Stand By Your Man-Marlene Dietrich And Tyrone Powers’ “Witness For The Prosecution” (1957) –A Film Review

Stand By Your Man-Marlene Dietrich And Tyrone Powers’ “Witness For The Prosecution” (1957) –A Film Review

DVD Review

By William Bradley   

Witness For The Prosecution, starring Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Powers, Charles Laughton, based on a story by murder mystery writer Agatha Christie, directed by Billy Wilder, 1957

If you have noticed over the past few months that many of the reviews, film reviews in particular, have material added to them which is not directly, and in many cases not indirectly, related to the film itself that is not happenstance but by design. Not the design of any individual reviewer but by the preferences of new site manager Greg Green and the Editorial Board that was created in the wake of the internal struggle with the old regime and its seemingly increasingly autocratic site manager. The new regime’s idea is two- fold, one, to be more transparently democratic in assignment selection and, two, to demonstrate to the reader the inner workings of a social media site and its day to day workings. Whether one or either of those reasons is satisfied in any particular review is up to the reader to decide.

In any case I have been asked, I won’t say ordered, by Greg Green acting under authority of the Editorial Board, to explain how I got this assignment. (I might add here as well that I came on board this site after the internal struggle had died down so I know only what I have heard as rumor around the “water cooler” about the disputes and the process that led to the new regime.) A couple of months ago I had to go to Washington, D.C. on another assignment for another social media site and was asked by Greg to stop by the National Gallery of Art to take a look at the Vermeer and friends (my term since I forget what the official title was but that will do) exhibition that was being held there. I did a review on it which can be found in the December 2007 archives although I know nothing, or knew nothing about 16^th and 17^th century art, Dutch and Flemish art in its golden age, which Bart Webber who does know about the subject took me to task on.

That trip also started the ball rolling on how I came to be a Marlene Dietrich “expert” even though I know nothing about the old-time black and white films which she starred in or the first thing about her career. This is where the example of how assignments are divvied up here comes into play. During that Washington trip I had also gone for my own purposes to the National Portrait Gallery to meet somebody and noticed walking through the halls that they had a Marlene Dietrich exhibit, mostly photographs, complete with a several page brochure about the life and times of the woman. When I passed in the Vermeer assignment in for editing I mentioned to Greg, my mistake granted, I mentioned in passing something about the Dietrich exhibit. A few days later I was saddled not with an assignment about the exhibit but a film that Greg was hot to have reviewed a thing called Stage Fright starring Ms. Dietrich among others.

Like I said on Vermeer and friends I knew nothing about Ms. Dietrich’s career, her private life, or her aura in films except the photos I had seen and the brochure. I gave Greg what I thought was a pedestrian review which he, after serious editing, posted. A few weeks later now that I was a Dietrich “expert” he cornered me to do the film under review, Witness for the Prosecution, directed by legendary director Billy Wilder. By rights this assignment should have gone to Sam Lowell who is something of a Billy Wilder expert. Mr. Wilder was last seen in this space in a review by Sam of his classic Sunset Boulevard where Sam tried to figure out how Joe Average Hollywood screenwriter wound up dead, very dead in has-been silent film star Norma Desmond’s swimming pool. Greg brushed that objection and suggestion off telling me that I needed to “broaden my horizons,” a favorite expression of his it seems. So here goes.       

Even I know that the minute you mention any storyline, film or book, involving Agatha Christie, that murder, murder most foul is in the air. Usually the murder of a high society or wealthy figure for money, dough ,moola for some off-hand expenses. That is the case here where Vole, the Tyrone Powers role, is picked up for the murder of a wealthy widow whom he had befriended for the prosecution’s contention that he did it for that big haul dough. Worse, worse for Vole anyway, was the hard fact that the old dame left him a bundle. The problem though is that if he doesn’t get out from under that murder rap he won’t get a chance to spent nickel one of the loot.  

