Once Again -When You Are Lost On The Great White Way, Broadway … And Don’t Know What To Do-Dick Powell’s “Dames” (1934)-A Film Review

Once Again -When You Are Lost On The Great White Way, Broadway … And Don’t Know What To Do-Dick Powell’s “Dames” (1934)-A Film Review  

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Dames, starring Dick Powell, dances sequences by the legendary Bugby Berkeley, 1934

I might not have known coming into the profession, the film review profession, since they didn’t teach us this at graduate school although they should have but now I know that this is a cutthroat profession. Know that and can now give as good as I get thanks quite a bit to my attentive mentor Seth Garth who has shown me some of the pitfalls to avoid and how to handle the old wizened hunchback, maybe mountebank is a better term Sam Lowell who should have given up the film reviewing game ages ago. That according to good old boy Seth who is after all quite familiar with Sam’s schoolboy tricks and ruses since they grew up together in the same Acre neighborhood, so Seth knows the score, maybe taught Sam some of them himself as he admitted to me one night at dinner. Since Greg Green our beautiful site manager has encouraged his by-line writers of which I am now proud to say I am a member to let our readership know the ins and outs of this cutthroat business and because this film review of Dames is a lesser Dick Powell effort, in fact something of a turkey I will once against enter the lists to response to the latest Sam Lowell diatribe.  

 

One would think that a writer like one Sam Lowell who prides himself on being what Seth calls the max daddy of film noir, has written a book which some consider the definite study of the genre, but which left me cold would have enough to do in his latest review of the film adaptation of British mystery writer Agatha Christie’s 1961 crime novel The Pale Rider to stick to the subject. The subject being, if you can believe this, that since the rise of hard-boiled fictional private detectives like Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade what he called “parlor pink amateur private dicks” was passe. Like there is no longer a market for such material. Sam, look at the best-seller lists past 1970 when you wrote your opus and then fell asleep thereafter. If he had just kept to that task he might have not jumbled up the review, left us with more questions than answers as to why an amateur sleuth under the gun couldn’t do as good a job as guys who are willing to take a slug or two (of bullets and whiskey it seems) and a few punches for what Sam calls a little rough justice in this wicked old world.

But no Sam had to again wallow in the so-called dispute between us retailing the same old nonsense about how I had libeled him, legally libeled him to boot although having some code of the Omerta from boyhood that he would not snitch to the courts or cops under some awful penalty he would not pursue the matter there. Thanks, Sam I was having sleepless nights worrying about some massive pending law suit for about one dollar which is all the so-called libel would be worth-if it was libel. I have, and I will do so again here, mentioned on several occasions that I have information in my possession that in the old days, the days after that so-called definitive film noir study Sam would use stringers, generally female stringers whom he was romantically involved with or who in those male- dominated days were desperate to get a by-line, write his reviews for him under his by-line. The proof. I need go no further than fellow journalist here Leslie Dumont who could go chapter and verse on the times she bailed Sam out. She was desperate to get ahead (which she did with a big by-line at Women Today before she came back here part time in her retirement) and moreover was not immune to his charms. That Sam maneuver despite the fact that in those days she was writer Josh Breslin’s companion. Case closed as the lawyers say when they have the thing in hand.                     

Sam is also pissed off with my mentioning that when he wasn’t hiring slave labor to do his handiwork say when he was on a toot with some stringer who therefore couldn’t write the reviews he would just use the studio press hand-outs, clip the tops off and sent them in under his by-line. In one response to this allegation he lamely mentioned that “everybody did it” when they had a dog of a review to put out. Yet if you go to the archives of the hard copy editions of this publication in the days before it had to go on-line to survive or to the archives of American Film Gazette you will find Sam’s review of say The Devil Is Down admittedly a real dog you will find through a further look at the archives of the press releases of Avatar Studios that they form almost a perfect match-except title and by-line. Seth says you can almost draw a perfect trajectory between when he was screwing some stringer and the cut-off press releases use as Sam by-lines. Case sealed with seven seals.          

