From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin -Franny Leclerc’s War- “If I Didn’t Care”

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Inkspots performing I’ll Get By.

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

She, Francine Lorraine Leclerc, Franny she to everybody in Old Saco, that is up in Maine, thank you, ever since she could remember, was in no hurry, a conscious no hurry, to get down to the War Ration Office to get her monthly sugar, flour, butter (really oleomargarine), and this and that before it closed on this first day of June, year two of our war, 1943. And the reason that Miss Leclerc was in no hurry was that hurry, or no hurry, she would have to wait in that seemingly endless line for half the afternoon for her goods, such as they were.

So moseying down the street around closing time was just as good as that eternal, infernal waiting, listening to Mrs. La Croix talking about how her Jimmy was saving the world single-handedly from the Japs, or, ditto, Mrs. Lévesque on her Jimmy on the European front. Secretly she wished that either, or both Jimmies, could do that herculean task but she knew, knew from her own Jimmy, Jimmy LeBlanc, in his every other day letters that there was no end to the war in sight. Even with everything rationed, or supposed to be.

But let us back up just a bit because there is more to Franny’s peevishness than meets the eye. See Franny was lonesome as hell, and she used that word without blushing to describe her condition to her shocked Jimmy’s Mrs. LeBlanc. Ya, she had the Jimmy (LeBlanc, reason for the last name usage to follow) blues bad for the almost year and a half that he had been gone. Naturally, no saving of the world Jimmy like a ton of LeBlancs and others with French surnames in town had enlisted about two days after Pearl Harbor just to do his “bit” as he said.

Here was Franny’s dilemma though. How was a pretty girl, very pretty if you asked half the breathing boys, hell, grown married men (and maybe some that didn’t breathe so good until a fresh breeze nineteen year old woman looking like Betty Grable and smelling, well, smelling of promises and gardens, edenic or not, came sashaying came pass on Main Street or on the boardwalk over at Old Orchard Beach) to stay true blue when she didn’t know if her boy was coming back, or if he would be wanting her to be waiting when he got back. She had heard stories from Papa Leclerc (her grandfather) about the last war and what it did to guys, guys who asked their girls to wait and then just took off when they hit New York and were never heard from after that. She knew her Jimmy though and when such thoughts passed her day she just keep thinking of their song, If I Didn’t Care.

Funny, she really hated the song, hated it from the very beginning before Jimmy left for boot camp and they decided they just needed a “their song” to keep up morale. Her morale. Truth is she didn’t want him to go, he had a good job down at MacAdams Textile Mill and if he had wanted to he could have been deferred as a war industry guy. But not Jimmy, Jimmy LeBlanc, and his need to do his “bit.” And truth too that is what she found, well, attractive about him although she still hated the song, hated it from the first. But she had promised Jimmy that when she got lonely, or tired, that she would play it. She did, hating it every time. And there were times she had to play it more than a properly waiting for her Jimmy girl should have had to.

And that is where the other Jimmies, LaCroix and Lévesque, came in. Saving the Pacific Rim or European civilization may have been their forte but neither boy (hell, they were only twenty) had enlisted right after Pearl but waited until they were drafted. And while they were patiently waiting they tried to steal, each in turn and separately, Miss Frances Leclerc’s affections away from Jimmy LaCroix. And both lads, given the times and the possibilities, used the same route to carry out their dastardly work. The Friday night dance night at the Surfside Club in Old Orchard Beach.

See Franny and Jimmy (Leblanc, just in case you drifted off) had agreed, or Jimmy had surrendered on the point, that bound to be lonely Franny, after a hard week’s work down at the Portsmouth Naval Yard (doing her own “bit” for the war effort) was entitled to let some steam off dancing the night away. Dancing to the be-bop music of the cover band, Jimmy Jacques and His Band, who played the Dorseys (Tommy and Jimmy), Artie Shaw, Glen Miller, and the rest of the big band gangs. Of course dancing in those days was cheek to cheek or close to it so naturally guys were lining up (and mainly getting turned down) to have a spin with Miss Leclerc (and that maddening sway perfume).

One late fall Friday night up stepped one James LaCroix, all handsome, a little drunk, and a little fresh but just enough fresh to spark the interest of a lonely pining away girl. Franny let him get to first base, but no further. That night she spent about half the left-over of the night playing If I Didn’t Care up in her room. And then one Friday night a couple of months later another handsome, eager, if somewhat shy Jimmy Lévesque got under her skin and took her for a whirl in his car (father’s car, complete with rationed gas) down to the lovers’ lane at Olde Saco Beach (down by the jetty all quiet and isolated except for an early lobster boat making ready for the day’s run) and got to second base with her, no further. She stopped counting the number of times she played “their song” that night and the next day.

