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Friday, January 30, 2015
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CIW receives
Presidential Medal for Extraordinary Efforts in Combatting Modern-Day Slavery at
White House Forum!
Yesterday was a landmark day in the history of CIW’s fight for farm labor justice. Twenty years ago, workers rose up in the fields and in the dusty streets of a dirt-poor town by the strange name of Immokalee to demand an end to the systematic violation of their fundamental human rights. The CIW was born in those streets, and today, twenty years later, through the unrelenting struggle and sacrifice of tens of thousands of workers and consumers, the CIW’s successful efforts have remade an industry, and the model of worker-driven social responsibility forged in that battle stands as a beacon of hope for many, many more workers trapped in poverty and exploitation at the bottom of vast corporate supply chains around the world. And so yesterday, the CIW’s efforts, born in a forgotten community’s desperate struggle for survival, were celebrated in the halls of power of the highest office of the land. 
Secretary of State John Kerry’s words in presenting
the medal were eloquent, and so we have included here an extended excerpt from
his remarks:
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Thursday, January 29, 2015
Once Again….Then-With The Carver High
School Class of 1962 In Mind
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Jack Dawson as he prepared to get ready
for his 50th high school class reunion (or rather prepared to think about
going to the event) in the early days of January, 2012 wondered out loud to his
old friend Josh Breslin, a guy from Olde Saco whom he had met out in the California
great blue-pink American West night back in the mid-1960s after he had
graduated from high school himself, whether their parents or grandparents had
in their 50th anniversary times wondered, wondered out loud about
all the changes, social changes that had taken place in their lifetimes. Since for
both men that was a moot question as both sets of parents and grandparents had
long gone to earth they could only speculate. Josh thought that his own
Irish-French-Canadian (mother nee LeBlanc) parents and before them his F-C grandparents
(he never met his paternal grandparents) pretty much acted like social change
was a social disease and kept to the various old country ways (and old America
ways too). Maybe, Josh thought, it had to do with the isolated existences in mill-towns,
both Olde Saco and Carver being such worn-out towns, working hard and keeping their
own counsel (no “airing dirty linen in public” the order of the day) and that
particular Catholic fatalism which they were both exposed to as kids that attached
to everything and drove both men crazy when they were trying to jail-break out
of the old time mold.
One night over high-shelf scotches, gone
were the days of heavy drug use which got them acquainted back in the day and prior
to that cheap low-shelf whiskies and lower shelf rotgut wines, in the Sunnyvale
Grille in downtown Olde Saco across from the famous Jimmy Jack’s Diner on Main
Street they decided to play a game about the changes they could recall from
back then. First off was the change in attitude toward drugs which back then
were seen as the province of dead-beat junkies and odd-ball New York hipsters
(read jazz musicians, read black people). They had to laugh when Jack said they
probably ingested more drugs all the “beats” combined. Another was the change from
fag-baiting guys who seemed girlish and dyke-baiting once they had understood
the idea of different strokes for different (none of their forebears would have
understood the whole gay marriage phenomenon). Josh mentioned attitudes toward cigarettes,
especially since that was “cool” in searching for girls and both having been long-time
heavy smokers who had only quit after many tries shook their heads at that
idea. Of course the whole thing with women (then girls) had gone topsy-turvy
with woman now in professions like the law and medicine that were unheard of
and while both their mothers had worked (in the respective town mills) and so
had been working Moms that was a necessity then to keep the families afloat and
had been the cause of many caustic comments by guys whose mothers did not work,
did not need to work.
Jack and Josh went on that way for a
while until they ran out of broad-based big ticket social subjects to think
about, ran out of booze too as the hour
got late and Jimmy the bartender wanted to close up. So as they walked up the
street to Josh’s house about ten blocks away they started on the silly stuff.
Stuff in high school like why did the boys and girls have separate gym classes,
why were there separate sex bowling teams for Christ sake. Why girls could not
run track like they had done (before that “cool” smoking stuff shifted their priorities).