Enter two figures to the rescue. First Vole grabs the best barrister in town (the guy in the English justice system who gets to try the cases, murder cases anyway), the sickly Sir Wilfrid Robarts, the Charles Laughton role, who having some doubts  about Vole’s innocence, really about whether he can get his man off and away from the big step-off gallows, nevertheless takes the case. Takes the case once Vole can give an airtight alibi-his wife. His German-born cool and demure wife Christine, the Dietrich role, whom he picked up in some German gin mill during his post-World War II British Occupation duty and brought back to London when he was discharged from the service. Christine would all assumed back up Vole’s story that he could not have been at the murder scene since he was home with his ever-loving wife, her, at the time.

An easy acquittal and all will be well. Whoa, hold on Christine as it turned out showed up at trial not to defend her husband but as a witness for the prosecution of the title. She contradicted Vole’s story to the dismay of the good barrister. Now there is a tradition in Anglo-American jurisprudence that says a wife cannot testify against her husband. Good idea except Christine was already married to a German national when she married Vole. Bigamy and no alibi and no exception so Vole’s goose is cooked although for what purposes who knows.      

Those Christine purposes are what drives the latter part of the film and as the announcer at the end of the film tells the audience, tells me, don’t let on about the ending. Don’t tell whether Christine did what she did for love or money. Don’t tell why Vole desperately needed that withdrawn alibi. All I will tell you is Christine is cool, calm and collected during this whole process. The look that she had groomed over many years and many performances. I will say this one has many twists that will keep you guessing right until the end.

The Remnant Of The 1960s Folk Minute-With Scattered To The Wind Coffeehouses In Mind

The Remnant Of The 1960s Folk Minute-With Scattered To The Wind Coffeehouses In Mind

By Laura Perkins

Funny when I was a young girl, maybe in early high school in the very late 1960s, I gravitated to the then ebbing folk music minute of the earlier part of that decade. Previously I had been tied up with the Bobby Vee/Sandra Dee, as my companion Sam Lowell calls it, “bubblegum music” before the Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who and the rest broke the spell and revived rock and roll as it should have been and was meant to be back in the classic mid-1950s when it was youth rebellion music. (That folk drift also broke the George Jones/Loretta Lynn country twaddle spell which my father had been addicted to and would only allow on the farm house radio. Later some of that country sound, the early country sound of groups like the Carters and individuals like Hank William would be reprieved.) The most amazing thing though was that while I had grown up on that farm not ten miles from the place, from Café Lena in Saratoga Springs, one of the totem pole places of the folk music movement, I had never heard of it (and would actually not go there until many years later after owner Lena Spenser had passed away). Didn’t know either about the whole Greenwich Village/Harvard Square/North Beach explosion which produced a crop of folk singers, some of who are still at it like Bob Dylan, Dave Von Ronk, and Joan Baez and others like Eric Von Smidt, Geoff Muldaur and Jim Kweskin of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band who gave it up once they couldn’t stay with the pace (although the latter two have returned after a long hiatus), they developed other interests or there were dried up dough problems. How could I out in that isolated cold world of the farm and its eternal drudgery not aided by that tyrannical father.

Once I had heard Joni Mitchell on a friend’s radio (we were not allowed to have our own radios or record players since dear father did not want to hear the “noise” he called it) I think or maybe a young Rosalie Sorrels (who I found out later but then unknown to me had stayed at Lena’s for various periods of time as had her friend folksinger/songwriter/genial anarchist Utah Phillips) I was hooked and have paid attention to the ebbs and flows, mostly ebbs, since then. A lot of what kept me going on the folk jag once I shed my two ex-husbands who were both serious rockers of the Tom Petty (the late Tom Petty) type, I don’t know how many times I heard his Saving Grace around those respective marriage houses until I went crazy, was when I started hanging around with Sam Lowell who also writes here and who knows a million things, a million songs about folk music having a been a music critic here and at the Folk Almanac. (Sam in what under the previous regime was titled emeritus status when he retired but now just a vanilla occasional writer under the new regime which he had helped bring in. Every chance we got we would try to make folk performances in the area, especially of the aging artists who had names in the 1960s but who were starting to slip away into that good night, raging or otherwise. Checking out guys like Taj Majal, Dave Von Ronk, Tom Rush, and gals like that Rosalie Sorrels mentioned above, Anita Dolan, Etta James to see if they still had “it.” Some did, some didn’t.                

