.

Mark was born in Huntington, New York, on September 7, 1956.

He came to the BJ from the Kingsport Times-News in Tennessee in 1983 as David Bianculli’s replacement for TV critic when David headed for the New York Post and living in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

In 1999 Mark joined the BJ exodus to the PD.

Previously, Mark's career took him to the Kingsport Times-News in Tennessee, the Bristol Herald Courier in Virginia, the Associated Press’ Washington bureau and Knight-Ridder Newspapers’ Washington bureau.

He is married to Sara Showman Dawidziak, who often performs with Mark when they’re not in their Cuyahoga Falls home. They founded the Largely Literary Theater Company. Mark and Sara met in Tennessee in 1981 when they appeared together in Neil Simon’s “The Good Doctor.” A year later, there was a Mark-Sara wedding in Johnston City, Tennessee, when Mark was at the Kingsport Times-News.

Their photos, in many instances, are taken by their daughter, Becky, who may have a career in photography art.

PD and former BJ pop culture critic and extraordinary author Mark Dawidziak and on-stage and off-stage co-star Sara Showman Dawidziak are celebrating their 35^th wedding anniversity today – October 9.

When I did the research for this article I realized that, to do justice to this “run of the play contract” for life, it would rival the Encyclopedia Brittanica in length. Since, as a BJ editor, I didn’t allow my reporters to do write that long, I won’t.

The Love Story of Mark and Sara (without the “h”) began in Tennessee in 1981 when they appeared together in Neil Simon’s “The Good Doctor.” A year later, there was a Mark-Sara wedding in Johnston City, Tennessee, where Mark was working on the Kingsport Times-News.

Another year later that’s where the BJ plucked Mark in 1983 as David Bianculli’s replacement for TV critic. And Mark “lucked into” me as his editor. As Humphrey Bogart said to Claude Raines, “It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship” that, like Frankenstein’s monster, “It’s alive!” today.

Before the BJ & the PD, Mark's career took him to the Kingsport Times-News in Tennessee,
the Bristol Herald Courier in Virginia, the Associated Press’ Washington bureau and Knight-Ridder Newspapers’  Washington bureau.

The Cuyahoga Falls couple’s photos, in many instances, were taken by their daughter, Becky, who may have a career in portrait art.

Mark was born in Huntington, New York (think Long Island), on September 7, 1956, a son of World War II Army Air Corps captain/navigator Joseph Walter Dawidziak, buried in Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island, and Claire Dawidziak. Later, Joe married Bernie Dawidziak.

Mark’s siblings were Joe, Jr., Jane, Aileen and Michael.

When he’s not writing more than a dozen books about Mark Twain, Columbo, Twilight Zone he’s performing the works of Twain, who is the spitting image of Dawidziak, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Dashiell Hammett (who gave birth to detective Sam Spade, played so admirably by Humphrey Bogart) and the Civil War, with Sara often alongside him on the stage for their Largely Literary Theater Company productions.

He has been Mark Twain at, honest to God, the Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, at the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, McKinley Birthplace Memorial Auditorium in Niles and the famous Barter Theatre in Virginia. He gave Hal Holbrook a run for his money when it comes to Twain impersonation.

He gets around, locally and nationally:

"A Christmas Carol," the Kent Stage.
"Shades of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War," Zoar. 
"Everything I Need to Know I Learned in The Twilight Zone," Broome County Forum Theatre, Binghamtom, New York.

"Twain By Two," The Thurber House, Columbus.

"A Force of Nature," scenic overlook at Ledges, Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

The Big Read in Wayne County at the Wayne Center for the Arts in Wooster. 
And Paula and I have witnessed Mark and Sara’s performances at libraries in Akron, Cuyahoga Falls, Massillon and Hudson.

Mark’s email address includes tributes to H.L. Mencken and Groucho Marx.

Mencken’s most famous quote trotted out today with Donald Trump in the White House: “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may have been channeling Mencken when he put the M label on President Trump.

Not to be out-done, Groucho said: “Behind every successful man, there is a woman. Behind her is his wife.”

That takes care of President Clinton, Monia Lewinsky and Hillary Clinton.

Despite his tremendous achievements, Mark will never need a larger hat size. He’s as comforting and entertaining as a Twain quote.

Mark is justifiably in the Cleveland Press Club’s Journalism Hall of Fame.

And it is impossible for the reports of his life and love of Sara to be “greatly exaggerated,” if I may borrow from Mark Twain’s denial of his demise.

Rod Serling, one of the many geniuses in Mark’s spotlight, once wrote: ““Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.”

Dawidziak is a writer who performs his lines in the public auditorium. But his skull is crammed with amazing talent.

One of my great pleasures in life was to work with and, in retirement, enjoy reunions at Primo’s Deli and at area performances by Mark and Sara, with Becky’s camera always at the ready.

Lights, camera, action – for Act IV of Mark, Sara and Becky.

 

Mark Dawidziak, Mark Twain, Hal Holbrook

Mark’s Twain coming down the track

If it looks like a Twain and talks like a Twain, it must be a Twain, right?

Well, a 21^st century facsimile, Mark Dawidziak, PD and former BJ entertainment critic.

Appropriately, Mark’s latest book is “Mark Twain’s Guide to Diet, Exercise, Beauty, Fashion, Investment, Romance, Health and Happiness,” which may be the Guiness record for longest title.

Writes Mark:

“Just arrived and looks great. The local debut event will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 4, at the Beachwood branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library. The national book launch will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 9, at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut. Sara and I will be performing Twain material at both. Hope to see lots of friends at both events. The changed cover photo indicates to whom the book is dedicated.”