Why girls could only play half-court basketball. Big question: why even on a
friendly date was the guy, them, poor as church mice guys, supposed to pay for everything
and “dutch treat” was considered bad form, very bad form even when the girls had
plenty of dough. It went on like that until they got to Josh’s house and then
they having exhausted the subject started talking about whether Jack was going to
his class reunion. Yeah, there was plenty of wondering going on that night, wondering
too about whether when their kids were getting ready for their 50th anniversary
high school class reunions they would be wondering about their what their
respective fathers made of their times.
[In the event Jack Dawson decided for a
host of good reasons not to go to his class reunion which really is a story for
another day. Josh, Class of 1965, is still up in the air about the question
from last report.]
If The Frame Fits-John Payne’s 99
River Street
DVD Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
99 River Street, starring John
Payne, 1953
Some guys are ripe to be framed,
framed and sealed with a big bow on it. Take Ernie, Ernie Driscoll, but really
Ernie everyman, in the film under review, 99 River Street, yeah everyman with a dream about getting out from
under some from hungry childhood and onto easy street, yeah, easy street and
little dreams. Ernie, not much going for him in, too tied in corner boy society
where street smarts outflanks book smarts, so kind of street smart but not knowing
how to work all the angles smart like his brother Jim, figured he could make
his way in the world through his fists, by being a pug, you know a
prizefighter, a guy who pummels another guy senseless until he cries “uncle” for
dough and the brass ring. Ernie (played by John Payne last seen in the movie
review section here bleeding like a sieve from a few off-hand slugs aimed at
him by old school criminal boss, Solly Caspar, when Johnnie tried to muscle,
brain muscle, his way into the rackets in the film Slightly Scarlet) had it going for a while, could take a beating
and stay standing up and that counted for something in that profession until he
took one too many punches to the eye and even the boxing commission which usually
let crippled up grandpas go ten if the price was right put the “no-go” sign on
him. Too bad a bunch of stand up fights and nothing but cheap street to show for
it. Guys, guys in the know, thought he could have been a contender, could have
gone all the way when he first came up, all hungry and full of nervous energy.
All for naught.
So like a lot of ex-pugs who went
back to cheap street, who wound up as bartenders or bouncers, working like pack
mules in waterfront warehouses, stuff like that, Ernie thereafter became a
hack, a cabdriver moving people from here to there in the big city, New Jack City,
for small tips and lots of sneers that he was taking them the long way around. Ernie
still dreamed, maybe small dreamed, that dreamed that maybe he could get enough
dough to own a gas station, be his own boss, and end that pitiful squiring the
Mayfair swells around. A big downfall from the days when guys would stand him
drinks, high-shelf whiskey too not that cheap stuff he hustled from winos when
he was a kid, pat him on the back all buddy-like, and blow the inevitable arena
cigar smoke at him but still a dream.
Oh yeah, a big downfall too from the
days when he had dough, plenty of dough, plenty of walking around dough, what did
that girl Irene call it, oh yeah, walking daddy dough, he a good-looking guy, the
girls moved in on him, on his sweaty body with lust in their hearts and dollar
signs in their eyes. One got the prize, Pauline, and that is where the frame
started to get wrapped right around Ernie’s stand-up guy head. See Pauline was
made for fair weather, for furs and jewelry, not for hack wife or fumy gas
station dreams and so as Ernie slid down in the world she proved to be little Ms.
Round-Heels, for a while.
Pauline had taken a lover, the next
best thing that came around the flower shop where she was forced to work since
hacking a cab was from nowhere, a low-ball gangster, Vic, who said pretty
things and talked big dough. Talked about a big score and how they would blow
the stink of the town off them, get some air, sit on easy street. The caper he
had planned, a good plan too with not too many moving parts to gum things up, was
to grab a ton of diamonds from a guy who Pauline would set up once he got a
look at her and she put his come hither look on him since the guy was nothing
but a skirt-chaser. Vic would pull the hammer down in some out of the way spot
and then would move to fence the goods and get his cash, get the pay-out, 50
Gs, just like finding money on the ground. Except that Vic wasn’t too careful
about how he bopped the mark and he wound up dead, very dead. And the fence, no
fool, called the whole deal off leaving Vic and Pauline in the lurch. That
fence by the way, a guy named Christopher who ran a pet shop as a front, told
Vic that he did not go for any capers that involved women. So bright boy Vic
seeing that he was in a tough spot, needing to get out of town fast before the
heat closed in, figured that deal could go through if the woman factor that
bothered old Christopher was eliminated. So our boy Vic snuffed Pauline. And
get this, this is beautiful when you think about it, puts the very dead Pauline
in the back of Ernie’s hack after luring him to a sleepy out of the way bar.