Over let’s say the past couple of decades though, almost as long as Sam and I have been companions, though except in old time coffeehouse hang-outs like Club Passim (the successor club to the legendary Club 47 over on Mount Auburn Street which I never got to hang out in), The Blue Note, and Café Algiers in Cambridge, a couple places like the Club Nana and Jimmy Swain’s in the Village, Hugo’s and the Be-bop Club in  North Beach the pickings have been pretty slim. You can travel through vast swaths of the country and be stymied in any effort to find such establishments. Although one time we found one in Joshua Tree in California run by a couple of not so ex-hippies who apparently didn’t get the news the folk minute was over but who were keeping the faith and who were able to draw second-tier acts like the late Jesse Winchester, Jesse Colin Young and Chris Smithers out to the palms and desert.

The real nut, the thing that still holds the “folk community” together if we can designate those still standing under that banner is a network of privately run labor of love coffeehouses like that Desert Bloom Coffeehouse out in Joshua Tree just mentioned. How much these places form a conscious network is up for debate since they are scattered around certain urban areas where the folkie remnant live, mainly on the Coasts or nearby. Attending one of these the other weekend Saturday got me thinking about a few things in my now long coffeehouse experiences and this little piece.

This piece brought to life after I convinced site manager Greg Green that this was not a nostalgia trip back to the 1960s but a look at a remnant of that movement that still exists, is still somewhat vibrant today. He rolled his eyes, looked at Sam who I made the mistake of taking with me since he is a hardened veteran, an actual participant in the early 1960s folk minute, which I thought might help my case. Not knowing that part of the change in regimes had been centered on breaking away from the 1960s nostalgia trips they were coming to define this space to the exclusion of the rest of the American left cultural and political historical experiences and hence the rolling eyes. That look at Sam as well as if to say he wanted no nonsense about who or what was in the firmament, folk, rock, hippies, beatniks, dope addicts, summers of love and that whole cartload of things he had come to detest about the 1960s before he took over fully from the previous regime. Only now coffeehouse stuff. Agreed. 

As Sam likes to say here is the hook. Here is the social reality too. Most of these private coffeehouses are housed in churches, church auditoria usually, and put on by church members and their friends. Sam calls the whole network ‘the U/U circuit” since a great number of them in New England at least are in Universalist-Unitarian churches, sometimes with both “Us,” sometimes singularly. Usually they are held once a month and have names like Second Street Coffeehouse, The Turks, Beautiful Day and so on. Everybody committed to these presentations, the volunteers, does “Jimmy Higgins” work turning on the lights, setting up tables and chairs, working the sound system where somehow there is always one technie grabbed from somewhere who rules the roost. Setting up a refreshment stand after all it is a coffeehouse and so you must provide coffee and…to the captive audience.

The question of performers at these events is a separate issue. Some of these are what are in what is called an “open mic” format simply meaning that anyone who wishes to sign up, after paying a nominal cover charge at the door to cover house expenses, can perform usually one or two songs and do so in some kind of order which varies with the venue. You would be surprised how many old folkies who I will discuss in a minute come out of the woodwork at the beck and call of an “open mic.” Some of the more venturesome venues like that Desert Bloom out in Joshua Tree try to lure whatever still standing professional folk singers can be corralled for cheap money (which also allows for higher cover charges-usually not too crazy like big ticket places). Iris Dement, Greg Brown, Tom Paxton, Tom Rush, Taj Mahal acts like that but that is the exception.

What usually takes place in these sites is what Sam and I saw that other week at the Second Coming Coffeehouse down in Carville about forty miles from Boston. The setting a U/U Church naturally. The set-up in the auditorium lights on, maybe fifteen tables four seats to each, sound system checked, coffee and… put out, a small table with CDs for sale, a standard set-up. This night there wa an “open mic” where one of our friends was performing, performing as the “feature” meaning that she got a half hour, maybe eight songs with an encore, for her set. She was sandwiched in between a few one song jacks and janies before her and a few afterward to make the evening complete.