That would be actor and Mark Twain impersonator Hal Holbrook, the only person in America more famous for doing Mark Twain than Mark Dawidziak. 

The two Twains cross tracks often somewhere in the other Twain’s America.

Dawidziak's  "Mark Twain in Ohio" book was launched two weeks ago at the 33rd Akron Antiquarian Book Fair.

This is Dawidziak's 12th book, including two other Twain efforts -- "Mark My Words" and "Mark Twain on Writing." 

Other Dawidziak books include the 1994 horror novel, “Grave Secrets”; two histories of landmark TV series, “The Columbo Phile: A Casebook” (1989) and “The Night Stalker Companion” (1997); and “The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dracula” (2008).

More national acclaim for Dawidziak

PD and former BJ entertainment critic Mark Dawidziak is gaining so much national fame that I’m glad he’s the kind who won’t need a larger hat size.

I was Mark’s editor at Ol’ Blue Walls, and he easily was my best entertainment reporter.

Mark Dawidziak

And I had a great trifecta in David Bianculli, who went on to greater fame at the New York Post; Rich Heldenfels, still at the BJ; and, of course, the New York City guy living in Cuyahoga Falls after a stint in Tennessee journalism who impersonates Mark Twain better than Samuel Langhorne Clemens and, in my opinion, Hal Holbrook, does a wickedly terrifying Edgar Allan Poe show, regurgitates Charles Dickens like the dickens, should wear a rumpled raincoat for his work on his “Columbo” book that Peter Falk loved; and has reincarnated the Civil War in his productions with his wife, Sara Showman.

He has performed his show at the Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut and the famous Barter Theatre in Virginia (admission was groceries, including ham for the hams). And teaches a class at Kent State, to avoid boredom, I guess.

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has been effusive in his praise of Mark’s writings, which include 12 books and insightful entertainment columns in the PD. Losing Mark and Terry Pluto may have been the BJ’s greatest losses to the PD.

Mark is justifiably in the Cleveland Press Club’s Journalism Hall of Fame. In mine, too.

Mark’s latest national acclaim comes from Las Vegas, land of Elvis and casinos every 10 feet.

That article:

Rice's reach exceeds genre

 

By John L. Smith
Las Vegas Review-Journal

"Night Stalker" author Jeff Rice probably would have appreciated a little more mystery associated with his July 1 death in Las Vegas.

When you live in a creative world riddled with blood suckers and neck crushers, an ordinary death seems just a little tame. But the results of an autopsy by the Clark County coroner's office reveal Rice's demise was accidental: renal failure possibly related to heat exposure. He was 71.

Readers of horror and fantasy novels will remember longtime local Rice as the creator of the character Carl Kolchak, the rumpled newspaper reporter who found a vampire using Las Vegas as a blood bank in "The Night Stalker," a novel that became the influential movie and television series starring Darren McGavin.

Word of Rice's death has been slow to circulate after it broke last month in this column, but author and undisputed Kolchak expert Mark Dawidziak penned an insightful essay on Rice's influence that you'll find on Cleveland.com. Author of "The Kolchak Companion" and many other books, Dawidziak is also the television critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The two were close friends.

"I thought the world of Jeff," Dawidziak said in a phone interview from Cleveland. "He was one of the most honorable men I've ever known."

In his appreciation, Dawidziak detailed Rice's influence on the horror and fantasy genre and some working journalists, too.

"And when you consider the incredible rolling influence of his character, we've all probably been touched by this writer in some way or another," he observed. "If I could write one last scene for Carl, he'd be tipping his pork-pie straw hat in tribute, and he'd be tipping it to Jeff Rice."

To read Mark’s fascinating article about Jeff Rice, whose work begat so many classic horror genre tales by those who were influenced by him, click on

http://www.cleveland.com/tv-blog/index.ssf/2015/08/jeff_rice_creator_the_night_stalker_had_an_enormous_influence_on_horror_entertainment.html

 

Dawidziak’s 12^th+ book out in 2015

Illustration by Mark Dawidziak; Mark D. as Twain

PD and former BJ television critic Mark Dawidziak’s next book on humorist Mark Twain will be “Mark Twain’s Guide to Diet, Exercise, Beauty, Fashion, Romance, Health and Happiness.” It will be published in June 2015 by Prospect Park Books.

Mark did the illustrations for the book.

Previous books by our Mark on Samuel Langhorne Clemmens’ Mark: “Mark My Words” and “Mark Twain on Writing.” When Mark isn’t doing Mark Twain shows with his Largely Literary Theater Company, he’s doing Charles Dickens or Edgar Allen Poe works. Although Mark and wife Sara Showman, who live in Cuyahoga Falls, did add a Civil War show, “Shades of Blue and Gray,” in 2013.

LLTC was formed in 2001. After 15 years at the BJ, Dawidziak trained his sights on the PD in 1999.

Among Dawidziak’s dozen or more books are the 1994 horror novel, “Grave Secrets”; two histories of landmark TV series, “The Columbo Phile: A Casebook” (1989) and “The Night Stalker Companion” (1997); and “The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dracula” (2008).

Dawidziak came to the BJ from Tennessee in 1983, but grew up in Brooklyn. The one in New York, not the one in Ohio.

Before the BJ & the PD, Mark's career took him to:

1979-83: arts editor (theater, film and TV critic), Kingsport Times-News (Tennessee)
    1979: arts editor (theater, film and TV critic), Bristol Herald Courier (Virginia)
    1978: city editor, Associated Press, Washington, D.C., bureau
    1977-78: bureau assistant, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Washington, D.C., bureau