Guys like Vic, small-time hoods quick
with the sap or gun but with peanut-sized brains, figured out that Ernie, who
was after all estranged from Pauline once he got hip to what she was doing to
Vic while he was out hustle small change, could take the fall. He was built for
the frame and it seemed that every step that Ernie had taken up to his discovery
of her body in his cab, and almost every step after, had his name for the big
step-off at Sing-Sing written on it. But Ernie really was a stand-up guy, a guy
who was maybe a little hot-headed, a little too quick with the fists for an
ex-pug, but basically a good guy and so he was determined to un-frame the frame
even if it meant he had to go 99 River Street, go to New Jersey for crying out
loud, to get some justice. And sure enough he caught up to Vic and broke the
frame, made old Vic cry “Uncle” before he was done with him.
Yeah, so in the end stand-up guy Ernie
Driscoll, Ernie everyman got his little dream, got the gas station with a
little help from a dame, an actress, Linda, he knew from the drugstore where he got his
coffee and crullers while on duty who helped bail him out of a couple of tight
spots along the way, including luring Vic out into the open, while he was being
framed. Wound up marrying her and the white picket fence dream. That was just
icing on the cake. But it sure was a close thing right to the end.
As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner
In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school but the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists and Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements, those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress, humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man. They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.
And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….
Important Mumia Abu Jamal Update-Free Mumia
Some facts about the case from the PDC (2006):
An Open Letter to Mumia Abu-Jamal Supporters-A Personal Commentary (April 2008)
The Partisan Defense Committee has passed "An Open Letter to All Supporters of Mumia‘s Freedom" to this writer. Those few who might not know of the torturous legal battles to free this innocent man can find further information at the above-mentioned Partisan Defense site. I make my own comments below.
Normally I pass information about the case of political prisoner Mumia abu-Jamal on without much comment because the case speaks for itself. The case has been front and center in international labor defense struggles for over two decades. However, in light of the adverse ruling by a majority of a federal Third Circuit Court of Appeal panel in March 2008 that affirmed Mumia’s 1982 conviction for first-degree murder of a police officer and left the only issue for decision that of resentencing to either reinstate his original death sentence or keep him imprisoned for life without parole I have some things to say about this fight.
Occasionally, in the heat of political battle some fights ensue around strategy that after the smoke has cleared, upon reflection, leave one with more sorrow than anger. Not so today. Today I am mad. Am I mad about the irrational decision by the majority of the Third Circuit panel in Mumia’s case? Yes, but when one has seen enough of these cases over a lifetime then one realizes that, as the late sardonic comic and social commentator Lenny Bruce was fond of saying, in the Hall of Justice the only justice is in the halls.
What has got me steamed is the obvious bankruptcy of the strategy, if one can use this term, of centering Mumia’s case on the question of a new trial in order to get the ‘masses’- meaning basically parliamentary liberal types interested in supporting the case. This by people who allegedly KNOW better. The bankruptcy of this strategy, its effects on Mumia’s case and the bewildered response of those who pedaled it as good coin is detailed in the above-mentioned Open Letter. Read it.
Today, in reaction to the Third Circuit court’s decision, everyone and their brother and sister are now calling for Mumia’s freedom. At a point where he is between a rock and a hard place. However, it did not have to be that way. Mumia was innocent in 1982 and he did not stop being innocent at any point along this long road. Freedom for Mumia was (and is) the correct slogan in the case. A long line of political criminal cases, starting in this country with that of the Haymarket Martyrs if not before, confirms that simple wisdom. Those who consciously pedaled this weak ‘new trial’ strategy as a get rich quick scheme now have seen the chickens come home to roost. And Mumia pays the price.
I would point out two factors that made a ‘retrial’ strategy in the case of an innocent man particularly Pollyanna-ish for those honest militants who really believed that Mumia’s case was merely a matter of the American justice system being abused and therefore some court would rectify this situation if enough legal resources were in place. First, it is illusory that somehow, as exemplified in this case, a higher court system would remedy this egregious wrong. Long ago I remember a lawyer, I believe that it might have been the late radical lawyer Conrad Lynn no stranger to political defense work, telling a group of us doing defense work for the Black Panthers, that all these judges belong to the same union. They do not upset each other’s work except under extreme duress.
