Sunday, January 29, 2017

Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Frankie Out In The Adventure Car Hop Night

Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Frankie Out In The Adventure Car Hop Night
 
 
A YouTube film clip of the Dubs performing the classic Could This Be Magic? to set the mood for this piece.

 
By Josh Breslin
 
Frankie Riley, the old corner boy leader of the crowd, our crowd of the class of 1964 guys who made it and graduated, not all did, a couple wound up serving time in various state pens but that is not the story I want to tell today except that those fallen brothers also imbibed Frankie’s wisdom (else why would they listen to him for they were tougher if not smarter than he was) about what was what in rock and roll music in the days when we had our feet firmly planted in front of Tonio’s Pizza Parlor in North Adamsville, had almost a sixth sense about what songs would and would not make it in the early 1960s night. Knew like the late Billy Bradley, my corner boy when my family lived on the other side of town back then, did in the 1950s elementary school night what would stir the girls enough to get them “going.” And if you don’t understand what “going” meant or what “going and rock and roll together in the same sentence meant then perhaps you should move along. Why else would we listen to Frankie, including those penal tough guys, if it wasn’t to get into some girl’s pants. Otherwise guys like Johnny Blade (and you don’t need much imagination to know what kind of guy and what kind of weapon that moniker meant) and Hacksaw Jackson would have cut of his “fucking head’ (their exact expression and that is a direct quote so don’t censor me or give me the “what for”).
 
But that was then and this is now and old, now old genie Frankie had given up the swami business long ago for the allure of the law profession which he is even now as I write starting to turn over to his younger partners who are begging just like he did in his turn to show their stuff, to herald the new breeze that the austere law offices of one Francis Xavier Riley and Associates desperately needs to keep their clients happy. In that long meantime I have been the man who has kept the flame of the classic days of rock and roll burning. Especially over the past few years when I have through the miracles of the Internet been able between Amazon and YouTube to find a ton of the music, classics and one-shot wonders of our collective youths and comment on it from the distance of fifty or so years.
 
I have presented some reviews of that material, mostly the commercially compiled stuff that some astute record companies or their successors have put together to feed the nostalgia frenzy of the cash rich (relatively especially if they are not reduced to throwing their money at doctors and medicines which is cutting into a lot of what I am able to do), on the Rock and Roll Will Never Die blog that a guy named Wolfman Joe had put together trying to reassemble the “youth nation” of the 1960s who lived and died for the music that was then a fresh breeze compared to the deathtrap World War II-drenched music our parents were trying to foist on us.         
 
That work, those short sketch commentaries, became the subject for conversation between Frankie and me when he started to let go of the law practice (now he is “of counsel” whatever that means except he get a nice cut of all the action that goes through the office without the frenzied work for the dollars) and we would meet every few weeks over at Jack’s in Cambridge where he now lives since the divorce from his third wife, Minnie. So below are some thoughts from the resurrection, Frankie’s term, for his putting his spin on “what was what” fifty or so years ago when even Johnny Blade and Hacksaw Jackson had sense enough to listen to his words if they wanted to get into some frill’s pants.
 
“Okay, you know the routine by now, or at least the drift of these classic rock reviews. [This is the sixth in the series that I had originally commented on but which Frankie feels he has to put his imprimatur on just like in the old days- JB] The part that starts out with a “tip of the hat” to the hard fact that each generation, each teenage generation that is makes its own tribal customs, mores and language. Then the part that is befuddled by today’s teenage-hood. And then I go scampering back to my teenage-hood, the teenage coming of age of the generation of ‘68 that came of age in the early 1960s and start on some cultural “nugget” from that seemingly pre-historic period. Well this review is no different, except, today we decipher the drive-in restaurant, although really it is the car hops (waitresses) that drive this one.
 
See, this series of reviews is driven, almost subconsciously driven, by the Edward Hopper Nighthawk-like illustrations on the The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era CDs of this mammoth set of compilations (fifteen, count them, fifteen like there were fifteen times twenty or so songs on each compilation or over three hundred classic worth listening to today. Hell, even Frankie would balk at that possibility).
 
In this case it is the drive-in restaurant of blessed teenage memory. For the younger set, or those oldsters who “forgot” that was a restaurant idea driven by car culture, especially the car culture from the golden era of teenage car-dom, the 1950s. Put together cars, cars all flash-painted and fully-chromed, “boss” cars we called them in my working class neighborhood, young restless males, food, and a little off-hand sex, or rather the promise or mist of a promise of it, and you have the real backdrop to the drive-in restaurant. If you really thought about it why else would somebody, anybody who was assumed to be functioning, sit in their cars eating food, and at best ugly food at that, off a tray while seated in their cherry, “boss" 1959 Chevy.
 