What interests me every time I go to one of these things, and Sam and I have talked for hours about it afterward, is what road did these committed folkie performers take away from making a career out of doing folk venues and recordings. While there are a few duds overall the performance level is high amateur with many seemingly professionally trained voices, interesting lyrics by those who write and test out their own compositions and some virtuosity among the instrumentalist. We know some of the stories somebody like our feature friend Rosalita. We know Rosalita gave up the road after about ten years when her voice just gave out from overuse and so the “circuit” allows her to use it in more measured terms which she tends to her business as a graphic artist. Like every other musical genre, maybe more so as a sidebar genre folk music careers are a very tough dollar to make money at. No matter how good you are in a genre that is not mainstream enough to have more than a few making money at the venture.

Certainly a good number of performers are totally committed to their craft if not their profession. Sam and I during intermissions will ask that very question, asked their stories. The answers are as varied as the interviewees. Wanting to be stable which the road, especially the folk road in small clubs scattered all over forbids one to do, wanting a family, having been trained in another profession which allows for time and space to do this “volunteer” work, to flat out not motivated enough to go the distance. All good answers and true. True too I hope that this little slice of the American life gone a bit by the wayside now as the aficionados get greyer never grows extinct. That the U/U churches never close their doors to the music and to the aficionados.                        

For Folksinger Tom Rush's Birthday-Searching For The American Songbook-In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute- With Tom Rush’s No Regrets In Mind

For Folksinger Tom Rush's Birthday- Searching For The American Songbook-In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute- With Tom Rush’s No Regrets In Mind 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

No Regrets, narrated by Tom Rush and whoever else he could corral from the old Boston/Cambridge folk scene minute still around, 2014  

I know your leavin's too long overdue
For far too long I've had nothing new to show to you
Goodbye dry eyes I watched your plane fade off west of the moon
It felt so strange to walk away alone

No regrets
No tears goodbye
Don't want you back
We'd only cry again
Say goodbye again

The hours that were yours echo like empty rooms
Thoughts we used to share I now keep alone
I woke last night and spoke to you
Not thinkin' you were gone
It felt so strange to lie awake alone

No regrets
No tears goodbye
Don't want you back
We'd only cry again
Say goodbye again

Our friends have tried to turn my nights to day
Strange faces in your place can't keep the ghosts away
Just beyond the darkest hour, just behind the dawn
It feels so strange to lead my life alone

No regrets
No tears goodbye
Don't want you back
We'd only cry again
Say goodbye again

A few years ago in an earlier 1960s folk minute nostalgia fit I did a series of reviews of male folk-singers entitled Not Bob Dylan. That series asked two central questions-why did those folk singers not challenge Dylan whom the media of the day had crowned king of the folk minute for supremacy in the smoky (then) coffeehouse night and, if they had not passed on, were they still working the smoke-free church basement, homemade cookies and coffee circuit that constitutes the remnant of that folk minute even in the old hotbeds like Cambridge and Boston. Were they still singing and song-writing, that pairing of singer and writer having been becoming more prevalent, especially in the folk milieu in the wake of Bob Dylan’s word explosions back then. The ground was shifting under the Tin Pan Alley kingdom.   

Here is the general format for asking and answering those two questions which still apply today if one is hell-bent on figuring out the characters who rose and fell during that time: 

“If I were to ask someone, in the year 2010 as I have done periodically, to name a male folk singer from the 1960s I would assume that if I were to get an answer to that question that the name would be Bob Dylan. And that would be a good and appropriate choice. One can endlessly dispute whether or not Dylan was (or wanted to be) the voice of the Generation of ’68 (so named for the fateful events of that watershed year when those who tried to turn the world upside down to make it more livable began to feel that the movement was reaching some ebb tide) but in terms of longevity and productivity, the never-ending touring until this day and releasing of X amount of bootleg recordings, he fits the bill as a known quality. However, there were a slew of other male folk singers who tried to find their niche in the folk milieu and who, like Dylan, today continue to produce work and to perform. The artist under review, Tom Rush, is one such singer/songwriter.

The following is a question that I have been posing in reviewing the work of a number of male folk singers from the 1960’s and it is certainly an appropriate question to ask of Tom Rush as well. I do not know if Tom Rush, like his contemporary Bob Dylan, started out wanting to be the king of the hill among male folk singers but he certainly had some things going for him. A decent acoustic guitar but a very interesting (and strong baritone) voice to fit the lyrics of love, hope, and longing that he was singing about at the time. During much of this period along with his own songs he was covering other artists, particularly Joni Mitchell, so it is not clear to me that he had that same Dylan drive by let’s say 1968.

