Every Corner Boy’s Dream, Getting Out From Under The Sign Of “From Hunger”-The Big Score -With Sterling Hayden’s “The Killing” In Mind

Every Corner Boy’s Dream, Getting Out From Under The Sign Of “From Hunger”-The Big Score -With Sterling Hayden’s “The Killing” In Mind  

By Fritz Taylor

The Killing, starring Sterling Hayden, Collen Gray, directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1956

Johnny Clay, Johnny Boy, let’s call him Johnny Stir because that is what his whole freaking life had amounted to, would amount when the deal went down, was a piece of work. Took stretches in stir, prison, the pen as rest periods so he could set up the next big scheme, plan out stuff, make the perfect plan. (Johnny had one time actually punched out a fellow inmate to lose his “good time” so he could finish planning a caper in peace.) For Johnny it was never about the money really, he figured he never would be able spend all the dough or would blow it in a week in Vegas, something like that. It was all about the plan, about getting the dough, getting some satisfaction that he had the whole thing figured. Johnny’s exploits were so famous, he had figured so many plans that they made a movie, The Killing, Stanley Kubrick famed director did the piece early in his career, about Johnny’s biggest heist, about the racetrack caper, no, the Great Racetrack caper and it does not matter which one but in the case it was a big name one, as it came down in lore in the criminal underworld grapevine. Plenty held it up it up as the greatest dough grab caper of them all.         

Kubrick got old school rock steady, no nonsense hard-hitting not afraid to take a punch or two for the good of the cause, to further the plan, ruggedly handsome with that deep voice that meant don’t fuck around with a straight shooter Sterling Hayden for the Johnny part. Did right to get him, line the actor right up for the Johnny caper probably having heard how he had been a stand-up guy, a heavy lifting guy, the rough edges guy for Doc Davin in that Wyman jewelry store caper a few years before, had worked the asphalt jungle from whence he came and didn’t complain when bleeding like a pig in Doll’s arms the Kentucky coppers nabbed him just as he was about to get back home. Trouble was that Johnny had been doing a nickel on that job in Lexington and so Stanley had to wait for Johnny boy to blow the joint and hope and pray that he didn’t go wacky in his planning and bop some inmate and lose his freaking “good time”-again. Johnny Stir in stir was that kind of noggin.      

By the way everybody knew, everybody who counted, including the coppers in about five states and the feds too since some of the action crossed state lines, that Johnny was Doc’s protégé, had met Johnny when they both were in stir. (Doc for messing around with young girls, a no-no in normal society and among the brethren who take armed robberies seriously too but Doc’s planning abilities and the fact that he never drew a day for any of his real capers got him a bye in the latter circles, had guys lined up wanting to get well on some Doc caper. Johnny, young, feisty and frankly wet behind the ears was doing a one to five for a daylight armed robbery attempt at the Granite City National Bank in Peoria who proved his worth by taking the fall, not snitching, not in his blood when the thing went awry and a panicked banker pulled the alarm and all hell broke loose. What most people didn’t know, except maybe guys who were close to the two men, was that Doc, showing his age a little, slowing down a little had worked out the Wyman caper about 50-50 with Johnny. Johnny, a fast learner in that sense, was eager to help out, to learn the craft.        

It was a beauty too, would have worked out fine. Here is the Johnny part to show his breeding, his bloodlines. You were not going to rob Wyman’s in daylight Johnny knew that much from bitter experience. You also were not going to get far at night with a frontal attack in the night the alarm system was too good. Johnny had Doll, Doll an old bar girl turning tricks to keep herself in rent money and Johnny in canteen cash while he was inside now out of the picture since young Faye (Collen Gray played her in the film) had caught  his eye one night at the Blue Grotto once he got out on doing the nickel and Doll was history, sent him the floor plans of the whole block Wyman’s was on. Saw that the whole thing could be done by blasting through the basement from a store a couple of doors down. Beautiful. The whole thing went off without a hitch until some nosey night watchman, not even a real copper so why was he not just sitting in his chair snoozing like he did every other night. Another Johnny contribution to the plan, checking out the live security patterns, which in the case went for nought.

There was a lot of shooting, the real coppers came in and Johnny and Doll fled, Johnny bleeding like a sieve, as best they could after making sure Doc got away. The other guys, guys he didn’t know, guys Doc wasn’t sure of either since he had been out of circulation for a while, didn’t do squat, a couple got nicked, one guy, a nobody got killed, got dead and bled all the way home like dropping a bread crumb trail giving the coppers a lead once they caught up with him and squeezed him hard before he died about where Johnny and Doc might be. (Doll was a late entry in the getaway since she insisted that she go with Johnny once she saw he was bleeding, told him she would go back to doing tricks to keep them in dough if he asked her to she was that kind of doll and to shut her up Johnny tumbled to her driving him to Kentucky.)

