The Front Pages From The Distaff Side-Rosalind Russell And Cary Grant’s “His Girl Friday”-(1940)-A Short Film Review

The Front Pages From The Distaff Side-Rosalind Russell And Cary Grant’s “His Girl Friday”-(1940)-A Short Film Review     

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

His Girl Friday, starring Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant, Ralph Bellamy, directed by Howard Hawks, from a play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, 1940  

Recently in reviewing another later (1960) Cary Grant vehicle, The Grass Is Greener, where he plays a cuckolded English Earl whose wife’s affections were stolen by an arriviste American oil man (played by also hunk Robert Mitchum) I noted that as a rule Cary Grant, the epitome of maleness, handsomeness, suaveness and whatever else matters to the majority females that made up the 1940s and 1950s audiences did not lose the woman (and in that vehicle he didn’t either but it was a close call when the deal went down). In the film under review Howard Hawk’s adaptation of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s screwball comedy, The Front Page, he almost let another dame get away, let his ex-wife Hildy beat it to upstate New York. So maybe I was a little wrong about Cary’s ability to swoop women off their feet-and keep them swooped (is that the right past tense, oh well).                 

Here’s the play and it may be familiar to those who saw the play or the later screen version with Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau except, a very big except the ‘‘ace” reporter is a woman, a female Hildy, played by rough and tumble, give as well as he received, Rosalind Russell, which allows the male-female tussle that drives the film to go forward. Tussle because one, Hildy had given Walter, Walter Burns, the mad monk editor-in-chief/owner of a New York City newspaper, his walking papers, no go, done, and two, she is now engaged and ready to let the rough and tumble life of an ace reporter fall by the wayside. Engaged to Bruce Baldwin, a nice safe middle of the road insurance man, played by Ralph Bellamy.      

But see Walter, since the nasty divorce had gotten “religion,” well maybe had gotten religion, since he is remorseful about the bad way he treated Hildy and wants her back. The hook: the hook for any good and resourceful journalist- a big career-making or enhancing front page story. The bait for the hook- covering the execution of a small time grafter whose upcoming date with death is being played by the political establishment for the impending elections as the final nail in the coffin for the anarchist plague that had descended upon the city. The felon nothing but a snook and so Walter lures Hildy into looking into what the whole plan is all about. Gets her in so deep she can’t even think about poor ordinary nice guy Bruce and his very average life plans. In the end the snook gets a reprieve and the local politicos have egg all over their faces for their cover-ups. And Hildy and Walter go about their merry way. As for Bruce, well, he is on his way back to Albany-alone. You know Cary had this one in the bag from the beginning when you think about it. Just don’t let your good woman loose around him-okay.        

In Defense Of What Now Figures To Be “Premature” Anti-Fascist Fighters-Cary Grant And Ingrid Bergman in Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious” (1946)-A Film Review

In Defense Of What Now Figures To Be “Premature” Anti-Fascist Fighters-Cary Grant And Ingrid Bergman in Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious” (1946)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Fritz Taylor

Notorious, starring Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Claude Raines, directed by the late Sir Alfred Hitchcock ( I was not sure whether when somebody had the honorific “sir” before his name and it is not hereditary whether it sticks for eternity and nobody else around the publication knew either so lacking somebody connected with the College of Heraldry I will keep it and let the bloody queen and her minions figure it out), 1946

The regular reader may wonder why I, Fritz, Taylor, who usually does commentary on wars and military affairs and not film reviews drew this assignment. That can be answered with two remarks. First, sort of strangely given the casualty numbers I was the only one on the staff, regular or contributing as is my status, who had lost a relative, actually two relatives, my uncle on my mother’s side and a cousin on my father’s side in World War II. Specifically, in the European Theater where the Soviet-led and American-assisted struggle was against the Nazi, fascist scourge. The anti-fascist sentiment runs very deeply in my family, my Southern-roots family who take such things seriously, take the military seriously. The second was that of all the people associated with this publication who are actively, meaning not just writing about it but out on the streets, opposing the current wave of fascist expression in social media and out on those very same streets which goes under several names Nazi, White Nationalist, Alt-Right but they are birds of a feather it has been determined around the water cooler that I am the most vociferous and involved. Sam Lowell, who under normal circumstances would hit a home run on the subject matter of the film under review, Notorious, is not only in a running battle with a young up and coming colleague but has sensed that I can do greater justice to the subject and so persuaded Greg Green to let me take a stab at it.

I was not familiar with this film although as a kid I saw several Sir Alfred Hitchcock films, mostly in color like Vertigo, The Bird, and his re-make of his original The Man Who Knew Too Much so I was a bit shocked by the premise that the American government in 1946, in the person of Dev a federal agent of some sort, played by suave and solid Cary Grant, was gung-ho about tracing down some recalcitrant and nasty exiled Nazis and their agents down in Rio. More so since the reality was that the American government was, except for the hardened Nazis at Nuremburg and such were trying to rehabilitate this ramble in the struggle against the Soviet Union in the ice-cold Cold War. But what really galled me was the idea then, today too in the age of Trump, that the anti-fascist struggle was to be left in the hands of governmental agents. My every instinct rebelled against that false idea, those “alternative facts” knowing what has been happening in the past several years. 

But to the film on its own premises. We already know about Dev, about the federal agent part but that would get the agency he worked for now nowhere since the guys who they were dealing with, those rats down in Rio were hooked into what was going on, were wise to the idea that the feds were on to them. Dev and friends needed a “lure,” needed a stoolie and who better that the party girl daughter of a guy who was sentenced in federal court in Miami for treason against the United States and who subsequently took his own poison pill just like in the movies. Enter one Alicia, played but off-handedly, ah, beautiful to fall down and cry for Ingrid Bergman, she last seen in this space according to Seth Garth who keeps tabs on such things as Victor Lazlo’s wife and rock in Casablanca leaving Rick of Rick’s Café and Louie to form a beautiful friendship. After lots of hemming and hawing and a little off-hand romancing Alicia buys into the project although what role she will play is not yet determined. So off to Rio but don’t blame that torrid town for harboring rats and their ilk.

Enter the plan once Dev and Alicia get settled in. The “mark” one Alex, played by Claude Rains last seen in this space according to Seth Garth who as I have already mentioned keeps tabs on such things as Rick of Rick’s Café out of Casablanca that’s in Morocco next beautiful friend after Victor Lazlo and Ingrid take off on the last plane to Lisbon to lead the anti-fascist resistance in sunken Europe, who with an overbearing mother is central to the financing of what they plan will be the 4th Reich (and no mistakes this time letting a bum like Hitler grind things down to nothing). That is where the “lure” literally comes in. Somehow Alex and Alicia knew each other, and Alex had been smitten -and would still be smitten. 