As for the songs themselves I mentioned that he covered Joni Mitchell in this period. A very nice version of Urge For Going that captures the wintry, got to get out of here, imaginary that Joni was trying to evoke about things back in her Canadian homeland. And the timelessness and great lyrical sense of his No Regrets, as the Generation of ’68 sees another generational cycle starting, as is apparent now if it was not then. The covers of fellow Cambridge folk scene fixture Eric Von Schmidt on Joshua Gone Barbados and Galveston Flood are well done. As is the cover of Bukka White’s Panama Limited (although you really have to see or hear old Bukka flailing away on his old beat up National guitar to get the real thing on YouTube).”

Whether Tom Rush had the fire back then is a mute question now although in watching the documentary under review, No Regrets, in which he tells us about his life from childhood to the very recent past at some point he did lose the flaming burn down the building fire, just got tired of the road like many, many other performers and became a top-notch record producer, a “gentleman farmer,” and returned to the stage, most dramatically with his annual show Tom Rush-The Club 47 Tradition Continues held at Symphony Hall in Boston each winter. And in this documentary appropriately done under the sign of “no regrets” in which tells Tom’s take on much that happened then he takes a turn, an important oral tradition turn, as folk historian. 

He takes us, even those of us who were in the whirl of some of it back then to those key moments when we were looking for something rooted, something that would make us pop in the red scare Cold War night of the early 1960s. Needless to say the legendary Club 47 in Cambridge gets plenty of attention as does his own fitful start in getting his material recorded, the continuing struggle from what he said. Other coffeehouses and other performers of the time, especially Eric Von Schmidt get a nod of recognition and does the role of key folk FJ Dick Summer in show-casing new work (and the show where I started to pick up my life-long folk “habit”). So if you want to remember those days when you sought refuse in the coffeehouses and church basements, sought a “cheap” date night or, ouch, want to know why your parents are still playing Joshua’s Gone Barbados on the record player as you go out the door Saturday night watch this film.   

“Turn My Nightmares Into Dreams”-The Rolling Stones’ “Sister Morphine”-For The ‘Nam Brother Slade Jackson With The “Burns-Novick “Vietnam War” Documentary In Mind

“Turn  My Nightmares Into Dreams”-The Rolling Stones’ “Sister Morphine”-For The ‘Nam Brother Slade Jackson With The “Burns-Novick “Vietnam War” Documentary In Mind   

By Bart Webber

(If you have tears now is the time to weep-RIP, Slade Jackson, RIP)

Slade Jackson always had a running nose these days, always sounded like a foghorn too. Yeah, you don’t even have to think another thought because you know without blinking an eye that the brother, the broken down from hard times in Vietnam brother, is up against a big fat jones and does not know how, does not care to know how to break the fucking habit. Funny in ‘Nam (only guys who have actually been there are entitled to use that shorthand for the hellhole as a few of his friends from the old days, from the old neighborhood, like Ben Bailey learned when they tried to emulate him on that sacred term and got nothing but icy stares for their efforts) Slade had been among the “alkies” and not the “dopers” in the division of the who did what to take away their pain, take away their constant fears, take away the dirt and grime too in the company out in the “boonies” of the Central Highlands of stinking ‘Nam.

Slade had almost naturally been revolted by the mostly black brothers and Hispanic hermanos when they lit up their damn blunts and he would get the second-hand smoke in his face when they wanted to taunt the alkies. Otherwise he got along with the brothers and hermanos, he had to almost every one of them were better soldiers than he was and a couple wound up saving his young white ass when the deal went down. Had naturally been back in the old neighborhood around 1965 when it became time for the young bucks to come of age in the drinking world attached to whiskey and beer. And deeply imbibed the alkie culture that went alone with the booze. But enough of that because this story is about dope, dope pure and simple. Yeah, Slade and his corner boys had laughed about the stupid beatniks and their dope who had better not come around their neighborhood, or else. (On that beatniks thing the inner suburbs were well behind the time since what they were objecting to were the early hippies on Boston Common with their long hair, beards, guys, weird clothing like granny dresses for women, their vacant dope-tinged stares and their free love, free sleep out on the Common, pan-handling ethos, and not the beats who were by then with their cold ass jazz, berets, black attire and indecipherable words passe, ancient history, gonzo.)                 