Doc got away clean and nobody ever heard from him again or at least nobody was talking about him and his whereabouts. Johnny as we know got a nickel for bleeding too much to make a clean getaway. Johnny also got religion on confederates, on their reliability, little good it did him in the end.

Problem had been, and Doc and he had gone round and round on the subject, the talent from the old days was just not around anymore. Either they were working somewhere in the food chain for the mob or were off doing something else, something legitimate with their skills in the post- World War II boom, especially the military service guys. So you had to go with what you had as Johnny would find out when he did the racetrack caper. The explosives guy had been battling the bottle for a few years and the expert safe cracker was being harassed by his pregnant wife not to get involved. Christ that would never happen in the old days when you had the pick of the litter in such specialties. Guys were lining up for work to get well.

The minute they grabbed Johnny, bleeding and all, he was already working on his next plan, the first of his own under his own imprimatur. He would spend that nickel, really four and half years since he was a model prisoner as he was anxious to get his plan in motion. This time no mistakes, no mistakes that he could help. Johnny had like a lot of guys coming up in the 1930s heard about the legendary bank robber Willie Sutton whose most famous utterance was that when he was asked by the coppers when he cashed his check on some not well thought out caper why he robbed banks he nonchalantly answered-“that is where the money is.” That first Johnny stir time Granite City bank robbery was based on that same idea although he would not hear about Sutton’s famous remark until he was in stir the first time and some yegg fished him on the tale.

Here is where Johnny figured something out from his own botched experience, something Willie and another guy named Pretty Boy Floyd didn’t see coming. The days of robbing banks was history, was too filled with pitfalls to make sense. Johnny’s take was where else would the money be. Dough, lots of it, the coin of the realm which from hunger guys like Kentucky poor white trash farm boy Johnny counted as valuable, as worth grabbing. That is where the Kentucky part came in, a racetrack, a high-end race track on a busy weekend big stakes day like the Derby would have tons of dough just waiting for the smartest guy in the room to grab it before the track owners got their mitts on it. So Johnny worked and worked on the thing figuring who he needed. Who could help get the loot.

           

The thing had to be an inside job, needed some people on the inside to clear the path and to keep some distractions while the heist was in progress. Needed a ticket teller, maybe a bar-tender, definitely a cop. Doc Davin would have been proud of his protégé, would have tipped his hat to Johnny if he had worn a hat. Johnny contacted his old friend Dibs, a guy he did time with and whom he trusted since Benny Long, the famous wrestler and a guy Johnny had used on a couple of capers when he needed muscle, physical muscle and not bang-bang guys, had vouched for him. Benny’s word was enough and in the end Dibs did just fine even if he went down, fell down hard when times got weird. Dibs set up the teller and the bartender knowing that the teller had a bitch wife with expensive tastes and sharp tongue problems and the bar-tender who was a stone-cold junkie in the days when nobody, not even race track owners, was testing for illegal drug use of their employees. Dibs also got the copper who was moonlighting at the track to earn some cash since he, the copper, was up to his ears in gambling debts to Sam Sloane and Slone was breathing down his neck for pay up or else dough. When Johnny cleared stir he got Benny, hard muscle and a sharpshooter from the Army he knew to complete the picture. Day labor.

Go. Day of action. Bank teller lets Johnny led by copper into the back room where the money was being counted in nice next small denomination piles (beautiful, Johnny, beautiful on that unmarked bills angle. Genius.) Meanwhile to keep everybody spinning, keep seven balls in the air Benny starts a brawl in the bar egged on by the bar-tender (the bar being the way that Johnny and copper would exit the joint). Here is where things got even hairier although it might crimp a legend’s status with some people. That ex-Army sharp-shooter was to kill the lead horse in the featured race creating chaos in the stands and elsewhere. Maybe there was some poetic justice in the fact that ex-Army get killed by a security cop after he killed Man of War or whoever took the tumble. No big deal he was just day labor, wages anyway. 

The long and short of it was that the whole thing worked fine, the loot was gotten out of the track and nobody, not the coppers, not the race people knew what the hell had happened. Like I said they still talk about the Great Derby robbery in hushed voices in many a cell and backroom. So Johnny picked up a win just as he got an assist on the Wyman caper since both went off without a hitch. But sometimes, hell, most of the time some goddam thing fouls up the works and mars what should be total victory.