Second, and this is where the ‘wisdom’ of the reformists about reaching the ‘masses’ by a stagest theory of defense work (fight for retrial first, then freedom) turns in on them. As witness the list of names of those who have signed the Partisan Defense Committee’s call for Mumia’s freedom, excepting professional liberals and their hangers –on, those interested in Mumia’s case (or any leftwing political defense case) will sign on just as easily for freedom as retrial. Thus, opportunism does not pay, even in the short haul. That said, Free Mumia- say it loud, say it proud.
*******
Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.
Commentary
The legendary social commentator and stand up comic Lenny Bruce, no stranger to the American ‘justice’ system himself, once reportedly said that in the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. The truth of that statement came home on Thursday March 27, 2008 as a panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals voted two to one to uphold Mumia’s conviction.
The only question left is that of resentencing- the death penalty or, perhaps worst, life in prison without parole. I have not yet read the decision but we are now a long way away from the possibility of a retrial-the narrow legal basis for even appealing in the legal system in the first place. Know this- in the end it will be in the streets and factories through the efforts of the international labor movement and other progressive forces that Mumia will be freed. That is the only way, have no illusions otherwise, whatever the next legal steps might be.
*****Some facts about the case from the PDC (2006):
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The Partisan Defense Committee has passed "An Open Letter to All Supporters of Mumia‘s Freedom" to this writer. Those few who might not know of the torturous legal battles to free this innocent man can find further information at the above-mentioned Partisan Defense site. I make my own comments below.
Normally I pass information about the case of political prisoner Mumia abu-Jamal on without much comment because the case speaks for itself. The case has been front and center in international labor defense struggles for over two decades. However, in light of the adverse ruling by a majority of a federal Third Circuit Court of Appeal panel in March 2008 that affirmed Mumia’s 1982 conviction for first-degree murder of a police officer and left the only issue for decision that of resentencing to either reinstate his original death sentence or keep him imprisoned for life without parole I have some things to say about this fight.
Occasionally, in the heat of political battle some fights ensue around strategy that after the smoke has cleared, upon reflection, leave one with more sorrow than anger. Not so today. Today I am mad. Am I mad about the irrational decision by the majority of the Third Circuit panel in Mumia’s case? Yes, but when one has seen enough of these cases over a lifetime then one realizes that, as the late sardonic comic and social commentator Lenny Bruce was fond of saying, in the Hall of Justice the only justice is in the halls.
What has got me steamed is the obvious bankruptcy of the strategy, if one can use this term, of centering Mumia’s case on the question of a new trial in order to get the ‘masses’- meaning basically parliamentary liberal types interested in supporting the case. This by people who allegedly KNOW better. The bankruptcy of this strategy, its effects on Mumia’s case and the bewildered response of those who pedaled it as good coin is detailed in the above-mentioned Open Letter. Read it.
Today, in reaction to the Third Circuit court’s decision, everyone and their brother and sister are now calling for Mumia’s freedom. At a point where he is between a rock and a hard place. However, it did not have to be that way. Mumia was innocent in 1982 and he did not stop being innocent at any point along this long road. Freedom for Mumia was (and is) the correct slogan in the case. A long line of political criminal cases, starting in this country with that of the Haymarket Martyrs if not before, confirms that simple wisdom. Those who consciously pedaled this weak ‘new trial’ strategy as a get rich quick scheme now have seen the chickens come home to roost. And Mumia pays the price.
I would point out two factors that made a ‘retrial’ strategy in the case of an innocent man particularly Pollyanna-ish for those honest militants who really believed that Mumia’s case was merely a matter of the American justice system being abused and therefore some court would rectify this situation if enough legal resources were in place. First, it is illusory that somehow, as exemplified in this case, a higher court system would remedy this egregious wrong. Long ago I remember a lawyer, I believe that it might have been the late radical lawyer Conrad Lynn no stranger to political defense work, telling a group of us doing defense work for the Black Panthers, that all these judges belong to the same union. They do not upset each other’s work except under extreme duress.