Of course, that would complicate the Alicia-Dev budding romance but the fight against the rats and the closing down of their rathole had to come first. The thing got so carried away though that smitten Alex actually married Alicia as a test of whether she was sincerely smitten by him. Sorry Alex she only has eyes for Dev whatever eye wash both try to put out to the public. The trouble, big trouble for Alex, is that Alicia is not only beautiful, hey lets’ call it by its right name, drop dead beautiful, but smart and worms some secret info out of him in passing before he realizes that she is a freaking American agent. Alex tries to slowly poison Alicia to get out from under what is in store for him but ready Dev comes to the rescue and Alex has to play along. Play along to his doom once his confederates figure out Alicia knew too much via the Alex pipeline. The last scene is great at some level when one of the Nazi confederates calls Alex to come hither and the dreaded door closes behind him. Gone.               

If assuming the American government gave enough of a rat’s ass about crushing a fascist revival in the bud in 1946, which we now know was hooey, to put an agency on the task it is also wrong to assume that we can let the cretins, and here I mean today’s progeny of those cretins, take care of their own like that last scene mentioned above. That said maybe the best way to really look at this film in order to get my blood pressure down is to see it as yet another variation on old Hollywood chestnut-boy meets girl- that has saved a million films and we will deal with the political conclusions ourselves. Yeah, Sam was right to tag me for this review. Enough said.    

When The Con Is On-Enough Said -A Rebuttal To “When Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines-In Honor Of Icarus’s Progeny- With Cary Grant And Jean Arthur’s “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939) In Mind”

When The Con Is On-Enough Said -A Rebuttal To “When Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines-In Honor Of Icarus’s Progeny- With Cary Grant And Jean Arthur’s “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939) In Mind”  

By Will Bradley

Sometimes you have to bust a balloon. That is the case today after having recently finished reading my colleague Lance Lawrence’s fairy tale Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines-In Honor Of Icarus’s Progeny- With Cary Grant And Jean Arthur’s “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939) In Mind published September 21, 2018. In that piece Lance told a tale as told to him by a rum-dum, a guy named Billy Bartlett who claimed to have known a guy named Johnny Cielo, the greatest early aviator who could have been king the hill if he had the smarts of the Wright Brothers and the overweening desire of Howard Hughes. (A guy who had many aliases according to Billy although he didn’t remember many and he was not sure that Johnny Cielo was the guy’s real name which in any case I was not able to track down as a name having anything to do with aviation, airplanes, who knows if he every even had been on a plane, had bought an airline ticket.)

When I confronted Lance at the water cooler and asked him point blank whether he had checked sources he blanched and said no, he had taken the guy’s word for it. This lack of investigation strange as it may seem is not all that unusual in today’s 24/7/365 news craziness, not unusual in the profession at all. When I told Johnny that at that point I had found no record of this Johnny Cielo doing anything like what this rum-dum Billy said he challenged me to find out what was what. I accepted and here is the real story behind whatever this Johnny Cielo was about.  

The reason I was not able to get an accounting for Johnny Cielo is because this was not his real name either but tracing back from the Barranca airline episode with Letts Fagan’s grandson who is still running the family business down there his real name, the name on the contract which his grandfather kept was John Avian. According to what this grandson, Avery, said his grandfather had told him when he was a kid about how tough things were back when he had started out in Barranca and it was like the American Wild West, crazy with con men, grifters and desperadoes of all types. At some point Lett’s told Avery about Johnny, about how Johnny had stiffed him (the old man’s term) on the airline deal, the mail and supplies deal which would have been very lucrative, would have pull everybody on easy street if Johnny could have kept his cock in his pants, if he had had an honest bone in his body.         

Avery was kind of sketchy, as his grandfather had been to him, about how Johnny set down in Barranca except nobody who could fly and had anything going for them was not hanging around a then small- time banana republic. Nowhere. Lett’s had mentioned that Johnny had claimed all sorts of stuff including having a shot at the ground floor of Allegheny Airlines which would have put him on easy street. On the basis of those whiskey-sodden conversations they struck up a deal. And Johnny did pretty well for a while, until his luck changed and he started losing guys going over the hump, the Condor Pass and he didn’t have the nerve to go up and over himself (couldn’t check this basic act of cowardice out with Avery further but it has the ring of truth given later events) The long and short of it was when the contract looked like a dead duck Johnny blew town without as much as by your leave. Leaving Letts with no dough and nothing but a bunch of broken-down World War I-type airplanes.  

When I asked him about the Billy-fed stuff about Johnny bringing down Rita Hayworth Avery laughed. Johnny, he guessed thought his was, and maybe he was, a lady’s man, claimed all kinds of bigtime conquests. Letts told him when he was a teenager that Johnny had brought down a redhead looker when he hit town. Apparently he had tried to brush her off in America but she was determined for her own reasons to get out of the States. Name: Rita Hayworth. This around the time the real Rita had gone underground before hitting the sheets with the Aga Khan so Johnny played everybody with this Rita Hayworth gag. Avery said his grandfather said she was a looker, real good-looking but the only Rita, real Rita Johnny had was probably his old pin-up in his locker at the airbase, or strip of land called an airbase for lack of a better term, really just a dug-out dirt patch.

As for the “Rita” Johnny brought down she was some tramp he met in New Orleans and couldn’t shake. When Johnny went bust on the Barranca contract and split she was left as usual with Johnny when he went bust high and dry. Letts told Avery when he was an adult he let her use his backroom for taking care of some customers, gave great blow jobs, which meant at least that part of the whole Rita story was right before she skipped town without paying the old man his percentage (and whatever he was taking in trade).     

That leaves only Johnny’s heroic, heroic in some left-wing circles, exploits serving as supply sergeant to Fidel and the hombres. And of course his fateful deep blue sea splash. That Colonel Fiero who supposedly hired Johnny for hard cash was actually a double agent for the cocaine cartel who wanted to use Cuba as a base of operations for opening up their drug transits to hit the United States hard from ninety miles away. All bullshit. The last time anybody saw Johnny was when he was walking out of Jack’s in Key West with a good-looking redhead named Rita, that same Rita who stiffed Letts and Johnny had previously left high and dry so that part of the legend of a subsequent going under the sheets with “Rita Hayworth” was true, taking her, according to FAA records when they investigated the crash, along with him on his regular flight between Key West and Naples-Florida providing air service between those two points. Oh yes, the name they had listed on the flight plans was John Blade. So maybe the son of a bitch is still holed up somewhere with that luscious red-head. Lance don’t believe word one from rum-dums I learned that long ago but learned quickly to duck when they came my way.  

Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines-In Honor Of Icarus’s Progeny- With Cary Grant And Jean Arthur’s “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939) In Mind

Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines-In Honor Of Icarus’s Progeny- With Cary Grant And Jean Arthur’s “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939) In Mind 

By Lance Lawrence

[Thanks to reader Lanny Lake who sent us the message that we had inadvertently cut the last few paragraphs from the original publication leaving her wondering what happened to Johnny Cielo after he left Barranca. This missing piece is more important now since young writer Will Bradley has unearthed some interesting details about Johnny which will raise some eyebrows-Watch for the commentary coming soon. Greg Green-site manager]   

[I am only the recorder, the light-touch editor on this piece, since these are basically the recollections of Billy Bartlett, a guy I met in a bar in Miami while having a couple after having a tough day tracing down some leads on a story about the below the radar scene in Palm Beach after the Pulitzer dust-up blew over. The person I was supposed to interview did a “dixie” on me which is not all that unusual in the business but gives the why of why I was having a couple (many three, okay) when Billy approached when he noticed I was writing some notes, asked if I was a writer, I answered journalist and then he hit me with the question-“buy me a drink”-also not unusual in the profession when everybody not connected to the damn thing thinks everybody from cub reporters to big byline guys and gals have an endless expense account.