That is what laid Johnny, Johnny Stir in case you forgot, low. This ticket teller was a loose cannon, was a nervous nelly afraid of his own shadow, afraid of losing his bitch wife’s affections if he didn’t come up with dough. When he copped to the caper he told wifey that payday was coming, hold on. Bitch wife having no confidence in her man pressed for details. He spilled his guts, spilled all that she needed to know. Know to pass on to her lover who was as dough crazy as she was. He would hold up the joint where the money split was to happen. In the event the deal, the money split went down too soon Johnny had not arrived to parcel out the shares. Lover boy and Johnny’s boys went bang-bang with nobody left standing except that stinking little teller. He lasted long enough to get home and go bang-bang with that gold-digging wife before he fell down. A little rough justice anyway.

Johnny saw what had happened at the share-splitting apartment and knew he had to blow town fast, knew that the coppers would figure out that these bloody scenes revolved around the Great Derby heist. Johnny grabbed Faye and they were ready to blow on the fastest plane out (the fastest then cumbersome prop jobs). One problem all the dough had to go from a trash bag to a quickly bought suitcase to be carried on board the plane. No go- the suitcase had to be checked.

Here where fate is kind of funny. The suitcase got knocked off the cart it on heading to the plane’s cargo area. All the dough went to the winds, all four of them. So long dough. Johnny and Fay tried to get away from the airport but before they can the coppers start to grab them. Fay standing by her man urged him to run but he said what was basically 1950s WTF and accepted his fate. See it was never about the money, never. Always about the execution of the plan, the kinkier the better. Fay knowing what Johnny was facing told her man she would turn tricks to keep herself in rent money and Johnny in canteen money as she waited for him to finish his time. Johnny nodded knowingly (he had been down that road with Doll back when who stooped to anything to keep herself, them in dough and only told Fay to stick to blowjobs and such and leave her ass for him when he got out). Even before the coppers put the hand-cuffs on Johnny was thinking about the next caper, the next plan. Something to do with Monets from the art museum, the Chicago Art Institute, something that would not blow away in the wind. Yeah, that Johnny Stir was a piece of work, a real piece of work.            

   

How The West Was Won-Johnny Too Bad’s “Johnny Guitar” (1954)-A Film Review

How The West Was Won-Johnny Too Bad’s “Johnny Guitar” (1954)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Johnny Guitar, starring Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Scott Brady and whoever else they could round up who played any cowboy roles before 1954, 1954

I am not, never was, a fan of Westerns in any of its transmissions to the screen from iconic Tom Mix mash to High Noon to The Wild Bunch the latter which began to chip away at the angelic white cowboy legend that sustained my late grandfather on many a Saturday morning on television and many a Saturday afternoon movie matinee according to my grandmother. And that seems to me to be exactly the point.  My grandparents born respectively in 1946 and 1948 were probably the remnants, the holy goof remnants according to fellow baby-boomer and thus contemporary Sam Lowell, who allegedly would have given his eye teeth for this assignment since he shared that same commitment to the Western white cowboy legends as my late grandfather did. In any case the assignment fell to me and that was that. (That “white cowboy” reference hot off the heels of reading a review of a new Smithsonian/Folkways compilation by one of the Carolina Chocolate Drops paying homage to the not inconsiderable role of the black cowboy in taming the West, so white in the days when the black contribution was conveniently written out of the picture in everything from dime store novels to “oaters.”)       

But I am still befuddled as to why I grabbed the assignment, this review of the classic iconic Johnny Too Bad Western, Johnny Guitar other than some office politics thing to keep it from Sam and keep him in line. Or as officially came to me in a reply memo when I asked why somebody who could care less about cowboys, and a genre which had zero influence on me growing up was given such an assignment that it would “broaden my horizons.” I accepted that answer until I saw the film and found out the real answer which is that this film breaks the mold, breaks the white male hero cowboy angel ride mold and pays a certain oblique homage to the pioneer women who one way or the other influenced the taming of the West once the gunplay subsided a little. A little startling for a 1954 film if you ask me.    