Second, and this is where the ‘wisdom’ of the reformists about reaching the ‘masses’ by a stagest theory of defense work (fight for retrial first, then freedom) turns in on them. As witness the list of names of those who have signed the Partisan Defense Committee’s call for Mumia’s freedom, excepting professional liberals and their hangers –on, those interested in Mumia’s case (or any leftwing political defense case) will sign on just as easily for freedom as retrial. Thus, opportunism does not pay, even in the short haul. That said, Free Mumia- say it loud, say it proud.
*******
HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT-Honor The Historic Leader Of The Bolshevik Revolution-Vladimir Lenin
Every January leftists honor three revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in 1924, Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin. I will make my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in this space tomorrow (see also review in American Left History April 2006 archives). I have made some special points here yesterday about the life of Rosa Luxemburg (see review in American Left History January 2006 archives). In this 100th anniversary period of World War I it is appropriate, at a time when the young needs to find a few good heroes, to highlight the early struggles of Vladimir Lenin, the third L, to define himself politically. Probably the best way to do that is to look at Lenin’s experiences through the prism of his fellow revolutionary, early political opponent and eventual co-leader of the Bolshevik Revolution Leon Trotsky.
A Look At The Young Lenin By A Fellow Revolutionary
The Young Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Doubleday and Co., New York, 1972
The now slightly receding figure of the 20th century Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin founder and leader of the Bolshevik Party and guiding light of the October 1917 Russian Revolution and the first attempt at creating a socialist society has been the subject to many biographies. Some of those efforts undertaken during the time of the former Soviet government dismantled in 1991-92, especially under the Stalin regime, bordered on or were merely the hagiographic. Others, reflecting the ups and downs of the post- World War II Cold War, painted an obscene diabolical picture, excluding Lenin’s horns, and in some cases not even attempting to exclude those. In virtually all cases these efforts centered on Lenin’s life from the period of the rise of the Bolshevik Social Democratic faction in 1903 until his early death in 1924. In short, the early formative period of his life in the backwaters of provincial Russia rate a gloss over. Lenin’s fellow revolutionary Leon Trotsky, although some ten years younger than him, tries to trace that early stage of his life in order to draw certain lessons. It is in that context that Trotsky’s work contains some important insights about the development of revolutionary figures and their beginnings.
Although Trotsky’s little work, originally intended to be part of a full biography of Lenin, never served its purpose of educating the youth during his lifetime and the story of it discovery is rather interesting one should note that this is neither a scholarly work in the traditional sense nor is it completely free from certain fawning over Lenin by Trotsky. Part of this was determined by the vicissitudes of the furious Trotsky-Stalin fights in the 1920s and 1930s for the soul of the Russian Revolution as Trotsky tried to uncover the layers of misinformation about Lenin’s early life. Part of it resulted from Trotsky’s status of junior partner to Lenin and also to his late coming over to Bolshevism. And part of it is, frankly, to indirectly contrast Lenin’s and his own road to Marxism.
That said, this partial biography stands up very well as an analysis of the times that the young Lenin lived in, the events that affected his development and the idiosyncrasies of his own personality that drove him toward revolutionary conclusions. In short, Trotsky’s work is a case study in the proposition that revolutionaries are made not born.
That said, this partial biography stands up very well as an analysis of the times that the young Lenin lived in, the events that affected his development and the idiosyncrasies of his own personality that drove him toward revolutionary conclusions. In short, Trotsky’s work is a case study in the proposition that revolutionaries are made not born.
To a greater extent than would be true today in a celebrity-conscious world many parts of Lenin’s early life are just not verifiable. Partially that is due to the nature of record keeping in the Russia of the 19th century. Partially it is because of the necessity to rely on not always reliable police records. Another part is that the average youth, and here Lenin was in some ways no exception, really have a limited noteworthy record to present for public inspection. That despite the best efforts of Soviet hagiography to make it otherwise. Nevertheless Trotsky does an admirable job of detailing the high and low lights of agrarian Russian society and the vagaries of the land question in the second half of the 19thcentury. One should note that Trotsky grew up on a Ukrainian farm and therefore is no stranger to many of the same kind of problems that Lenin had to work through concerning the solution to the agrarian crisis, the peasant question. Most notably, is that the fight for the Russian revolution that everyone knew was coming could only be worked out through the fight for influence over the small industrial working class and socialism.