And beside the food, of course, there was the off-hand girl watching (in the other cars with trays hanging off their doors), and the car hop ogling (and propositioning, if you had the nerve, and if your intelligence was good and there was not some 250 pound fullback back-breaker waiting to take her home after work a few cars over with some snarl on his face and daggers in his heart or maybe that poundage pounding you) there was the steady sound of music, rock music, natch, coming from those boomerang speakers in those, need I say it, “boss” automobiles. And that is where all of this gets mixed in.
 
Of course, just like another time when I was reviewing one of the CDs in this series, and discussing teenage soda fountain life, the mere mention, no, the mere thought of the term “car hop” makes me think of a Frankie story. Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, Frankie from the old hell-fire shipbuilding sunk and gone and it-ain’t-coming-back-again seen better days working class neighborhood where we grew up, or tried to. Frankie who I have already told you I have a thousand stories about, or hope I do. Frankie the most treacherous little bastard that you could ever meet on one day, and the kindest man (better man/child), and not just cheap jack, dime store kindness either, alive the next day. Yeah, that Frankie, my best middle school and high school friend Frankie.
 
Did I tell you about Joanne, Frankie’s “divine” (his term, without quotation marks) Joanne because she enters, she always in the end enters into these things? Yes, I see that I did back when I was telling you about her little Roy “The Boy” Orbison trick. The one where she kept playing Running Scared endlessly to get Frankie’s dander up. But see while Frankie has really no serious other eyes for the dames except his “divine” Joanne (I insist on putting that divine in quotation marks when telling of Joanne, at least for the first few times I mention her name, even now. Needless to say I questioned, and questioned hard, that designation on more than one occasion to no avail) he is nothing but a high blood-pressured, high-strung shirt-chaser, first class. And the girls liked him, although not for his looks although they were kind of Steve McQueen okay. What they went for him for was his line of patter, first class. Patter, arcane, obscure patter that made me, most of the time, think of fingernails scratching on a blackboard (except when I was hot on his trail trying to imitate him) and his faux “beat” pose (midnight sunglasses, flannel shirt, black chinos, and funky work boots (ditto on the imitation here as well). And not just “beat’ girls liked him, either as you will find out. Certainly Joanne the rose of Tralee was not beat sister (although she was his first wife). 
 
Well, the long and short of it was that Frankie, late 1963 Frankie, and the...(oh, forget it) Joanne had had their 207th (really that number, or close, since 8th grade) break-up and Frankie was a "free” man. To celebrate this freedom Frankie, Frankie, who was almost as poor as I was but who has a father with a car that he was not too cheap or crazy about to not let Frankie use on occasion, had wheels. Okay, Studebaker wheels but wheels anyway. And he was going to treat me to a drive-in meal as we went cruising the night, the Saturday night, the Saturday be-bop night looking for some frails (read: girls, Frankie had about seven thousand names for them)
 
Tired (or bored) from cruising the Saturday be-bop night away (meaning girl-less) we hit the local drive-in hot spot, Arnie’s Adventure Car Hop for one last, desperate attempt at happiness (yeah, things were put, Frank and me put anyway, just that melodramatically for every little thing). What I didn’t know was that Frankie, king hell skirt-chaser had his off-hand eye on one of the car hops, Sandy, and as it turned out she was one of those girls who was enamored of his patter (or so I heard later). So he pulled into her station and started to chat her up as we ordered the haute cuisine, And here was the funny thing, now that I saw her up close I could see that she was nothing but a fox (read: “hot” girl).
 
The not so funny thing was that she was so enamored of Frankie’s patter that he was going to take her home after work. No problem you say. No way, big problem. I was to be left there to catch a ride home while they set sail into that good night. Thanks, Frankie.
Well, I was pretty burned up about it for a while but as always with “charma” Frankie we hooked up again a few days later. And here is where I get a little sweet revenge (although don’t tell him that).
Frankie sat me down at the old town pizza parlor [Tonio’s Pizza Parlor of blessed memory-JB] and told me the whole story and even now, as I recount it, I can’t believe it.
 
Sandy was a fox, no question, but a married fox, a very married fox, who said she when he first met her that she was about twenty-two and had a kid. Her husband was in the service and she was “lonely” and succumbed to Frankie’s charms. Fair enough, it is a lonely world at times. But wait a minute, I bet you thought that Frankie’s getting mixed up with a married honey with a probably killer husband was the big deal. No way, no way at all. You know, or you can figure out, old Frankie spent the night with Sandy. Again, it's a lonely world sometimes.
 