But that was then and this was now, the last four years now he had descended to the pits of hell (his term in his more lucid moments less frequent now), had run to sweet cousin cocaine, the good girl, and an occasional jolt of horse, the bad boy, when the money was fresh, or when he could cadge some credit from the “fix-it” man (also less frequent now). The trail down had started simply enough after coming home, coming back to the “real” world after the hellhole of Vietnam (also a term reserved for those who had been there although Slade would not give the icy stare when those who had not been there said the word), after the few months in the hospital at Da Nang recovering from that bastard Charlie’s stray spray of bullets that caught him, purple heart caught him, in the left thigh and had left him with a lifetime limp and some pain on wet or humid days. He had come back expecting no hero’s welcome after all his years were 1969 to 1972 long after almost everybody but the weird generals had given up the ghost of war and heroes, had received none but almost from day one back he was anxious to get away, anxious not see family and the old neighborhood boys. Had moved on in his head, moved on in his pain. Needed to seek kindred, needed to have some fucking peace in his head if anybody was asking  (when he went to the VA for some help he put the matter more elegantly although with results that made it clear it did not matter if he said “fucking” or “go fuck yourselves”).      

So Slade had drifted away from hometown Riverdale a score or so of miles outside of Boston, had had one job after another until he hit the West Coast, the place where he had landed after having come back to the real world and had thought about when decided he needed a fresh start. Trouble was he couldn’t find any work, couldn’t find any unskilled work for which he was fit having dropped out of school in the eleventh grades except maybe bracero work in the fields which was below his dignity (he told somebody that he had had his fill of “spics” in the Army anyway and hoped he never saw one again although as soldiers they were fine, better than him anyway), couldn’t hold the few day labor jobs that came his way. Started drinking heavily, mostly cheap day labor wines (“What’s the word, Thunderbird, what’s the price, forty twice”), and hanging around parks with guys, some fellow vets from ‘Nam but mostly older guys who had been around the block one too many times. A loser only made worse by his thigh pain acting up more and only made worse by his deeper alienation from the real, real world.

One day he was in San Luis Obispo having hopped a series of local freight trains working his way down from Salinas (where he had done stoop labor with the “braceros” after all so you know where his head and soul were at just then) when he stopped in the “jungle,” the hobo, tramp, bum hang-out along the railroad siding when he met John Arrowhead (an appropriate moniker for a man who was one hundred percent Native American, indigenous person, an Indian), who had served in ‘Nam with the 101^st Airborne who told him he was heading down to Westminster south of L.A. to join what he called the “brothers under the bridge.” At first Slade did not understand what John was speaking of, though the cheap wine he was drinking and cheaper marijuana he was smoking had fogged up his head. Then John explained that there were maybe one hundred, one hundred and fifty guys, all ‘Nam guys who could not face the real world coming back and had joined together under a railroad bridge and created their own world, their own commune if you wanted to put the situation that way. (John did not, could not express his thoughts that way but that was how Slade explained it to Ralph Morse, an old high school corner boy and fellow veteran, one night when he had come back to Riverdale because he had no other place to go to “die” as he said to Ralph when asked about why he had come back to town). 

Slade decided that he would hobo his way down to Westminster with John to see what was up, to see if the brothers under the bridge could make him feel like a man, like a human being again. The night before Slade and John left John passed  Slade his cheapjack joint and while in the past Slade had passed a million times when a joint or pipe had been passed around that night he was feeling so blue about his prospects that he did his first weed. Nothing to it but he slept soundly, or as soundly as anybody sleeping on the ground in a hobo camp could, for the first time in a long time.

A few days later arriving in Westminster after having flagged down three freight trains to get there and warding off a bunch of punk kids in El Segundo who wanted to “hassle the bums” Slade could not believe that these brothers under the bridge had created their own world outside of town. Had created a tent city but more importantly for the first time in a long time he felt at home. So when somebody passed him a joint, a “welcoming joint” the guy had called it (a guy from the notorious 23th Division in ‘Nam) he took a handful of tokes without a second thought. That, when somebody had asked him later when he made his first of about ten tries at “detox,” was when he charted the beginning of his slippery slope ride down to the gates of hell. There had been so much dope at the tent city (brought in by guys who had connections in Mexico and old connections to the Golden Triangle opium trade in Vietnam) that it became impossible for him to resist if he had wanted to resist when the dope train started.              