Those points I can deal with easily but the continual references to some kind of budding affair between Seth and I have got me really ticked off and have gotten my companion Clara ready to throw knives at me-and Sam. Sam’s proof of some hanky-panky on the side between me and my good friend Seth is that Seth took me to dinner one night after work. What Sam conveniently “forgets” to mention is the night in question is Seth took Clara and me to dinner that night. I have mentioned before and the reader can figure out that I am the “B’ in LGBTQ since I have had both male and female lovers. Right now I am very attached to Clara who is an “L” and is quite sensitive to any assertions that I might be looking elsewhere, might switch, might find a man interesting. I have stated this before and will do so again I find Seth very interesting and helpful and he has been a doll helping me with this Sam monster. He also unlike Sam who seems like he is one hundred years old maybe more keeps in pretty good shape for his age. Very good shape but that is the rub he is old enough to be my grandfather and although he is a teddy bear I don’t think I would want to go there. Moreover, nobody including supposed old corner boy Sam, has bothered to ask Seth if he was interested in me. Which according to what he told Clara and me that night at dinner he is not, not me personally but after three ex-wives, a parcel of kids, his term, and too many affairs to count he is not looking for an affair or anything else except to get me up the food chain. He did say, and Clara laughed although a sullen laugh if he was interested despite the age different he would not be afraid to take dead aim at me like she had. If that is not enough to keep Sam from his snide insinuations then the hell with it, Seth’s expression.            

I guess I should be getting to the review of this dog although I have tried to avoid it. This is my third review of a Dick Powell early career song and dance man musical before he went for better acting roles, tough guy roles in vehicles like Murder, My Sweet and Cornered which Greg Green let Seth review rather than Sam who was pissed at not getting those assignments. I got the musical bug from my grandmother whose mother had taken her to them in the 1930s and who wondered why I didn’t review more early musicals. I asked Greg for the assignment and now I guess I am the resident Dick Powell musical specialist. Not all Dick Powell films are born equally though and this is number three of three on the like list.

Why? Well the whole premise is silly. Some rich as Midas and as foolish has it in his head to improve the morals of America and has the dough to run the rack. He also has relatives who he wants to leave money to if they are up-standing enough. That bar is pretty low since his main peeve is Broadway musicals with those scantily clad chorus girls and such. That low bars means no truck, none with musicals under penalty of disinheritance. Trouble is the daughter of the relatives have a daughter played by Ruby Keeler who is crazy to dance and crazy about a wannabe Broadway producer Jimmy Higgins played by Dick Powell. So naturally the family gets into backing a Broadway musical by stealth. The show goes into production with Jimmy in charge and despite some snafus things work out okay, as Dick and Ruby trill away the night. The only redeeming art is the elaborate Bugby Berkeley productions which as usual are way over the top with a million chorines and two million complicated dance steps and maneuvers. If doing so would not be in such bad odor I might have considered running back to the archives to see what the studio press release looked like for possible use. Sweet thoughtful Seth though said Sam would have ten thousand daggers aimed right at my heart if I did. Cutthroat profession is right.    

On Internment of Japanese Americans In World War II

Workers Vanguard No. 1137	27 July 2018

TROTSKY

LENIN

On Internment of Japanese Americans In World War II 

(Quote of the Week)

Amid widespread outrage over the incarceration of immigrants in detention centers, the Democrats cynically pretend that such barbarity is unique to the racist Trump administration. During World War II, some 120,000 people of Japanese descent, the vast majority U.S. citizens, were savagely uprooted and thrown into concentration camps in a calculated atrocity ordered by the Democratic administration of liberal icon Franklin Roosevelt.

The Stalinist Communist Party expelled all of their Japanese American members in a grotesque example of their support to the “democratic” imperialists in the war. The then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, facing persecution themselves for opposing U.S. imperialist war aims, were among the very few—including the Quakers—who courageously campaigned against the repression of Japanese Americans. We print below an excerpt from an article they wrote shortly after the roundups began.

A minority problem as acute as any in Europe is being created by the forced removal of Japanese-Americans from the Pacific Coast.

In a move unprecedented in U.S. history, American citizens are being taken from their homes and transported to hastily constructed concentration camps....

Evacuations are being enforced by army officials acting under a presidential decree empowering them to bar from certain areas any person they consider undesirable. The army command has power to declare any district a restricted area and to order the removal of any residents. No reason need be given for the evacuation, and American citizenship is no protection.