The real problem, the real Frankie problem, was once they started to compare biographies and who they knew around town, and didn’t know, it turned out that Sandy, old fox, old married fox with brute husband, old Arnie’s car hop Sandy was some kind of cousin to Joanne, second cousin maybe. And she was no cradle-robber twenty-two (as if you could rob the cradle according to Frankie) but nineteen, almost twenty and was just embarrassed about having a baby in high school and having to go to her "aunt's" to have the child. Moreover, somewhere along the line she and cousin Joanne had had a parting of the ways, a nasty parting of the ways. So sweet as a honey bun Arnie's car hop Sandy, sweet teen-age mother Sandy, was looking for a way to take revenge and Frankie, old king of the night Frankie, was the meat. She had him sized up pretty well, as he admitted to me. And he was sweating this one out like crazy, and swearing everyone within a hundred miles to secrecy. So I’m telling you this is strictest confidence even now fifty years later and long after his divorce from her. Just don’t tell Joanne. Ever.
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A View From The Left-Syrian “White Helmets”: Tools of U.S. Imperialism

Workers Vanguard No. 1103
13 January 2017
 
Syrian “White Helmets”: Tools of U.S. Imperialism
When the Netflix “documentary” The White Helmets was released in September, it was greeted with rousing fanfare. The White Helmets, popularly identified by their headgear, are promoted as humanitarian heroes who are lauded for their claims to have saved tens of thousands of lives from the rubble of the Syrian civil war. The Wall Street Journal hailed them as “White Knights for Desperate Syrians.” The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof gushed over them as “a reminder of the human capacity for courage, strength and resilience.” The London Guardian lobbied for their nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. Secretary of State John Kerry hailed them as “brave 1st responders on the scene.” George Clooney is planning to make a movie about them. Hollywood shortlisted the Netflix documentary for an Oscar nomination.
The slickly produced Netflix film is principally a “feel good” propaganda hoax aimed at manipulating public perception about the civil war in Syria and popularizing imperialist intervention. The White Helmets are presented as impartial, ordinary citizen volunteers with no political agenda, motivated only by the lofty motto: “To save a life is to save all of humanity.” Absent from the documentary is any mention of their origin or how they acquire their funds and equipment. Several scenes show them training in southern Turkey, with no explanation of how a group of Syrian civilian volunteers were able to cross back and forth over that border.
But there have also been a number of online articles exposing who these people really are. Most notably, Max Blumenthal, an award-winning journalist and author of Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, published a two-part series on alternet.org last October that clearly demonstrated the true nature of the forces behind the White Helmets. The organization was founded in 2013 by James Le Mesurier, a former British army officer and a veteran of NATO interventions in Kosovo and Bosnia who subsequently established a career in the murky world of mercenary organizations like Blackwater. The group’s members were trained to film themselves rushing into bombed buildings to extract survivors while also recording the destruction meted out by the Syrian regime. Such footage, which forms a large part of the Netflix documentary, is disseminated to the world to promote “humanitarian” imperialist military intervention to overthrow the brutal regime of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad.
As Marxists, we have no side in the grisly civil war, which has claimed some 400,000 lives and displaced half the country’s population. However, we say that workers internationally do have a side against military intervention by the U.S. and other imperialists. It is these forces that have stoked the flames of the war by providing material and logistical support to the anti-Assad forces. Thus, while we are die-hard opponents of everything the reactionary cutthroats of ISIS stand for, we are for the military defense of ISIS against the imperialists’ armed forces and their proxies in the region. These include the Syrian Kurdish nationalists as well as, in Iraq, the Baghdad government, the Shia militias and the Kurdish pesh merga—who have all been acting as the ground troops of the U.S. military intervention. At the same time, we also oppose the other capitalist powers involved in Syria—such as Russia, Iran and Turkey—and demand that they get out.
As Marxist opponents of imperialism, we recognize that any setback for Washington coincides with the interests of the international proletariat, both in the Near East and, crucially, here in the U.S. We aim to turn the multisided disillusionment and anger of working people in the U.S. into class struggle against their capitalist rulers. It is through such struggle that the proletariat can be won to the need to build a revolutionary workers party that will lead the fight for socialist revolution to destroy the imperialist beast from within.
From the beginning, the White Helmets scheme was funded by various imperialist powers, including Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which to date has shelled out some 32 million pounds (over $40 million). The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has given out another $23 million through its Office of Transitional Initiatives (i.e., its office of regime change). Japan and several European countries have also sent financial aid to the group.
The White Helmets serve as a vehicle for a shadowy public relations outfit called the Syria Campaign, which presents itself as a “non-political” campaign for regular Syrian citizens that is dedicated to civilian protection. But, as Blumenthal writes, “Behind the lofty rhetoric about solidarity and the images of heroic rescuers rushing in to save lives is an agenda that aligns closely with the forces from Riyadh to Washington clamoring for regime change.” The Syria Campaign has organized demonstrations and mobilized pressure for Western intervention to overthrow Assad. The White Helmets documentary itself, according to Blumenthal, “appears to be at least partly the handiwork of the Syria Campaign.”