Billy’s “hook,” his experienced hook, was to tell me about a guy, about Johnny Cielo, who I had never heard of before and how he was one of the real aces of the early aviation industry, the barn-stormer end when the guys, and it was mainly guys despite Amelia Earhart and Sally Southern, ready did fly by the seat of their pants. Took awful chances to fight for Icarus’s honor and would rather die in the sky that stay earthbound-simple. That homage to Johnny, whom Billy had met as a young man in the 1950s when he was hitch-hiking to the Florida Keys and wound up in Jack’s in Key West where Johnny hung his hat, was just the icing on the cake for the real hook which was that Johnny, for dough as always with these mercenary fly-boys, had met his end in the deep blue Caribbean seas running  guns or something for Fidel and his guys in the hills of Cuba.   

No question when Billy flamed that story he had my attention, especially after those four drinks and that “dixie” stand-up I had visions of a big sassy story which I felt certain that my editor, Greg Green, would spring for. Just for grins Billy told me that Johnny had bedded one Rita Hayworth the big Hollywood hot flash to guys before she went over to Morocco and the Aga Khan. I was all ears after that since I remember my father told me that his father had had a Rita Hayworth pin-up in his locker when he was in the service during World War II. He had showed me a photograph of her and I could see what he, what my grandfather, was all itchy about every time he mentioned her name. So here it is. L.L.]

*********

A tear comes to my eyes every time I hear the name Johnny Cielo, yes, Johnny, one of Icarus’s latter- day sons who was a pioneer in aviation when that was tricky business-when flying by the seat of your pants really was something more than a quaint saying. (By the way for passport trouble purposes, for cons and scams, for ducking the law, John Law he called them Johnny Cielo had many aliases; Johnny Too Bad, Johnny Blade, Johnny Blaze, Blaze Johnson, Johnny Icarus, Izzy Johns and who knows how many other those are just the ones I remember but I will use his real name, assuming that it is for my purposes here). Yes, Johnny was a piece of work, was somebody who gave as good as he got and who had that flight dream from very early on, from the first day he heard about Wilbur and Orville Wright and their successors. Johnny though was strictly a fly boy adventurer, although he could have had a piece of Alleghany Airlines and lived on easy street for the rest of his life. Could have been flying Piper Clubs for the country club rubes to gawk over. But our Johnny was not built that way, didn’t want to become an extended cycle repair shop guy, didn’t have Howard Hughes’ overweening desire to own it all, whatever “it” was for the moment.       

Some people, even people knowledgeable about the history of aviation in America, have claimed they never heard of Johnny Cielo until you mention the Barranca air service set-up. Then they are all ears-not so much about the aviation part, the desperate flights to get the mail out, to get stuff delivered to impossible places, but about Johnny’s red-hot affair with film siren of the 1930s and 1940s Rita Hayworth. Yeah, there was plenty of truth to his exploits with the females, with high class dames like Rita back then. Rita who was every military guy’s favorite pin-up and if not then second. Johnny led Rita a merry chase, had her abandoning that very promising and lucrative Hollywood career to follow him to the wilds of Barranca down in Central America and then ditched her leaving her no choice but to grab the next best thing (this before the Aga Khan took his run at her and snagged her for a while-even “a while” most guy’s idea of heaven). Left Rita for some vaudeville tramp down on her uppers, somebody who couldn’t even stand in the same room as Rita but Johnny was funny that way-would stay with one woman just so long and that not long. Told them straight out his fly-boy life was it and he did not expect a woman, wouldn’t ask a woman to follow him where he was going. And he was right, just ask Rita who did and got not even a by your leave.   

Maybe it is better to begin at the beginning, or at least how Johnny got down on his own uppers so bad he had to take a shot a running a fool’s errant airline down in sunny Banana Republic Barranca. Johnny got deep into running dope, you know, marijuana, opium stuff like that way before most people even know what the hell illegal drugs were about from sunny Mexico up north. Did it for a few years, made a ton of money and proceeded to blow it on dames, various experimental airplane projects and hand-outs to every drifter he ran across. Then one day an agent for whatever cartel he was working for at the time, such things are murky and best left murky told him he was through, that they had some new boy, their boy who would run the merchandise.

Johnny thereafter needed work, needed it bad to keep up with the fresh but expensive Rita. Nothing doing around America for a guy whose last job was a dope smuggler so he headed south to Central America when his old friend and comrade Letts Fagan said he had a deal for him if he came fast. The deal was a secured route for a mail and express delivery for everything south of Mexico to what the hell Antarctica if he wanted to go that far if they could set up the route through some pretty tough terrain in the days when propeller was king and planes still wobbly in inclement weather. Heading out he told Rita he was going, he didn’t expect her to follow, wouldn’t ask her to but can you believe she said “let’s go” and as a sign of her own seriousness she was ready the next day to travel-a world record maybe for a woman with a big wardrobe and plenty of luggage to pull off. Johnny was impressed-and pleased.      

Things started out pretty well for Johnny and Rita and Johnny and his new airline. Looked like he would meet all the deadlines imposed by the contract and by his own daring. Pulled a few rabbits out of the hat to get through a bunch of horrible weather to deliver whatever there was to deliver-typical Johnny Cielo magic. Then the roof caved in, or rather that tramp from some northward-bound tramp steamer trampled into town looking for some sweet sugar daddy- or a Johnny kind of guy. She wasn’t choosey especially when she found out that Johnny was carrying Rita in tow. Two minutes after she saw him she had him in a backroom at Letts’ restaurant doing whatever she wanted, whatever he wanted. (We are all adults and know what was what but when some guy, some Johnny latter-day devotee wrote up his biography the guy left the hard sexual description part out, just like they were doing in the films in those days but you know as well as I do, and I know, because before the end Johnny told me, it was oral sex, a blow job, said she was good at that, Rita too, but you had to coax Rita and not the tramp.)

Okay even tramps have names, as if it mattered to Johnny or any other guy when a woman leads him to some backroom, so hers was Jean, Jean Smith I think Johnny said she called herself. Like I said Johnny had a fistful of aliases, so she probably did too. She was from nowhere, had done nothing but was something new and shiny for Johnny and that was that. Of course two dames, a glamour gal and a tramp or any combination thereof, working the same guy in the small blistered and balmy town are not going to make anything work in the end. That was when Rita blew town, went back to Hollywood to be knocked off by the Aga Khan for a while until she got bored. (The funny thing and even that biography guy didn’t know about the situation until I sent him a letter and he looked the stuff up after Rita blew that Moslem prince off and went back-where else Hollywood not Brooklyn or wherever she was from she and Johnny went under the sheets again for a while until she blew him off-nice trick. Johnny always spoke highly of his sassy redhead after that though-always had that glean in his eye when he mentioned her name. 