Slade went along okay for a while, felt at home, felt he finally belonged somewhere, and fuck, finally found some relief for his physical pain that was acting up the longer he suffered under it. Got some relief for the pain in his head, something to put out the fire in his head (not his way of expressing the matter but Ralph’s shorthand way of putting it many years later when the subject of Slade Jackson came up among the surviving corner boys who had known Slade in sunnier days). He worked hard to help keep the place in shape, in as good shape as any band of brothers living out in the winds could do. Then one freaking night (Ralph’s expression, not Slade’s) the whole world collapsed, the cops from about seven different units local, county, state who knows maybe federal this before every law enforcement agency had the particular agency emblazoned on their slickers so it was hard to tell descended on the camp and ran everybody who could be run off the hell off, ripped down the tents and communal dining areas, everything. Arrested a few guys who had outstanding warrants against them and that was that. Gone.

A few days later Slade having lost contact with John Arrowhead found himself in El Cajon down south of San Diego in a rundown rooming house filled with stinking braceros and street winos who had enough dough for a flop for the night. He had been busted up some by a night stick-wielding cop with nothing but rage on his face so Slade was in some pain. He asked one guy, a dark Spanish-looking dude if he had any dope, weed, to clear his head. No weed. This was in the days when cocaine was just coming up the Mex pipeline in big bricks, kilos rather than ounces. That dude connected with somebody he knew and a few hours later he was back showing Slade how to cut the stuff, how to do blow by using a mirror and a razor blade to cut it up and taking a rolled dollar bill and snorting it up your nose. Slade’s first reaction was a jolt, a rapid beating of his heart like he was going to have an attack. That jolt did not last that long but after that first attack subsided he felt no pain in his thigh, felt no anger in his heart. He grabbed the razor blade and diced up another line. You know the story from there, or can guess it. Know the end too.                              

But no you don’t know. Don’t know how sweet cousin made his days go by faster, made the ‘Nam nightmares that had plagued him, had robbed him of his sleep, had made the night sweats go away for a while (even he admitted before he got to be a too far gone daddy in the days when he at least accepted the idea of “de-tox” that it was only for a while, only until the effect subsided). Then reality hit, the reality that to keep an even keel he needed more dope and more dope meant more money, and there was not enough money in the world to curb his hurts. He hustled first cons, then himself. Became a sneak thief and stole everything that was not nailed down. Finally winding up as usually happened with a guy with a big habit acting a stupid “mule” for Ronnie Romero, the big connection guy in El Cajon.           

One night he had been out at a park after bringing a load of goods over the border when a middle-aged guy, a be-bop kind of guy, what in the old days in places like New York City and Frisco town they called a hipster, hipster meaning cool back then sized him up and asked him if he wanted to “get well.” Get back on top. Slade, now so deep into the drug scene that he was game for anything said sure. That max daddy hipster put the first, although not the last needle in Slade’s arm. He had a rush ten times greater than any cocaine boost had ever given him. Somehow he knew for a while that he had better not go to the mat with horse, with boy. And for a couple of years he would do a hit on occasion while working for that hipster around town selling his wares. But in the end he forgot the first rule-the seller does not test the merchandise. And so there was a direct correlation between his increased horse use and the lessening of his cousin.          

No one knew Slade was dying when he came back to Riverdale after many years absence, after shedding a pants full of weight, after failing his last chance “de-tox” at Smiley VA Hospital in Frisco. But Slade knew before the end because he told Ralph one night that he had heard the “noise of wings,” a phrase he remembered from a childhood hymn, Angel Band, that had always impressed him because previously he had believed that those angel wings were silent. One night they found one Slade Jackson, purple heart Vietnam War veteran in a back alley humped up in a pile. The cause of death-heart failure. The real cause-Slade Jackson could never get enough dope in his system to turn his nightmares into dreams.       