One of the key calls of both the Syria Campaign and the White Helmets is the imposition of a no-fly zone in Syria. Visitors to the White Helmets’ website are promptly greeted with a request by its leader, Raed Saleh, to sign a petition for a no-fly zone. In May 2015, Saleh met with UN and European officials to push the same, while his colleague Farouq Habib testified before the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs in support of such a zone. The imposition of a no-fly zone in Syria would not only be directed against Assad; it would also potentially pose war with Russia, which has provided crucial air support to the Syrian regime. Thus, Washington is currently reluctant to impose such a zone.
As for the White Helmets, who operate exclusively in territory held by anti-regime forces including the Islamic State (ISIS), they have been seen in videos and photographs posing triumphantly on the corpses of Syrian government soldiers and boasting about discarding their body parts in the trash. One video shows them with jihadist fighters celebrating under the flag of the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front (now calling themselves Jabhat Fatah al-Sham) after a defeat of Syrian troops. A particularly disturbing video shows the execution of a man in civilian clothes in northern Aleppo by an Al Nusra member, and then two members of the White Helmets immediately wrapping up his body.
The Syrian civil war has seen plenty of atrocities committed against civilians by all sides, from minorities slaughtered or driven out of their villages and towns by various rebels, to the bombing of Aleppo by Russian and Syrian forces as they retook the city. With Donald Trump moving into the White House and promising to “work together” with Russia, it is unclear whether or how U.S. policy will shift regarding Syria. The bottom line for Marxists is the understanding that U.S. imperialism is the greatest enemy of working people and the oppressed around the world.
ISO: PR Agents for the White Helmets
That a supposedly civilian rescue group in war-torn Syria has received tens of millions in aid from the imperialist powers while its leaders are being feted by Western governments and the United Nations (UN) should tell you that something stinks. We have many political differences with Blumenthal, but we appreciate the work he did in getting the dirt on the White Helmets. Not so the reformist International Socialist Organization (ISO), which has a long history of supporting U.S. imperialism’s aims, including in Syria (see “ISO on Syria: Pimps for U.S. Imperialism,” WV No. 1097, 7 October).
Under the title “Will the Left Hear the Cries from Aleppo?” (socialistworker.org, 19 October), the ISO’s Ashley Smith penned yet another apologia for the imperialists. This time, his main polemical target was Blumenthal, whom he denounces for laying bare the U.S. role in Syria. Having deceitfully painted the Sunni Islamist-dominated rebellion as a “pro-democracy uprising” and the “Syrian Revolution,” the ISO’s Smith complains: “Blumenthal focuses entirely on exposing the U.S., thereby letting the primary agents of counterrevolution in Syria—Assad and Russia—off the hook.” One can safely say that the ISO has never been guilty of such focus.
In fact, the ISO’s main problem with the U.S. imperialist rulers is that they have not intervened enough in Syria. Smith laments: “The U.S. withheld critical military support, for example blocking a shipment of anti-aircraft weapons that could have undermined the regime’s military advantage.” Reading Smith’s article, one gets the impression that the U.S. is barely playing a role in the Syrian conflict. In reality, as Blumenthal reports, USAID has committed nearly $340 million for “supporting activities that pursue a peaceful transition to a democratic and stable Syria.” This is on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars the CIA has spent supplying and training rebel forces in the country. And all this is on top of the tens of thousands of bombs that the U.S. has dropped on Syria and Iraq in recent years.
The U.S. ruling class that the ISO alibis is responsible for some of history’s most gruesome crimes, including the destruction of Iraqi society through a decade of sanctions followed by the 2003 invasion and occupation, which has killed hundreds of thousands. Cities like Ramadi and Fallujah have been reduced to rubble. It is telling that just around the same time that the ISO launched its polemic against Blumenthal, Iraqi ground forces, backed by U.S. special ops and aerial bombardment, launched their assault on Mosul to “liberate” that city from ISIS. Yet just like the pro-imperialist media from which the ISO takes its cue, Smith is silent about Mosul while he loudly condemns the horrors taking place in Aleppo. Thousands have been slaughtered in Mosul, including over 900 civilians, according to undoubtedly understated estimates by the UN in early December. At least 130,000 civilians have been displaced.
The ISO finds it “shocking” that Blumenthal exposed the White Helmets for the imperialist tools that they are, with Smith writing, “Just because Blumenthal can find an aid trail that leads back to the USAID doesn’t automatically mean the group and its work are an extension of U.S. imperialism and its politics are molded to those of some of its funders.” It seems that the ISO needs to be reminded of the old adage: “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”
Since its establishment in 1961, USAID has worked hand in glove with the CIA. From its role in backing the bloody dictatorship of Humberto Castelo Branco in Brazil in 1964, to providing funds in the 1990s to Albert Fujimori’s mass sterilization campaign in Peru—in which some 300,000 indigenous women were forcibly sterilized—to aiding the junta campaigns of genocide against the Mayan peasants in Guatemala, the history of USAID continues to be written in blood.
The ISO’s pimping for U.S. imperialism in Syria is not a surprise. The organization’s political godfather, the late Tony Cliff of Britain, broke from the Trotskyist movement during the 1950-53 Korean War when he refused to defend the Soviet Union, China and North Korea against the counterrevolutionary war waged by “democratic” U.S. and British imperialism. The ISO supported the CIA-backed, woman-hating, anti-Soviet mujahedin forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It cheered on the destruction of the Soviet degenerated workers state in 1991-92, a world-historic defeat for the international working class. The ISO was born of social-democratic anti-Communism and has always been in the camp of “democratic” imperialism.
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In Film Noir Dreamland-With The Black And White 1940s Film World In Mind