The tramp won round one. A big win but Johnny was all business for a while trying to make the nut with that fucking two-bit contract that must have been written up by a Wall Street lawyer it had so many escape clauses for the owners. Johnny had by his own reckoning, a half dozen ex-World War I planes of no repute, or something like that to get the mail and goods over the hump. Tough going, very tough as he lost a few guys who like him would rather die than not fly so they took risks, big risks, just for the hell of it. And nobody, Johnny made sure of that, mourned out loud about the dead guy, grabbed his smack sack possessions and divvied them up so no moony stuff. After one guy got, a guy who was supposed to buy this Jean a steak when he tried to make a play for her behind Johnny’s back, to sit with the angels, that what they called it she sniffled up and Johnny told her to shut up or follow Rita (Johnny could be cutting). Here’s the real deal Johnny part though-five minutes after the guy flamed out Johnny was a sky pilot taking the undelivered load over the hump and back in some kind of hurricane. (That “hump” not the Burma World War II hump that almost broke the backs of English and American pilots but through Condor Pass the next country over from Barranca.)   

Of course knowing Johnny like I did it came as no surprise that things didn’t work out in Barranca, he couldn’t get Letts’ operation going by that freaking Wall Street deadline and he had to skip town owning everybody and their brother and sister dough-including a ton to Letts who swore if Johnny Too Bad, that was the alias he was using down there apparently and not a bad idea with the riff-raff that went through that place, cutthroats, grifters, midnight stabbers, and the like the one time I went through there in a homage to the places Johnny set down on after I found out he had passed away. Naturally the tramp, that Jean whatever her sexual attractions and practices, once Johnny had no dough went on to the next best thing-whatever male was walking with dough in his pockets. As for Johnny he went free-lancing for a few years staying away from any spots where he owed dough. Picked up a few floozies and left them and headed for Key West where I met him in Jack’s, the hangout for guys like Hemingway and Giles, women like Selma Johns and Loretta Oldfield if you remember all those names.

That is about it except to grab the end, grab how Johnny fell down. Somehow about 1957, early in the year a guy approached  Johnny, a guy who called himself Colonel Fiero, something like that, who claimed to have been on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War (as if Johnny gave a fuck what a guy’s credentials were as long as the proposition made sense, it involved flying, the more dangerous the better and the dough was big and in cash) who wanted Johnny to fly from some point in Mexico to the Sierra Madres in Cuba. To fly to Fidel and his band of rural fighters who needed arms and supplies. I never did get the place in Mexico, Johnny wouldn’t say even to me and I don’t know how many flights in and out Johnny made. Probably a guy like Johnny didn’t even know he was supplying revolutionaries, guys opposed to the guy who was running Cuba for the Americans. In any case one fateful night Johnny cashed his check, took at dive down in the deep blue sea Caribbean from what some sailor who saw what happened told it. Yeah, every time I think about that bastard (he had stiffed me too for dough more than once in those days) I shed a tear.          

When Sylvia Sidney Battered Her Eyelashes-The Once And Future…Princess- Ms. Sidney and Cary Grant’s “Thirty-Day Princess” (1934)- Film Review

When Sylvia Sidney Battered Her Eyelashes-The Once And Future…Princess- Ms. Sidney and Cary Grant’s “Thirty-Day Princess” (1934)- Film Review

DVD Review

By Lance Lawrence

Thirty Day Princess, starring Sylvia Sidney, Cary Grant, Edward Arnold, 1934

Lest one forget this country, this United States in a republic, yes, republic with a small “r,” despite what fragility that designation has come upon of late, of the past fifty or sixty years. Our forebears, oh you know this but let me get it off my chest, our winter soldiers when that meant something, drove the British, dear Mother England, into the deep blue sea, into the Atlantic and thereafter, what did Ben Franklin say, formed a republic-if we could keep it. But there has been a lot of backsliding on the question, on the question of giving a pass to every royal Tom, Dick and Harry. Of every Kate, Jane and Mary. Of worrying to a frazzle about what Princess somebody was wearing, or not wearing, of giving a pass to all kinds of stuff our forebears, rightly, would have blanched at while decayed royalty goes about its unsavory business. There I have it off my chest. What brought me to the froth was a look at the movie under review, The Thirty-Day Princess, where in the heart of the Great Depression, in 1934, in this country (and worldwide), fairy tale princesses had center stage. Which told me before I remembered about Henry James and his robber baron era novels which had plain, ordinary, rich Americans, male and female, pining away for some title, some sign if formal nobility to separate them from the hoi polloi, that this infatuation has a long pedigree.

I have left the reader in the lurch enough let’s get down to brass tacks. The off-kilter king of Taronia, Tiberia, something like that, some mythical European country does it really matter since it is mythical needed cash, big amounts of cash, to do the kingship business up right and to live in the splendor he was used to in the old days. Along comes Mr. American Moneybags, Mr. Plutocrat, does it really matter his name, played by perennial unlikable guy Edward Arnold, a guy who didn’t jump out the window in 1929 and had been working the chump bond market to get back on easy street offered to get the king 50 mil, 50 million just walking around money now that even pan-handlers would turn their nose up at now but big dough back then.

The problem: times were tough, and investors were wary of foreign market bonds after all kinds of floats had gone bust so they needed a hook, needed a front. The front turned out to be the king’s daughter Princess something does it really matter the name, royalty okay, played by battering eyes Sylvia Sidney who could tidy things up with a trip to America to hustle the bonds, put the king and commission crazy Moneybags back on jump street. She went but early on in New York she contracted mumps and would be out of action for, okay, thirty days if you read the title of the film before reading this screed. The deal was off, done, forget jump street. In that case though you would have underestimated commission crazy Moneybags. He came up with the bright idea of getting a substitute who looks like the princess. Guess what he finds- one who looks amazingly like the princess, Nancy something, does it really matter her name, played by a woman who really did look like Sylvia Sidney but who was a down at the heel actor living on cheap street between skimpy parts. She grabbed the role, the dough and maybe something for the resume after playing hard to get.

Enter Marshall, does it really matter the name as you can now guess, a muckraking newspaper publisher who has a bullseye on the back of crooked Mr. Moneybags, played by pretty Cary Grant in his early career, who was ready to move mountains to squash Moneybags’ operation. Until he met the “princess.” Then all caution was thrown to the winds and he acted like any other American who has forgotten that this country is a republic with a small “r.” He fell for her big-time and in an unseemly manner if you asked me. The “princess” fell for him hard too so what we have here is the two millionth variation on the old Hollywood tried and true “boy meets girl” trope that that glamor town made into a very profitable art form. Problem: princess turned actress was living a lie, was just a hireling once Marshall somebody gets on to the grift.       