So far the measure has been applied only to Japanese-Americans and to enemy aliens: but militant workers, liberals or “uncooperative” citizens could be ousted similarly.

After Pearl Harbor, the press whipped up an hysterical picture of a West Coast invasion aided by Japanese-American residents. The administration had to make a decisive move to show West Coast residents it was alert to their danger. The FBI rounded up all suspected enemy agents in the first few days of the war, but this was not demonstrative enough to give the effect of energetic preparedness the administration was seeking to offset Pearl Harbor.

Considerable pressure for the ousting of Japanese-Americans came, however, from California Chambers of Commerce, the Bank of America, and the reactionary Associated Farmers. These groups see in the Japanese-American farmer not a military menace, but an obstacle to their complete domination of California agriculture. Taking advantage of the situation to demand their ousting in the name of “national defense,” California bankers hope to seize control of the truck gardening fields vacated by the Japanese-Americans....

And so the story of the Japanese-American evacuations stands today—a repressive measure, based purely on racial discrimination and motivated chiefly by the desire of Big Business for additional profits, which is presented as a necessary part of the “war for democracy.”

—“Behind the West Coast Evacuations: Bankers Profit from Driving Japanese-American Citizens into Concentration Camps,” Militant (30 May 1942)

In The Days When Parlor Pink Private Detectives Ruled The Roost- The Film Adaptation Of Crime Novelist Agatha Christie’s “The Pale Horse” (1997)- A Review

In The Days When Parlor Pink Private Detectives Ruled The Roost- The Film Adaptation Of Crime Novelist Agatha Christie’s “The Pale Horse” (1997)- A Review     

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

The Pale Horse, starring Colin Buchanan, based on the crime novel of the same name by Agatha Christie, 1997  

[In the interest of continuity although this review was written well after a previous one by Sarah Lemoyne reviewing Dick Powell’s Varsity Show I have placed it here today with hers since the pair are still in the throes of their “dispute.” Greg Green, site manager]   

This is no pun I am on my high horse, pale or otherwise, today. No, not about this so-called dispute between my old friend from high school day Seth Garth’s young protégé or whatever else they have decided to call her relationship with him Sarah Lemoyne. Mentor is the word I think they have been using to try to cover up whatever is going on there. When Seth Garth is involved, as in the interest of transparency I will admit was true of me as well when I was younger, when it comes to women younger or older don’t believe a word of “just friends” noise, a word of denial. That is when you double down on a guy like Seth as I have learned from bitter experience in the days when he would think nothing of sweeping up some woman I was interested in with no moral qualms whatsoever. Would laugh at an expression like “moral qualms” a term unknown to hard corner boys from the old Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville and by extension in the cutthroat world of film reviewers where if you don’t cut somebody’s idea, some witty insight, some weird take on a film then you are not long for the profession. Why else would anybody put up with such doings when you are only giving your subjective opinion for the world to feast on (and now on the downside of the Internet experience have to put up with all kinds of dingbat thoughts from average citizens who know think that based on having seen a film that gives them the right, the god-given right to read some of the stuff to bore the rest of us with their ill-considered “takes” on the spot).    

In any case that is not what I am after today although I continue to steam, mighty puffs of steam, over the now almost libelous comments Ms. Lemoyne has made about who has, or hasn’t, written my reviews for me other than myself once I moved up the film review food chain many years ago. Totally libelous and subject to legal action if I was that kind of guy but I am not a snitch is the false accusation that long ago I used the studio press releases as my reviews with just the top snipped off and mailed in to whatever publication I was writing for at the time. I have just mentioned the cutthroat nature of our profession, so I am inured to such misinformation about my career. I will admit Ms. Lemoyne writes good reviews and had enough sense to go to Seth as a mentor or whatever he is to her at the office or elsewhere, but I can handle these young and hungry types since that is exactly where I started out trashing the legendary film critic Walt Wilson when he was riding high and now nobody remembers his name. What has me burning up today is one Greg Green’s lame attempt to bring back parlor pink private detectives with this review of the film adaptation of one of Agatha Christie’s crime novels The Pale Rider. (Pale rider a reference from the Bible meaning death a not unimportant part of the plot line in both the novel and the film which diverts from the novel in several ways but is on point about the death part, plenty of it and who the hell the pale rider is when the deal, the final deal, goes down)