In Film Noir Dreamland-With The Black And White 1940s Film World In 
Mind  













By Lance Lawrence 

Steve Roberts admittedly was a quirky guy, a guy known for an ironic turn of phrase but also for his eclectic taste in all things cultural, if his love of movies, old time black and white movies could qualify as cultural, a term he himself would not have used to describe his interests being an old working-class guy who would eschew such fancy terms of art. He just liked them, didn’t need a guy like Professor Jameson, a guy he read about recently in the newspaper, see I told you he was an old-fashioned working-class guy who the heck reads newspapers these day, who wrote a book of observations about the great crime novelist Raymond Chandler which went way overboard with the sociological and critical jargon. Tried to place old Chandler’s work, you know Phillip Marlowe mostly, in some high culture academic frame-work instead of just accepting the stuff as good story-telling about a time and place that was worthy of some play. Chandler himself would have roasted Jameson alive for his quirky interpretations of his work.  

Here’s is how that quirky fit played out recently to give the reader an idea of how Steve’s mind works when he gets an enflamed idea. He and his lovely wife Lana had gone to their local movie theater, the Majestic, in Riverdale to see Brad Pitt’s latest film, Allied, where Brad as a Canadian British Intelligence Officer during early World War II is in the thick of espionage and counter-espionage as well as in the thick of an off-hand romance that had all the signs of nothing but trouble for him-and anguish too in the end. Lana’s reason for going was simplicity itself. She wanted to see Brad’s female co-star, Marion Cottillard, who plays a French Resistance fighter aiding Brad in his work and his heartache romantic interest but more importantly had been involved in a swirl of rumors about being the reason that Brad and his paramour Angelina Jolie had split up. Steve’s reasons were more pedestrian once he found out from Lana who had heard a review on NPR one afternoon which included a chat with the film’s director that part of the storyline was set in wartime Casablanca (World War II in case you forgot to clarify which war we are talking about in an age of endless wars). That reference made him automatically think about Rick, Rick’s Café, Ilsa, Victor Lazlo, Louie the Vichy-loyal local gendarme, Bogie, Ingrid Bergman,  Claude Rains, Paul Henreid,  Play It Again, Sam and a million other off the top of his head thoughts about the classic black and while film from the 1940s, Casablanca.               

 After viewing Allied Lana had asked Steve the inevitable question about what he thought of the film and naturally he mentioned that while he liked it Casablanca would kick the thing down the road and have time for lunch as a saga of wartime romance. Lana accepted that answer although as usual without good grace since she was thrilled by the whole period piece and begged the opinion that this Cottillard woman looked like a home-wrecker and had the full blush lips that Brad seemed to go for but such were their different takes on movies (and music) that she just let it go. (Although Steve would never know when his opinion might come back to haunt him in some future more serious argument as an example of how they were too different to breathe but he, they had been through enough of those spats they called them that he had long ago given up trying to curb his real opinion just to keep peace in the household.) 

Steve that night though having a fitful night as always when he sees a current film that provoked some serious thoughts unlike the vast bulk which he would be glad to inform that Professor Jameson are just plebian entertainment, harmless and not worthy of the high culture treatment. Were written, directed, produced, acted strictly for the cash nexus-end of story. So he ran through the film in his mind again-and as he did he mixed in his tenth at least re-run through the plot of Casablanca. Something was gnawing at him and he could not quite figure out what. Finally he went to sleep with visions of Bogie telling Claude Rains not to do anything foolish like the Nazi officer had done trying to stop Victor Lazlo-with lovely Ilsa in tow-from leaving on the last plane out of Casablanca that night.      