Don’t worry though things smoothed out a little when Marshall ( I don’t have to say “somebody” at this late part of the piece, do I) realized that he loves that democratic down at the heels actress whose heart really was of gold and that was that. Needless to say although Taronia got its bonds money Mr. Moneybags got his comeuppance too. Only in America.

A Slice Of Life-French Style-Beauty Galore In The Days Of Old-Maybe-Cary Grant’s “Kiss And Make-Up” (1934)-A Film Review

A Slice Of Life-French Style-Beauty Galore In The Days Of Old-Maybe-Cary Grant’s “Kiss And Make-Up” (1934)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Kiss and Make-Up, starring Cary Grant, Helen Mack, Genevie Tobin, 1934        

New Introductory note by Sarah Lemoyne: I want to thank site manage Greg Green for manning up to what had happened to me in losing the coveted Hammer Production psychological thriller six-film series due to what he confessed was office politics and the cruel realities of the cutthroat publishing business. I had intended on leaving but his offer of giving me both the Star Wars and Marvel Comic studio film reviews was too good to pass up. Read below to find out just how treacherous this journalism business really is-stuff they don’t have a clue about in journalism schools.

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Admittedly, as I have freely admitted in my bracketed introduction to my first film review, I have a lot to learn about journalism, the ins and outs of journalism, and the internal politics of who and why certain personalities get, or don’t get, certain reviews. That naiveté on my part got me caught in a vise right after my second review of the six-part Hammer Production psychological thrillers when wizened and gnarled ancient Sam Lowell unceremoniously grabbed the series from under me on the basis of some good old boy connection. In that sense I learned fast that you make your own breaks in this world and that you had best defend your turf in this cutthroat business. I get that. What I don’t get is when a turkey of a film, well not a turkey but one that could have been left on the cutting floor and nobody would have cried one single tear, like this Kiss and Make-Up is assigned to me and I am clueless about what to say about the thing except I am fully confused by the point.               

That is when my newfound friend and mentor Seth Garth gave me some pearls of wisdom that he had learned at the feet of that same gnarled Sam Lowell who I refuse to talk to these days as one can understand. Seth told me Sam told him that when all else fails always go to a “slice of life” hook informing a new younger audience of what these old- time films showed about life in those periods. That will be my hook here although in a quirky way.

(By the way I am not talking to Sam especially since I have heard a rumor that the old cretin in taking over my Hammer series has decided that he had to give his take on my first two published reviews in order to make the series his own. Being from all observations practically senile he is looking for me, for Sarah Lemoyne, to write those reviews and basically trash my own reviews as so much insignificant babble since as a stringer I am at the beck and call of this mountebank. He had, has, a well-deserved reputation for either, at least in the old days, just doing a recopy job on the press releases the studios handed out or having a stringer like Leslie Dumont, who clued me in of on Sam’s having stringers write the stuff under his name, write it for him   

Probably for some women, maybe more in the past than now, although maybe I have been sheltered a bit by being around professional women, personal beauty and appearance drives their lives. That is the premise the studio was working on in this wacky sent-up of the very lucrative beauty business where handsome Cary Grant is in Paris as a doctor specializing in make-overs for the rich and ugly women who need all the help they can get in his temple of beauty. (Why the film had to be set in Paris, per se, instead of London or New York since nobody including French Nationals speaks French except I heard that Paris was, and still is, one of the beauty and fashion centers of the world with people like Coco Chanel and Christian Dior running amok). What the good doctor was trying to do is laughable by today’s plastic surgery standards where a tuck here and a pinch there will do wonders, thank you, exercise and diet standards but we will chalk this up to the times and let the chips fall where they may.

Now Cary, whom along with Clark Gable, was my grandmother’s idea of manly handsomeness and to an extend I see her point is not only running this beauty temple but sampling the wares of his transformations, especially one Madame Caron, who has not only been transformed but has become the bane of her husband since she came under Cary’s care. The solution, for the cuckolded husband anyway: sue for divorce with Cary as the co-respondent, the alienator of affections, in those tough divorce times especially in Catholic France in the 1930s when the Church still had some sway. That done Madame and Cary get married and run to the French Rivera for their honeymoon but find they are incompatible since she had become a beauty maven. (By the way what passes for beauty, genuine or bought, in those days would be hard-pressed to even get a date out in today’s meat markets since today pretzel thin upper body with long thin legs and long hair un-permed, or the appearance of un-permed hair is what is considered attractive by fashion magazine and cinematic standards.)           

   

Of course that was only the “front” story. Handsome Doc, who apparently had sold out his professional credentials for filthy lucre after medical school rather than making some research breakthrough that could lessen the ills of humankind, in the end sees the error of his ways. Made to see those errors by his smitten (with him) secretary and chief fixer Anne who is dewy fresh and who could today get dates without lifting a finger both as to looks and brains. Seth tells me this is an old Hollywood “hook” in the storied history of cinematic boy meets girl lines which have salvaged half the films ever made. If you don’t follow the bouncing ball you lose the fact that everything is heading toward some final romance between this pair, despite Cary’s ill-advised marriage, despite the playboy affect, despite the blindness to a genuine companion against some floosy affair.

In the end after being kicked metaphysically in the head Cary finally gets it. If that doesn’t give enough of a slice of life about what was fashionable in a previous age then let me throw this out. This is film is touted as a pre-Code film meaning after the enforcement of the Code came into play that each and every possible connotation of sex, sexual desire, even sexual knowledge was under pressure from the religious crazies and zanies banned from the screen. This included any nude scenes, profanity, erotic touching and the like. Those later post-Code films, especially with scenes of  married, happily married, couples in separate marital beds, certainly could provide a slice of life for the times but what passes for the sexually provocative in the pre-Code period would be laughed at today by eight- year olds with a computer and access to the Internet. How is that for slice of life.        

“The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strained”-Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman’s Talk Of The Town” (1942)-A Film Review

“The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strained”-Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman’s Talk Of The Town” (1942)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Bart Webber

Talk of the Town, starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Ronald Colman, 1942

We, meaning those of us corner boys left from the old Acre working class neighborhood in North Adamsville still standing like Frank Jackman, Jack Callahan and Allan Jackson always talked the talk about a little rough justice in this wicked old world even in high school because when the economic pie was dealt out we sure as hell did get any of the stuff. Whatever gnawed at us it wasn’t always clear what we were trying to get from the lady with the scales (I refuse to say blind because while it may look good on statues it sure as hell isn’t her real condition favoring the Mayfair swells who could buy the justice-could buy the freaking statue too). I don’t know if it was from the law, from society or whatever but it gnawed at us and still does. That is why I grabbed the review of this film under review, the classic Talk of the Town because there is a very interesting tension between the theory of justice and what actually happens out on the streets, the place where we looked for justice in the old days-maybe now too.    