Vienna, the role played by Joan Crawford who I only know a little, the name mostly, because Jack Kerouac whose book Big Sur I did my master’s thesis on did a short piece for some magazine about Joan Crawford working on some film in San Francisco and had her as some fogged up dame who jammed up the works and gave the very obliging director seven kinds of hell. I don’t know if she was considered some kind of femme earlier in her career but she looked like she had been through the mill by 1954. Which is good because the role of Vienna calls for a woman who has been through the mill, has seen and done it all from saloon bar girl to some Madame La Rue (that courtesy of Seth Garth from the table of Allan Jackson) whorehouse denizen to what knows what else but as the scenes open she is running, she, her, Vienna is running a nice little casino and jip join outside of some dusty town in the real, meaning not the Left Coast, if still mostly untamed West. She might have worn out a few beds in her time and maybe was running her own unseen whorehouse but she was on the high side now. Even better she was laying plans for the railroad to build a depot near her place and extend a line and a new born town bringing plenty of gringos and sad sack immigrants who washed out in the East and think they will find the mother lode before the frontier ends and their dreams go up in opium smoke like Mrs. Miller in McCabe and Mrs. Miller. All you have to say in railroad in 19^th century America, East or West and that meant money, money for those savvy and hungry enough to grab it and pay a little graft for the right to make a fortune. And our Vienna was ready to grab whatever fell to her with all hands.

Of course an independent woman out West running a saloon and gambling den and whatever else she was running was sure to raise the hackles of the good and prosperous town folk who money was made through banking and cattle so the tension would fly through the night especially when some vengeful woman Emma, played by Mercedes McCambridge, has it in for her for reasons from repressed sexuality to class snobbishness and prudery. (I like the sexual repression theory one townie ran by us revolving around one Dancing Kid whom she love/hated and would shoot right through the head in the end but that was much later. Of course, as well, a woman, hell, anybody running a gin mill and clip joint will also have partisans, partisans like the just mentioned Dancing Kid and his gang of cutthroats who will gladly relieve stagecoaches and banks of their precious possessions. (This nickname stuff and we will see with Johnny Guitar in a minute reminded Seth Garth when I told him about the film to get a little advice on a “hook” of when he and the North Adamsville corner boys he grew up with went to California in the Summer of Love in 1967 and all took up monikers to what he called “reinvent” themselves maybe like these earlier travelers and denizens of the low spots.) The Dancing Kid not only a partisan of Vienna’s dreams but with knowledge of her in the Biblical sense which will cause no end of problems and not just with bitch Emma.

Now the scene in set so enter one Johnny Guitar, played by ruggedly handsome Sterling Hayden who Seth said did a great job bleeding himself to death as the heavy lifter in the classic film noir The Asphalt Jungle which he reviewed, with nothing but a guitar on his back (caseless by the way) and tombstones in his eyes. Those tombstones via the cardinal error of trekking West without manly guns and plenty of them like some fool Eastern city slicker. He is in Vienna’s joint to sing troubadour style for his supper and entertain the hooligans while they lose their dough. But that Johnny Guitar front is just baloney because behind that moniker and those easy-going whiskey sot ways is the gun simple killer one Johnny Logan, a name once revealed that even got the Dancing Kid’s attention. Vienna and Johnny were lovers some time and place back and while Vienna played the ice queen and tough hombre bit for a while she only has eyes for Johnny when the deal went down. By the way let’s get this straight now this Johnny Guitar troubadour stuff is strictly lame since he neither sings one damn song nor does he do more than strum that guitar and not very well at that. So unless Johnny is better in bed than he looks he would be hard put to make dimes for donuts today on the mean streets of the city or in the subways.  

  

That interestingly enough though is all side door Johnny stuff. The real war is on, the war between the two vixens Vienna and Emma with Vienna two to one in my book to win this duel to the death with the guys looking on here taking direction from womenfolk. Yes you heard that right all of these cowboys cum civilized town folk are lining up to take sides this this big step off. (Seth Garth also mentioned that in this film virtually every actor who had donned a cowboy hat more than once in films was part of the back-up cast including Scott Brady and Ward Bond.) The Dancing Kid set the whole shooting match up when he and the boyos robbed Ms. Emma’s bank and that gave her the last straw she needed to send Vienna to the gallows by associating her with the Dancer’s action maybe even the brains behind the heist.

The chase was on, big time, because it might be a cliché but it works here-watch out for a woman scorned as twisted sister Emma aint no feminist and wants Vienna’s pretty little neck around some fresh hemp. And she almost has her way but Johnny boy who was on the outs with Vienna for a while came by to save Ms. Vienna’s bacon. Save it and leave the situation fluid enough for the gals to have a final draw-down to see who was queen of the hill. Needless to say I won my bet. Johnny did too taking the ice queen to better surroundings. But please, please, please no more of these   fake Westerns which still leave me cold.