The next afternoon he went on to his computer to Google any reviews of Allied. Most of them were laudatory which would be his own estimate if for no other reason that the feel of the film as a 1940s period piece, including a party hosted by Max and Marianne in bombed-out London with Benny Goodman, the king of swing, holding forth in the background as the partiers jitterbugged away the night (before being curtailed by the inevitable German bombing raids) but one stuck out which caught the feeling that he was having about the town of Casablanca as backdrop for romances. 

Sam Lowell, one of the fairly well-known reviewers for the American Film History blog whom Steve had read reviews by before although usually not current films but classics where they had a mutual interest, had mentioned that Casablanca was a tough town to have a romance blossom in. Maybe something about the desert air, maybe the decadent of the Casbah, hell, maybe the colonial atmosphere of the place in those days. That phrase that idea got Steve thinking back to the film Casablanca and how thwarted love was a big theme there when it came right down to it. Maybe the fate of three high-strung people didn’t mean much against all the craziness of the world at war, didn’t as Bogie said mean a hill of beans but he had let her go because a guy like Victor Lazlo whatever personal bravery he had could not face the nights alone and because Ilsa was made to keep such men intact.

He had written down a little something about the plotline and how things played out for his own purposes after finishing reading the other reviews which didn’t quite speak to his concerns the way Sam Lowell did, to show Jack Davis his friend that night when they would have a couple of drinks and catch up on each other’s week. That write-up trying to figure out what in Casablanca made things go awry in turn got him thinking about other classic love thwarted classics from the 1940s and that led inevitably to a humdinger of love thwarted, Billy Wilder’s film adaptation of James M. Cain’s potboiler Double Indemnity. Quirky guy, right.             

Steve believed almost without question that the Billy Wilder-directed Double Indemnity was the greatest noir produced in the 1940s, better by far than Casablanca even in the romance department since it got down to the real nitty-gritty that mattered a hill of beans to the two twisted lovers. The grift in Double Indemnity is pure unbridled, unhinged passion gone amok leading to, well, pure murder, murder my sweet when you got right down to cases. Watch this one unfold from minute one when the gunshot- gutted insurance man grabs a Dictaphone to “confess” his crimes just for the record, just to get things straight. But our man had had sunnier days, did not always have the mark of Cain on his forehead. 

Okay here’s the play, take a hustling insurance salesman Walter, played by Fred McMurray, out in the sunny slumming streets of pre-war Los Angeles before the hordes came out to infest the land looking for defense jobs, sunny weather, the end of the frontier and to get the damn dust out of their throats from the Okie dust storms (by the way the war is World War II again), looking to close an insurance deal walked right into lonely housewife man-trap Phyllis, played by alluring Barbara Stanwyck, with his eyes wide open, very wide. Wide open from that first moment he took his hat off as he feasted his eyes on her after sunbathing and moments later as she came walking down the stairs all sexy and swagger with an ankle bracelet he would not soon forget. And the smell of jasmine, honeysuckle, something like that which goes deep into a man’s sexual instincts honed over a millions years or however a man has hungered at the sight of good-looking if dangerous women.

Almost immediately they did the dance around each other for who knows what purpose she all coy and he all resistance, fast fading resistance. (There was great foreplay with her talking about the speed limit in the state as he rushed her and he countered with, well, false contriteness.) The unbridled passion took hold of each of them (at least he thought so and he after all is telling the story into that damn jittery Dictaphone) so quickly that they lost their moorings, or at least he did. She, a classic femme fatale to rival Jane Greer in Out Of The Past although not as handy with a gun when it came right down to it, as will be found out by Walter later had the morals of a great white shark. That is to say none but she kept him driving her chariot anyway.                

So Walter, egged on by that jasmine, hell, maybe the ankle bracelet, maybe frontier fever, or strictly lust, in any case being led by the nose, or some such organ, with his great insurance man instincts for the main chance put together a “fool-proof” plan to murder her husband after getting him to unknowingly sign an accident policy with the fatal double indemnity clause of the title. Fatal for hubby  meaning if he died of an accident the claimant would double up, or double down maybe a better way to put this delicate matter. He was a goner any way you cut it once that signature got inked on that contract (and the payment check handed over). Beautiful. Walter’s plan was simplicity itself, although it required too many moving parts in the end. Get her subsequently injured boorish stingy husband (the original plan had assumed that he would be healthy) to board the train to Palo Alto for his class reunion-or to appear like he was on the train and due to his injury had fallen off the back of the train. Accident-go straight to the cashier’s desk.