Let me tell you though I had to grab this one right from under Cary Grant-crazed Laura Perkins nose so I could make my points when all she would do is drool or whatever the minute the poor bastard comes on the screen all damned and framed, already to take the big step off if things go another way. There was talk too of Frankie Riley taking a shot at the film since he is a lawyer but I was able to convince Greg Green the guy who hands out the assignments that the points made in the film were too important to let a lawyer within fifty miles of the thing.

Here’s the play as Sam Lowell and now Laura Perkins has picked it up as well. Leopold, Jesus Leopold, Cary Grant’s role is a corner boy in his own right stirring up trouble and trying to get that rough justice that we were always short-end looking for. He has a huge frame built around him from one of the factory town big shots who calls the shots for burning down a factory with the foreman inside. Knowing he is cooked, literally if he stays in jail and let’s that funky lady do her thing he takes a powder, escapes that cellblock. Finds sanctuary in Nora, Miss Stiller’s house, the part played by Jean Arthur, which is to be rented to a big time dean of a law school on sabbatical and which she is preparing for his arrival. Nora and Leopold know each other from town and school where she teaches and he begs her for help, although not too hard in the end since his smooth manner and boyish charm, the qualities Laura Perkins goes crazy over. Won over or at least neutralized big time professor, played by old time matinee idol Ronald Colman, a Harvard Law School graduate, you know the law school where the classmate next to you, maybe you, might sit on the United States Supreme Court, now Scotus in twitter speak, some day, comes through the door all great at legal theory but a little short on that street justice, we, and Leopold, are always craving.

The play then turns to Leopold and Nora keeping him from the gallows and the good professor from turning this damn fugitive from justice in for his day in court. That tension finally gets resolved at least partially by the good professor winking at his theory a little and working as he should have from the get go like seven dervishes to prove Leopold innocent and that the town big wig is the criminal. Of course there has to be a bit of romance and romantic tension with two matinee idols on the bill but youth must be served and Leopold carries off the prize. Oh yeah to prove the quality of mercy is not strained Harvard boy gets that seat on Scotus-figures. Great film which won a fistful of awards.                

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-A Pauper Comes Of Age- For the Seaside Heights South Elementary School Class Of 1958-With Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-A Pauper Comes Of Age- For the Seaside Heights South Elementary School Class Of 1958-With Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen In Mind

By Allen Jackson

[Hell even “the projects” boys, hell, maybe especially projects boys have dreams of grabbing some slumming Cinderella and turning the course of their lives around having that cachet nightingale wrapped around your very live dreams. I know I did, did three times later on when I got the marrying bug and scored three very bright, very pretty but most important very upper- middle class young women, no not rich like in the Scotty Fitzgerald sense that is almost too much to expect from someone born down in the mud, way down like I was. Of course that marrying bug took its toll what with alimonies, pay on time alimonies buster-or else-harsh talk from those so-called gentile Waspish wags and that fistful of nice brood of kids college tuitions that I am still clawing to get under control and which is the undertow of why I was in Frisco last year and why those horrible rumors about me working some whorehouse pimping with Madame La Rue anywhere from Frisco to Buenos Aires, Frisco where she is-without me- and blessed old neighborhood corner boy Timmy Riley known out there in North Beach for many years now as Ms. Judy Garland ( I think Timmy uses Miss to go back to the times but I will keep up with the times on this one.) who was supposed to be my transvestite lover and me high as a kite of sweet boy-girl opium bong pipes. WTF.

Strangely, or maybe not so strangely when I was in high school at North Adamsville High in the early 1960s I had nada, nothing for dates with any girls from high school or even from North Adamsville because of that social stigma which attached to guys down in the mud. The mud that I have never been washed clean from and in some senses, senses about sharing my fate with the poor people of the earth as Cuban nationalist Jose Marti said in his song made famous in America by Pete Seeger and the folk revivalists of the early 1960s, I don’t want washed away. In that former sense the caked mud sense, Markin, the aforementioned Scribe who would also have three marriages, three quick marriages before he went to ground down Sonora way, was ahead of me even though he too never got date number one from high school girl classmates or again from the town. (We didn’t either of us go dateless since under Scribe’s tutelage I got a few dates when we hit the late fading faux beat complete with black beret scene and the early folk scene over in Harvard Square but none of that was for serious dough young women but the arty type which we both fell head over heels for in those days).

So it is a little hard for me to tell a sweet little sixteen story straight up like Fritz Taylor could do up in high school New Hampshire, a guy I, we, met out in Southern California some years after our respective Vietnam War tours of duty. Met through lightening rod Scribe at first when I was just getting started on my series about those lost brothers who were having a tough time, as Fritz was, as I was although I didn’t know it until I went down in the mud again with my fellow soldier brothers who couldn’t adjust to the “real” world after “Nam, and as the most surprising of all the Scribe was but we were clueless about whatever pains and sadnesses possessed his beautiful bastard heart. No question what Fritz had to say below was one hundred percent or close just from seeing him with the young women out West who fell all over him even in his desperation times when he really should not have been dealing with women at all (something he denied at the time but has acknowledged since proving you can learn something in this wicked old world). So when he talks of some Cinderella princess that disturbed his sleep, some virginal sweet sixteen from the early 1960s you know that he was in synch with the times, keep his head down and ready for anything. Allan Jackson] 

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They're really rockin Boston
In Pittsburgh, P. A.
Deep in the heart of Texas
And 'round the Frisco Bay
All over St. Louis
Way down in New Orleans
All the Cats wanna dance with
Sweet Little Sixteen

Sweet Little Sixteen
She's just got to have
About half a million
Framed autographs
Her wallet's filled with pictures
She gets 'em one by one
She gets so excited
Watch her look at her run

Oh mommy mommy
Please may I go
It's such a sight to see
Somebody steal the show
Oh daddy daddy
I beg of you
Whisper to mommy
It's all right with you

Cause they'll be rockin on bandstand
In Philadelphia P.A.
Deep in the heart of Texas
And 'round the Frisco Bay
All over St. Louis
Way Down in New Orleans
All the Cats wanna dance with
Sweet Little Sixteen

Sweet Little Sixteen
She's got the grown up blues
Tight dress and lipstick
She's sportin' high heal shoes
Oh, but tomorrow morning
She'll have to chang her trend
And be sweet sixteen
And back in class again

Cause they'll be rockin on bandstand
In Philadelphia P.A.
Deep in the heart of Texas And 'round the Frisco Bay
All over St. Louis Way Down in New Orleans
All the Cats wanna dance with
Sweet Little Sixteen

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This is the way my old corner boy, Fritz Taylor, from down in “the projects” told me the story one night years later when we were sitting on the grey granite steps of our high school, Miller High, in Seaside Heights, that’s in New Hampshire. Those projects by the way, all white projects  unlike the ones you hear about lately which are mostly populated by minorities, had originally been build right after World War II to help stem the heavy demand for housing from returning servicemen with young families and not enough dough to finance a house. The original idea as well was that the housing was temporary and had been built with a certain careless abandon by some low-bidder contractors. Fritz’s and my family had been among those families in the 1950s who did not get to participate in the “golden age” and so we were long time tenants all through our school years until we graduated from Miller High. Between the isolated location of the projects and the high number of kids the place had it had its own elementary school, Snug Harbor (sounds nice right, however, that school was also expected to be temporary and built as such by those same low-bidder contractors), where we both had gone through all six grades together (we started in the time before kindergarten became a step in one’s education). I am telling you about this because the story happened down there long before we got to high school.