So you can see why one Francine Lorraine Leclerc was in no rush, no rush at all, to get to that War Ration Office much before closing.

Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By (Kind Of)-Until We Meet Again: The Love Songs of World War II

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Inkspots performing I’ll Get By.

CD Review

Until We Meet Again: The Love Songs of World War II, various artists, Smithsonian Institute, 1993

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

My late mother (Delores, nee LeBlanc) from the French-Canadian sections of Olde Saco up in Maine was an inveterate letter-writer and letter saver. After she passed on I went up into the attic of our old tumble-down working class house on Atlantic Avenue to start the long process of sorting out her “legacy.” What I discovered was that not only did she save her own received letters but those of her family, her brothers and sisters mostly. One written by her sister, Nina, from World War II three-cent stamped and all shook me up for days. Here it is and in it is the essence of what the CD mentioned above is all about.
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December 13, 1942

Hi Jimmy,

I hope this letter gets to you okay and that you are in good health and good spirits. We haven’t heard much recently about Guadalcanal so we are taking that as a good sign that things have settled down and you can rest. Even my father, my straight arrow Army World War I father, says you guys are doing a hell of job mopping up the Japs out there. Sorry for the swear but, you know Dad, that’ how he speaks when he talks about stuff like that. I guess that means that you are okay and that he has gotten over the fact that you chose to go into the Marines instead of waiting, like a lot of guys, a lot of guys like Jimmy LaCroix, Delores’ beau, to be inducted into the Army. I am proud of you and hope your every waking thought (and dreams too) are of me. Well, except when you are shooting or doing Marine stuff.

Jimmy, every time I listen to the radio and hear I Don’t Want To Walk Without You I get a little teary and think of that last night we had together before you shipped out. Oh, I am not crying about what we did and why I let you go as far as you did. No that only brings me closer to you. What I am teary about is that you had to go away right away and I didn’t get a chance to tell you it was okay. That I was your girl forever now whatever happens. The same thing happens when I hear your old favorite song We’ll Meet Again. Remember when we fought half the night a couple of week s before you left about whether that song or I’ll Never Smile Again was the cat’s meow. And then I Don’t Want To Walk Without You won in the end. Funny, hah.

Say, I had been feeling a little funny lately, a little sick, not much nothing to worry about but I feel better today because I am writing you. Gee, I wish you were here and we could go somewhere and dance, and do you know what. I wouldn’t let you down. Well, that’s about it for tonight because my pen is running out of ink.

Always your girl- Nina
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P.S. The envelope that contained this letter bore the makings- Return To Sender-Deceased stamped across the front. Jimmy Dubois had been killed under a hail of enemy fire while trying to rescue a buddy on hellhole Guadalcanal on December 10, 1942. RIP-Jimmy Dubois-JLB

***Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake’s “This Gun For Hire”-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for This Gun For Hire.

DVD Review

This Gun For Hire, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, based on a novel by Graham Greene, Paramount Pictures, 1942

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass. Some, such as the film under review from 1942, This Gun For Hire, offers parts of both. The plot line maybe less so, although because it is set in World War II America and indirectly part of the fight to defeat the nefarious (in this case Japanese) enemy it has a certain intrigue factor. As for femme fatale energy, or rather quasi-femme fatale energy, although I have always considered Veronica Lake (and her classic air over her eye look) fetching here she is cross between that type and the girl next door.

As for the plot. Alan Ladd, a gun for hire to the highest bidder does his job as expected and is paid off for doing so. Unfortunately those that hired Ladd to silence an employee of a chemical company whose president was ready to sell poison gas to the highest bidder (Japan)were not on the level. They tried, might and main, to set Brother Ladd up as the fall guy. But one does not get to be, or rather one does not survive in the hired gun business, by being a chump for some nefarious scheme. Needless to say the plot is partially driven by his well-earned revenge.

However, a second plot line is brought in by Ms. Lake. America was at war and selling poison gas to the bidder, Japan, was, well, not right so she is “hired” to get the goods on the chemical operation through a weak-link, one of the company executives. Naturally in the course of these two plots unwinding the Ladd-Lake combination is brought to a boil, well, almost a boil. Through twists and turns the pair get the bad guys, although Ladd as a bad guy himself, or maybe just misunderstood, has to take a bullet for the cause because as we all know- “crime, especially murder, does not pay.” Not as good a pairing of Ladd and Lake as in The Glass Key but okay. But you can see what I mean about this one being sort of a semi-classic noir, right?