The real deal was that Walter was going to be in the back seat of their sedan when Phyllis drove her husband to the station for his well-deserved rest at his reunion, Walter would kill him there, dump the body and crutches along the railroad track after he had replaced the husband as the man with crutches on the train. Hey, I like it in theory, a little off-beat, shows a nice knowledge of the inside of the insurance scam. Our Walter on his good days with that scent driving him crazy was still a pretty smart guy. What Steve and his boys in the old hang-out days called “street smart,” which were the only kind of smarts that mattered around his way. Book smart got you pushed around and punched out for simply reading some freaking book (Steve something of a bookworm survived by doing the other guys’ homework and besides he had had an older tough guy brother who looked after him.) Probably in Walter’s neighborhood too.          

Recently in a review of a film, Cassandra’ Dream, which Steve had read where two brothers wound up killing a guy who was ready to jam up the works for their rich uncle who had requested they do the deed so he could avoid jail (and go on providing very nicely for the family) Sam Lowell, as already mentioned the fairly well-known reviewer for the American Film History blog, noted there is a strong reason why most civilized societies put murder, murder most foul, beyond the pale and subject the act to harsh penalties. That little pearl of wisdom can be repeated here to advantage. This deed, this well-laid out plan even if expertly executed could have no happy ending. Helping that inevitable bad end was one Keyes, played by Edward G. Robinson, the chief fraudulent claims guy for Walter’s insurance company. Although it took him a while to figure something was not right in the end his tenacity made him believe that something was amiss-Phyllis’ husband had been murdered. The question was who beside the obvious murderous wife had done the evil deed, who had aided her in the dastardly deed.        

That is when the panic and bad blood between our lovebirds set in. After the deed was done, after the insurance company was ready to pay out Keyes put the brakes on the whole scam with his, what did he call it, oh yeah, his “little man” gnawing at his suspicion. That meant that our two confederates had to keep away from each other, keep their torrid affair under wraps. And that hard fact, that no dough situation, amounted to the kiss of death for somebody-hell, for our boy Walter. See after the split up Walter started getting some small, very small doubts, about his paramour. Seems sweet sexy tantalizing Phyllis had been her late husband’s first wife’s nurse who died under some seemingly mysterious circumstances. Mysterious to her step-daughter, Lola who gave Walter a chilling earful one afternoon. He had to clam her up about that, about her suspicions which she wanted to take to the cops so lover boy Walter started taking Lola around town for a good time to keep an eye or three on her. This worked out okay for a while since she had broken up with her volatile boyfriend Nino.         

Here is where any guy smitten or not, under the sway of that honeysuckle, jasmine or whatever the scent or not had to take stock for a minute anyway. When you run up against a real femme fatale or the on the screen kind watch your back, watch all of you if it comes to it. Keyes had what he thought was the whole thing wrapped up after all-the dame, the so-called grieving widow no doubt was the mastermind but through his snooping he found out that sweet Phyllis was keeping time with, get this Nino. Lola’s ex-beau. And the only reason that she was keeping company with her step-daughter’s ex-beau. Well you know why, who is kidding who here. Walter had become a loose cannon, had to take a fall. And if our Phyllis could wrap up a mature guy like Walter for cold-blooded murder with a simple ankle bracelet and a few whiffs of random perfume then it would be like taking candy from a baby to put the blast, the full court press on Nino. Then she would have had to gather up some poor sap to do the deed to Nino. It would never end. 

Fortunately Walter got wind that Phyllis had been seeing Nino and Walter saw he had to put an end to the madness. So in their last go-round he left her with some famous last words when they met and she tried one last lie, one last lie plus a few gunshots aimed at him, just to keep in practice-no dice. He wasn’t buying, had gotten wised-up fast. “Good-bye baby,” were the final words she would ever hear as he put two in her right where it would hurt. Nice work Walter, nice work and Steve hoped they would not hang him too high. Steve had had to laugh though when he thought Casablanca was not the only town that was tough on the love racket.            

Of course if Steve was a little cuckoo about old time movies his pal, his drinking partner of late, Jack Davis who has so far been a passive listener to everything Steve had to say while he was throwing down a few glasses of high-end whiskey (unlike the old days when he South Boston-born had to suffer through some terrible stuff that had probably been bonded the day before yesterday) was deep into such talk as well. Jack, although a contemporary of Steve’s who had logged in own his many Saturday matinee double-features at The Strand Theater, had been a late coming to an appreciation of the material he had seen when he was a kid. That say, when Steve made that remark about Los Angeles being as tough a town as Casablanca on frayed romances Jack automatically thought about another L.A. -based classic, another Billy Wilder-directed film which tells you how good he was, the classic jaded-eye view of Hollywood when that was the capital of the prime entertainment of the plebian masses, Sunset Boulevard.         