So there we were sitting there on the steps, no dough in our pockets, our main guy for a ride out of town, Benny, also a corner boy, on a family vacation up in Maine, no girls in hand, or prospects either since any girls we were interested in had no interest us either because we had not car or because we were from the projects, come to think of it forget that last part it was because we were car-less and that world was filled with guys with cars, “boss cars,” swooping down on the interesting girls, talking slowly. Talking kind of softly for us although loudly or softly no one would have been around to heard us that warm summer night with about six weeks to go before school started again and we could go back and start our junior year, kind of dreamy too really about the first times we had been smitten by a girl, not necessarily a forever smitten thing but with a bug that disturbed our sleep (forever then being maybe a month or six weeks, no more except for some oddball couples who found love and stayed together for the next fifty years if you can believe that in this day in age).

Yeah, that is exactly the way to put it, when some frail disturbed our sleep, the first of many sleepless nights on that subject.  (That “frail” a localism for girl, heavily influenced by our corner boy with the car Benny watching too many 1930s and 1940s George Raft or James Cagney gangster and Humphrey Bogart hard-boiled private detective movies.) So we were sitting there thinking about how we were now chasing other dreams, well, maybe not other dreams but older versions, sweet sixteen versions of that same dream.  Of course at sixteen it was all about girls but as it turned out that subject had its own pre-history way back when. Just ask Fritz Taylor if you see him.

Fritz Taylor, if he thought about it at all and at times like that dream vision night at sixteen on the steps in front of the high school he might have, probably would have said that he had his history hat on again like when he was a kid, loving history or even the thought of history since Miss Winot blew him away with talk of ancient Greeks and Romans. Blew him away so that when he got in trouble with that teacher for saying something fresh, and it really was, a swear word expression, “what the fuck,” that he heard all the time around his house which he thought everybody said when they were angry, assigned him a paper to write of five hundred words and he wrote an essay about Greek democracy which she actually read to the class she was so impressed. Miss Winot, blew him away more when she freaked him out with talk of Egypt and Pharaoh times with the Pyramids and the slaves and all the times he had begged his older brother to drive him all the way down to the art museum in Boston to look at old Pharaoh stuff some guys from Harvard had unearthed. But all that is just stuff to let you know what kind of guy Fritz was in elementary school before he wised up, or kind of wised up, in high school. Funny one time when I wanted to take the bus down to Boston when I got the Pharaoh bug in high school he dismissed me out of hand. Done that, he said. So that night he had his history hat on so I knew I was in for a story, a bloody silly story if I knew Fritz but we had nothing better to do so I let him go on. Let him go on that sixteen years old summer night when out of the blue, the memory time blue, he thought about more modern history, thought about her, thought about fair Rosimund.

No, before you get all set to turn to some other thing, some desperate alternate other thing, to do rather than read Fritz’s poignant little story, this is not some American Revolution founding fathers (or mothers, because old-time Abigail Adams may have been hovering in some background granite-chiseled slab grave in a very old-time Quincy cemetery while the events to be related occurred since Fritz was crazy about her too once he figured out she was the real power behind John and John Quincy) or some bold Massachusetts abolitionist regiment, the fighting 54^th, out of the American Civil War 150th anniversary memory history like Fritz used to like to twist the tail around when you knew him, or his like. This is about “first love” so rest easy.

Fritz, that early summer’s night, was simply trying to put his thoughts together and figured that he would write something, write something for those who could stand it, those fellow members of our class who could stand to know that story. Although, at many levels that was a very different experience from that of the average, average Miller High class member the story had a universal quality that he thought might amuse them, amuse them that is until the name, the thought of the name, the mist coming from out of his mouth at the forming of the name, holy of holies, Rosimund, stopped him dead in his tracks and forced him to tell me that story and to write that different story later.

Still, once the initial trauma wore off, Fritz thought what better way to celebrate that milestone on the rocky road to surviving childhood than to take a trip down memory lane, that Rosimund-strewn memory lane. Those days although they were filled with memorable incidents, good and bad, paled beside this Rosimund-related story that cut deep, deep into his brown-haired mind, and as it turned out one that he have not forgotten after all. So rather than produce some hokey last dance, last elementary school sweaty-palmed dance failure tale, some Billie Bradley-led corner boy down in the back of Snug Harbor doo wop be-bop into the night luring stick and shape girls like lemmings from the sea on hearing those doo wop harmonies, those harmonies meant for them, the sticks and shapes that is, or some wannabe gangster retread tale, or even some Captain Midnight how he saved the world from the Cold War Russkies with his last minute-saving invention Fritz preferred to relate a home truth, a hard home truth to be sure, but the truth. Here is his say:

At some point in elementary school a boy is inevitably supposed to learn, maybe required to, depending on the whims of your school district’s supervisory staff and maybe also what your parents expected of such schools, to do two intertwined socially-oriented tasks - the basics of some kind of dancing and to be paired off with, dare I say it, a girl in that activity. After all that is what it is there for isn’t it. At least it was that way a few years back, and if things have changed, changed dramatically in that regard, you can fill in your own blanks experience. But here that is where fair sweet Rosimund comes in, the paired-off part.

I can already hear your gasps, dear reader, as I present this scenario. You are ready to flee, boy or girl flee, to some safe attic hideaway, to reach for some dusty ancient comfort teddy bear, or for the venturesome, some old sepia brownie camera picture album safely hidden in those environs, but flee, no question, at the suggestion of those painful first times when sweaty-handed, profusely sweaty-handed, boy met too-tall girl on the dance floor (age too-tall girls hormone shooting up first, later things settled down, a little). Now for those who are hopped up, or even mildly interested, in such ancient rituals you may be thinking, oh well, this won’t be so bad after all since I am talking about the mid-1950s and they had Dick Clark’s American Bandstand on the television to protect us from having to dance close, what with those funny self-expression dance moves like the Stroll and the Hully-Gully that you see on re-runs. And then go on except, maybe, the last dance, the last close dance that spelled success or failure in the special he or she night so let me tell you how really bad we had it in the plaid 1960s. Wrong.

Oh, of course, we were all after school black and white television-addled and addicted making sure that we got home by three in the afternoon to catch the latest episode of the American Bandstand saga about who would, or wouldn’t, dance with that cute girl in the corner (or that leering Amazon in the front). That part was true, true enough. But here we are not talking fun dancing, close or far away, but learning dancing, school-time dancing, come on get with it. What we are talking about in my case is that the dancing part turned out to be the basics of country bumpkin square-dancing (go figure, for a city boy, right?). Not only did this clumsy, yes, sweaty-palmed, star-crossed ten-year-old boy have to do the basic “swing your partner” and some off-hand “doze-zee dozes(sic)” but I also had to do it while I was paired, for this occasion, with the girl that I had a “crush” on, a serious crush on, and that is where Rosimund really enters the story.