I would note that for the modern young reader that two things Trotsky analyzes are relevant. The first is the relationship between Lenin and his older brother Alexander who, when he became politicized, joined a remnant of the populist People’s Will terrorist organization and attempted to assassinate the Tsar. For his efforts he and his co-conspirators were hanged. I have always been intrigued by the effect that this event had on Lenin’s development. On the one hand, as a budding young intellectual, would Lenin have attempted to avenge his brother’s fate with his same revolutionary intellectual political program? Or would Lenin go another way to intersect the coming revolutionary either through its agrarian component or the budding Marxist Social Democratic element? We know the answer but Trotsky provides a nicely reasoned analysis of the various influences that were at work in the young Lenin. That alone is worth the price of admission here.
The other point I have already alluded to above. Revolutionaries are made not born, although particular life circumstances may create certain more favorable conditions. Soviet historians in their voluntarist hay day tried to make of Lenin a superhuman phenomenon- a fully formed Marxist intellectual from his early youth. Trotsky once again distills the essence of Lenin’s struggle to make sense of the world, the Russian world in the first instance, as he tries to find a way out the Russian political impasse. Trotsky’s work only goes up to 1892-93, the Samara period, the period before Lenin took off for Petersburg and greener pastures. He left Samara a fully committed Marxist but it would be many years, with many polemics and by using many political techniques before he himself became a Bolshevik, as we know it. And that, young friends, is a cautionary tale that can be taken into the 21st century. Read on.
On His Majesty’s Secret Service-Rex Harrison’s Night Train To Munich
DVD Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Night Train To Munich, starring Rex Harrison, 1940
Yes His Majesty’s Secret Service is right in the title as this film’s story line takes place under Queen Elizabeth II’s father, George, the one who determinedly overcame stuttering problem. One can be forgiven though for thinking there had been an error since the dear queen has reigned as the British monarch forever since for the vast majority of humankind know no other living English monarch. Along with the endless tales of her reckless and tiresome progeny which are gist for the tabloids and 24/7/365 media outlets with nothing serious to talk about.
In any case this film, Night Train To Munich, is a mock serious take on the British secret service in wartime, that wartime for those keeping tabs being the early stages of World War II when Mother England had her hands full trying to hold back the Nazi onslaught before it landed right on right on her doorstep, Munich appeasement or not. So as the film moves along we get a demonstration in a half-comic way of the British good old boys secret service which had been keen to grab anybody who could help their cause, and failing that keeping those who could help especially with weapons development out of the Nazis clutches.
And that turns out to be the premise the plotline of this film works under. After Czechoslovakia was devoured by the Germans one of their key weapons developers escaped to England as the troops marched into Prague. Unfortunately leaving a daughter (played by Margaret Lockwood) behind who winds up in a concentration camp. And winds up escaping from that camp under an insidious German plan to use her as a foil to get to her father by using an SS man as a fellow convict. (That SS man played by Paul Hernreid last seen playing the freedom-fighter Victor Lazlo in the film Casablanca, go figure.) Well, the German plan worked, for a while, as the scientist was spirited out of England and to Germany. Things looked tough for the benighted British, the spunky scientist, and the fetching daughter (that last part to come in handy later when the boy meets girl part gets heated up).
But here is where the good old boy British secret service network comes in and saves the day. Dickie/Guy played by Rex Harrison is brought in to lure the scientist back from the Germans by impersonating a high German officer full of chutzpah (not very well with that high British accent so we have to suspend a lot of disbelief). And the train part. Well the whole thing revolves around getting the scientist off the train to Munich and by one means or another to neutral Switzerland. Naturally there is much derring-do including a final shoot-out with that pursuing SS officer who originally kidnapped the scientist to put paid to his treachery. I am sure Kim Philby got a kick out of this one.
Oh yeah, to top things off Dickie/Gus/Rex gets the girl-you know like I already told you that had to be part of the mix so I thought I would just let you know in case you were wondering about a romantic interest for Rex (who at one time was voted the “sexiest” man in the world so that daughter had to be fetching).
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