Steve smiled a knowing smile, a smile to acknowledge that Jack was onto something, on to thwarted love, murder, murder my sweet and everything else you could find hidden in the slumming streets of L.A.  Where he disagreed with Jack was in rating the pair of films against each other. Steve gave the nod by a hair to Double Indemnity. Steve also smiled because he knew that Jack was ready to spin his take on Sunset. Both men knew enough to keep silent when the play was on.

Jack who with his movie star good looks when he was younger (and was pretty well preserved even now although he had lost a step or two in the never-ending fight against a few extra pounds) had always been puzzled by the Bill Holden figure, by Joe Gillis, a budding screenwriter who was going down the wrong street in his career. Here was a guy that both Jack and Steve could relate to. A working class guy, a working stiff from Ohio who after serving in the Army during World War II (both Steve and Jack were veterans as well just a different war-Vietnam) grabbed a job as a journalist on the hometown newspaper. Probably like them had used the G.I. Bill to get ahead. But see a guy like Joe, maybe an average guy, but footloose after seeing his fill of war was dazed by the bright lights of Hollywood. Wanted to head west to the ocean, to the last frontier like a lot of people them who collectively changed L.A. from a small friendly insider town to what it is today-a megapolis. So that wanderlust got under his skin, got him shot six ways to Sunday when the deal went down and he wound up face down in some old has-been actress’ swimming pool.       

Maybe Joe should have talked to his friend, his buddy Arnie, played by a young Jack Webb, who was happy as a clam to be an assistant director, had known that he would always have steady paydays. Had a great gal too-Betty, played by Nancy Olson, who Joe filched from him (and then threw back when she found out some seedy stuff about him-about him and that has-been actress). What Arnie could have told him, at least warned him about was to keep the hell away from the high numbers on Sunset Boulevard. Maybe it would have sunk in but probably not because by the time he hit that neighborhood he was strictly from hunger-strictly one bus ticket from heading back to the Buckeye state.

But as a later real journalist, the late and missed Hunter Thompson, Doctor Gonzo, said when things got a little crazy, or a little interesting-buy the ticket, take the ride. Joe, poor clueless Joe, landed up on the high numbers in Sunset and wound up knee-deep with the old time silent film star Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson. Yeah, Norma knew a guy who was from hunger, a guy who could re-write some film scripts she had been working on since who knows when, her last silent film probably getting ready to make her comeback (sorry Norma, “return”). So she snagged the boy, snagged him good despite their age differences. And despite the worshipful jaded eye of her man servant, Max, played by Erich von Stroheim, who turned out have been both her old time director and an ex-husband. WTF was Joe thinking when he got into that mess.              

So Joe, come hell or high water turned from failed screenwriter to, well, take your choice, gigolo or “kept man” (more like kept pet like the monkey she had buried out in the back yard as Joe enters this new world). Norma came to rely on him in the process of falling hard for him-and preparing for her “return” to the bright klieg lights of Hollywood. Joe played along for a while but guys who have been around, seen time in war, had been in the glare of the bright lights needed some room. So he would sneak out and go to a studio and in the dead of night work with Arnie’s sweetie pie, Betty who was a screenwriter. One thing led to another and by that close proximity they fell in love.         

Mistake Joe, bad mistake because an over the hill “boss” like Norma was not going  to let things go-she wanted her man and no pretty young thing was going  to deny her that. So she snitched on Joe, had Betty come to the high numbers on Sunset to see what her lover-boy was really all about. That frosted it for Joe and Betty. But Joe reared up and told Norma he was leaving. Another mistake. A woman like Norma, a bit unhinged probably since “talkies” came in was not likely to take well to the woman scorned. Bang! Bang! In the end there was Joe face down in that foolish swimming pool. Tough luck, brother, tough luck.    


When Jack finished his take on the film even before he could say it Steve blurred out –“Yeah, L.A. was a tough town too on the love racket.”
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The Cold Civil War Has Started-Join The Resistance- News Alert: Federal judge stays deportations of travelers detained at U.S. airports after Trump order on refugees and migrants

The Washington Post
To  alfredjohnson34@comcast.net 
  
 
News AlertSat., Jan. 28, 2017 9:30 p.m.
 
 
Federal judge stays deportations of travelers detained at U.S. airports after Trump order on refugees and migrants
The American Civil Liberties Union sought the action after the detention of travelers at airports in New York and beyond on Saturday, a day after President Trump signed an executive order barring refugees and migrants from seven mostly Muslim countries from entry into the United States.

Judge Ann Donnelly of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn said the risk of injury to those detained by being returned to their home countries necessitated the emergency stay of deportations, and Donnelly noted that those detained were suffering mostly from the bad fortune of traveling while the ban went into effect.
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The Cold Civil War Has Started-Build The Resistance- 1/29 Boston Protest Against Muslim Ban and Anti-Immigration Orders

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