Everybody knows, everybody seriously interested film noir which hinges in many cases on the plots of crime novels, knows that I have written what many, except apparently the totally ignorant Ms. Lemoyne who was not even born when I made my big splash and whom Seth should have wised up, call the definitive book on film noir. I like to think that the reason for that status was my ground-breaking work on the private detective novel on film with its moody, dark scenarios and hang-by the fingernails twists and turns before the crummy felons get some quick and rough justice from our mere mortal no superhero bombast gumshoes.  Moreover that noir explosion and the work of crime novel writers like Jim Jenson, Jack Cullen, and above all Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett had put paid to the old-fashioned amateur detective sitting around waiting for the villain to out of shame or something throw up his or her hands and come clean, come to justice without so much as by your leave. Take a warming cell or the big step-off for their errors in judgment while the crafty amateur goes off to lunch or on holiday after such strenuous work.

As Zack James, my and Seth’s old friend Alex’s youngest brother, has made clear in a number of astounding crime short stories about real private detectives this is no business for amateurs. I heartily agree since that profession is mainly about “repo” work the professional repo men can’t handle, bogus insurance claims, missing husbands or wives, looking for lost animals, dogs and cats mainly, and in the old days, peeping Toms on divorce cases involving sultry adultery (and which saved many a struggle P.I. before no fault divorce and just living together destroyed that part of the market leaving some guys, mostly guys, with nothing but hanging around a beaten down desk taking generous slugs from the low-shelf whiskey bottle in that bottom desk drawer). But on the screen, and in crime novels, those gumshoes, those peepers get the royal treatment, get the royal treatment if they are hard-nosed, tough, wind-mill chasers, skirt-chasers, heavy smokers and drinkers, and not afraid to take a slug or two, a roughing up for the good of the cause. Lenny Larkin was the epitome of the type who was also not afraid to whiplash a guy for looking at him the wrong way. Naturally when you mention Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe chasing a million wind-mills for some old general, or looking for some lady in the lake, or looking for big Moose’s lady friend comes to mind. Sam Spade of course from the Dashiell Hammett stable not only chased skirts, took a few punches for her, but when it was him or her he sent her over, sent her to the big step-off and the fuck with the stuff of dreams trying to own some freaking fake bird.

Which brings us to this little film. What we have here, a guy named Eric somebody does the last name matter since he is not going into the annals of private detection, no way. A damn sculptor, not even an amateur detective but a guy who makes art, modern art and not bad from the quick looks we get when he is around his art gallery, a guy who is trying to keep the noose from around his pretty head when he is accidently involved in a murder when he looked too much like the real felon and the coppers, the public coppers, as they will grabbed him and were ready to call it a day on the case. Sent him off with a smile claiming he wasn’t much of a sculptor anyway. Case closed.

They set this film in 1960s London so you get a modish crowd as background including two young women, one very rich and proper taking a ride down in class to give our Eric a run for his money but whom he spurns and another, Rhonda something does it matter her last name since she will not go down in the annals of private detection, no way. The latter he met at a funeral after her friend had died from what appeared to be some natural cause disease. The connection. The priest who was supposed to bring a message to a third party as the deathbed wish of another women who also appears to have died of natural causes is the guy whom Eric is supposed of have murdered and Rhonda friend’s name was on that message. Rhonda is not buying natural causes and so she is on board as an assistant sleuth. No femme fatale not at all but another freaking amateur detective to gum up the works. 