Rosimund see, moreover, was not from “the projects” but from one of the new single-family homes, ranch-style homes that the up and coming middle-class were moving into up the road. In case you didn’t know, or have forgotten, I grew up on the “wrong side of the tracks” down at the Seaside Heights Housing Authority apartments. The rough side of town, okay. You knew that the minute I mentioned the name, that SHHA name, and rough is what you thought, and that is okay. Now. But although I had started getting a handle on the stick "projects" girls I was totally unsure how to deal with girls from the “world.” And Rosimund very definitely was from the world. I will not describe her here; although I could do so even today, but let us leave it at her name. Rosimund. Enchanting name, right? 

Thoughts of white-plumed knighted medieval jousts against some black-hooded, armored thug knight for the fair maiden’s hand, or for her favors (whatever they were then, mainly left unexplained, although we all know what they are now, and are glad of it)

Nothing special about the story so far, though. Even I am getting a little sleepy over it. Just your average one-of-the-stages-of-the-eternal-coming-of-age-story. I wish. Well, the long and short of it was that the reason we were practicing this square-dancing was to demonstrate our prowess before our parents in the school gym. Nothing unusual there either. After all there is no sense in doing this type of school-time activity unless one can impress one's parents. I forget all the details of the setup of the space for demonstration day and things like that but it was a big deal. Parents, refreshments, various local dignitaries, half the school administrators from downtown whom I will go to my grave believing could have cared less if it was square-dancing or basket-weaving because they would have ooh-ed and ah-ed us whatever it was. But that is so much background filler. Here is the real deal. To honor the occasion, as this was my big moment to impress Rosimund, I had, earlier in the day, cut up my dungarees to give myself an authentic square-dancer look, some now farmer brown look but back then maybe not so bad.

I thought I looked pretty good. And Rosimund, looking nice in some blue taffeta dress with a dark red shawl thing draped and pinned across her shoulders (although don’t quote me on that dress thing, what did a ten-year old boy, sister-less, know of such girlish fashion things. I was just trying to keep my hands in my pockets to wipe my sweaty hands for twirling time, for Rosimund twirling time) actually beamed at me, and said I looked like a gentleman farmer. Be still my heart. Like I said I thought I looked pretty good, and if Rosimund thought so well then, well indeed. And things were going nicely. That is until my mother, sitting in a front row audience seat as was her wont, saw what I had done to the pants. In a second she got up from her seat, marched over to me, and started yelling about my disrespect for my father's and her efforts to clothe me and about the fact that since I only had a couple of pairs of pants how could I do such a thing. In short, airing the family troubles in public for all to hear. That went on for what seemed like an eternity.

Thereafter I was unceremoniously taken home by said irate mother and placed on restriction for a week. Needless to say my father also heard about it when he got home from that hard day’s work that he was too infrequently able to get to keep the wolves from the door, and I heard about it for weeks afterward. Needless to say I also blew my 'chances' with dear, sweet Rosimund.

Now is this a tale of the hard lessons of the nature of class society that I am always more than willing to put in a word about? Just like you might have remembered about me back in the day. Surely not. Is this a sad tale of young love thwarted by the vagaries of fate? A little. Is this a tale about respect for the little we had in my family? Perhaps. Was my mother, despite her rage, right? Well, yes. Did I learn something about being poor in the world? Damn right. That is the point. …But, oh, Rosimund.

The Rich Really Are Different From You And Me, Part II-Cary Grant’s “The Amazing Adventure” (19)-A Film Review

The Rich Really Are Different From You And Me, Part II-Cary Grant’s “The Amazing Adventure” (1936)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Frank Jackman

The Amazing Adventure (In England released as The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss), starring Cary Grant, Mary Brian W1936

F. Scott Fitzgerald caught the essence of the truth that the rich, by that in his time he meant millionaires and such today it would have to be billionaires, the really rich, the controlling rich are different from you and me. Lifestyle, concerns, power, hell, even not worrying for one minute where the next meal is coming from and whether one has a roof over his or her head that preoccupies the rest of us. That is the hidden premise behind this early Cary Grant film The Amazing Adventure (can’t say much for the nondescript film title which sounds like a title for a kid’s movie) where the rich, or one rich heir to a London fortune can renounce wealth and go on the bum-for a while.         

Poor little idle rich boy heir to a pile Ernest Bliss, played by a young versatile Cary Grant, is down in the dumps. Reason. Life as a poor little idle rich heir is not what it is cracked up to be and well boring by his lights. As many people do, maybe more these days than then, Ernest checks with a doctor to see what is wrong with him. Being idly rich is the good doctor’s diagnosis with a poor prognosis for recovery. That little slap on the face irks dear Ernest and he decides to go on the bum for a year after making a big bet with the doctor who, maybe rightfully, believed this idea was a non-starting among the Mayfair swells according to his experience.

Looking for work for a guy without any references in Great Depression era London though is a tough sell. But before long our boy is walking the streets as a salesman for ovens. Works that racket so well turning dross into gold for his boss that he decides he has to move on to some other line of work when the boss wants to make him a partner. Of course not before wowing the boss’s secretary Frances, played by no name Mary Brian, taking her from right under the very interested in her boss’s nose. Eventually he grabs work as a chauffeur and that is where things get dicey. See that boss wants to marry Frances but she loves Ernest but has to look out for a better prospect than a lowlife cabbie so she leaves the boss’s employee as well in a quandary.

After a few frankly less than amazing adventures including an attempt to scam Ernest by some white collar criminals and a rousing of Frances’ new employer who is thinking about silky sheets and not her typing skills Ernest finally asks Frances to marry him. But fate plays fickle here since Frances’ sister is at death’s door and needs some serious and expensive medical attention. Lowlife cabbies don’t count at that point and she agrees to marry the oven king. Don’t forget this is Cary Grant she is throwing over so you know in the end she will bounce back into his arms. How? Ernest finds out why Frances flew the coop on him and finally reveals who he really is. He loses the bet since the year is not up but gains a wife. Ho-hum.       

There have been a spade of books of late touting the advantages of shedding lots of material things which are not necessary. Buy only what you absolutely need and use recycled stuff to divest yourself from the deep consumer society which has plagued America. There is some good to this idea but I noticed that the authors were all relatively well-heeled when they decided to chuck stuff and live simply. And stayed relatively well-heeled even after shedding material goods. What the knock on these New Wave self-help books is though is informative as well. It is a very good thing for the well-heeled to cut back. But what about those masses of people living on a few dollars a day, those “from hunger” as we use to say in the old working poor neighborhood I grew up in. They don’t have that storybook luxury down at the base of society when food on the table and a roof over the head keeps them up nights. That is where the idea behind Ernest’s moment of renunciation belongs as well. Yes, the very rich are different from you and me in a lot of ways, a whole lot of ways.