Later naturally as well there will be a love interest between these two and I can’t blame Eric on that score since she is one of those fetching types, yes, the ones who are not ice cold beautiful with personalities to match but the ones who an hour later you wonder what they are doing and are willing to do it with you. But just as naturally in these parlor pink private detection novels there is a red flag, although I hesitate to use that expression now that it is a catch word among the world’s growing population of conspiracy theorists. A prime suspect for this gumshoe pair centered on an eccentric wealthy art collector who had been chair-ridden since youth with polio. That was a ruse though, a cover for a very successful bank robbery in which the plotline involved taking the robbery proceeds and investing in art. Investing in a time when the art market was exploding, and he actually when “outed” as prime suspect for a while got to keep his ill-gotten gains. No, the real villain, the guy who in his psychopathic mind went over the edge was the attending physician of a number of patients who had been involved in what turned out to be an insurance fraud scheme with a few modern-day witches a la Macbeth and a bookie covering the insurance angle and the good doctor subtlety poisoning them using ordinary consumer goods like toothpaste as the murder weapons. 

Nice play, nice racket which any old Acre corner boy would appreciate but when Rhonda became the subject of the scheme and nobody knew how to cure her you know that mad monk doctor was doomed. It was the toothpaste, stupid. Get the freaking antidote asap. In the end Eric and Rhonda go off in the sunset their amateur private detection minute over. Not a minute too soon either.               

In Defense Of Inter-Species Love-“The Shape Of Water”(2017)-A Film Review

In Defense Of Inter-Species Love-“The Shape Of Water”(2017)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

The Shape of Water, starring Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones, 2017

By rights this review, the review of the 2018 Oscar for best picture The Shape of Water should have been done by Frank Jackman. While we no longer have specific titles to reflect our areas of various expertise Frank has long been the main political and cultural reporter on this publication. You ask how does a film about the improbable love affair between a disabled woman (a mute), a member of the human species, and a good looking if scaly creature from the lagoons down the Amazon warrant a political touch. Well beyond this seemingly blatant attempt to win “flavor of the month” status for yet another oppressed identity group there is the now wide- open question of whether we, meaning the human race should permit not only love between members of different species but permit different species marriage.

However, if Frank had tackled this film from that approach he would have had a hell-broth of anti-gay, anti-same sex marriage crazies to contend with who would have claimed that they had been righteously right to oppose those rights because see where does the madness end and what about the sanctity of marriage when human pair with other sentient being. Jesus it would be a blood-bath and Frank would probably have to leave town or take an alias-maybe go out among the Mormons like Allan Jackson tried to do, allegedly tried to do from what later reports by him informed us happened and see if he could hustle some work with them.

So I drew the assignment as a favor to new site manager Greg Green since he wanted to cash in on a different variation on the “boy meets girl” theme that continues this one hundred plus years later to be a huge hook for Hollywood productions (and a big money maker too). And so you have what started out a mere curiosity by Elisa, played by Sally Hawkins, a “talking challenged” person (hell I don’t know what you call it although I know mute is far too cutting these days reminding me, and maybe one and all, of the timid person who came up to you in the street cards in hand claiming deafness and dumbness asking for cash donations. Asking especially when you had a date you were out to impress with your humanity and gave the person some change. Some of this I learned later when I was down on my luck was a classic scam but some of which is the only way to get cash for hard-pressed people with a disability in those days) when a mysterious creature from out in the Amazon (a creature straight out of the 1950s creep thriller The Creature From The Black Lagoon) who looks like maybe some missing link on the evolutionary trail is secreted in secret CIA-type operation location where she is a cleaning lady to try to figure out how to use the thing in the on-going Cold War then raging between the United States and the former Soviet Union.       

That curiosity about a sentient being also trying to survive in a troubled world will eventually turn into what between humans would be called love, and maybe in inter-species lingo as well. The problem is that the creature is being mistreated, mishandled by the agent in charge to the chagrin of Elisa and others including a scientist who is actually a Soviet spy. Moreover when the agent in charge is ordered to vivisect the amphibian all hell broke loose as Elisha plotted her honey’s great escape. After a few close calls and some fancy foot work Elisa gets her man out of harm’s way for a while. In the inevitable eventual confrontation before she can release her now ailing guy (not enough sea water to keep his strength up) to the open seas where he will be at home again they are both injured by that wicked Cold War agent who in return is wasted by the amphibian. Things work out okay though because this mad monk monster has some curative powers which gets he and his honey well in the open ocean. Things work out well but if and when “inter-species” marriages become the flavor of the month among progressives and others watch out all bets are off. But at least you know where the campaign got its start.