A View From The Left-Catalonia: Neo-Francoist Offensive National Liberation Struggle at Impasse

Workers Vanguard No. 1126	26 January 2018

Catalonia: Neo-Francoist Offensive

National Liberation Struggle at Impasse

We print below a translation of a January supplement issued by our comrades of the Grupo Espartaquista de México.

“The desire of a ruling nation to maintain the status quo frequently dresses up as a superiority to ‘nationalism,’ just as the desire of a victorious nation to hang on to its booty easily takes the form of pacifism.”

— Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (1932)

The chauvinists who rule from Madrid and their hacks spare no ink condemning Catalan nationalism as “anachronistic,” “reactionary” and “xenophobic.” At the same time, they humiliate the oppressed Catalan nation and stomp on its rights in the name of the unity of Spain—that is, the supremacy of Castile in its small prison house of peoples.

Since the end of last October the central Spanish government, applying Article 155 of the Constitution through an occupation force of thousands of police, has taken control of Catalonia, dissolved the Generalitat (the Catalan legislature and executive council), and ordered that elections be held in Catalonia (which took place on December 21). The government also imprisoned several Catalan officials—including Vice President Oriol Junqueras and other pro-independence deputies and activists (some for the “crime” of “hatred”...of the police!). One Guardia Civil unit—led by a colonel who is a convicted torturer of Basque nationalists, pardoned by then-president José María Aznar at the end of the 1990s—is still searching “door-to-door” for Catalans who might have “assaulted” Spanish police on October 1 [the day of the Catalan independence referendum]. Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who has an arrest warrant hanging over him, had to go into exile in Belgium. Spanish [Castilian] has, in practice, been reimposed as the only official language of the local government. Francisco Franco must be smiling from hell.

In this offensive, the ruling Popular Party (PP) had the support not only of its appendage Ciudadanos [right-wing Citizens party], but also the social democrats of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) and the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC). This coup was the Spanish rulers’ response to the independence referendum last October 1 and the subsequent unilateral declaration of independence by the Catalan Generalitat. The Spanish nationalist onslaught also sends a message to Basques and Galicians of what they can expect if they fight for their liberation.

As irreconcilable opponents of all forms of exploitation and oppression and as fighters for workers power, we Spartacists are for the independence of Catalonia and Euskal Herria (the Basque Country), nations that extend to the north of the Pyrenees and are oppressed by Spain as well as France. We are for the right of independence for Galicia and against the continuation of the artificial and monarchist Spanish state: For class struggle against the Spanish prison house of peoples! Down with the monarchy! For workers republics! We call for the immediate release of all independentistes and for dropping all charges against them, as well as for freedom for all the Basque nationalists locked up in the dungeons of Spain and France. We are also for the unconditional withdrawal of Spain from its enclaves in Morocco, Ceuta and Melilla, relics of the now very distant colonial “glory” of Spain.

For a Class-Struggle Road to Independence!

Through these elections, [Spanish prime minister Mariano] Rajoy and his henchmen hoped to rid themselves of the independentistes and impose a Spanish-nationalist government in Catalonia. The elections backfired on them: the Catalan pro-independence parties got more than 47 percent of the vote and again achieved an absolute majority in the Parlament. The PP got little more than 4 percent and three deputies. But, as we recently explained, the Spanish state repression has made it clear that there is no hope of making Catalan independence a reality in the near future (see “Spain Strangles Catalonia,” WV No. 1121, 3 November). Independence won’t come from parliamentary agreements among the bourgeois independentistes. Madrid is using every judicial and other means to prevent even the formation of an autonomous government within the Spanish framework that isn’t made up of openly Spanish-nationalist parties. Catalonia has nothing resembling its own state, most of all armed forces that can resist the Castilian onslaught. The Catalan bourgeoisie has more than demonstrated its powerlessness, and now seeks a pact with Madrid to return to some version of the status quo.

Madrid won’t hold back on the use of brute force to prevent the independence of Catalonia, which would furthermore give a great impulse to the fight for national liberation in Euskal Herria and Galicia. And the Spanish rulers have the firm support of France as well as the imperialist European Union (EU), given that the dismemberment of Spain would threaten the implosion of this conglomerate. One of the principal functions of the EU is precisely to trample the national sovereignty of the poorest European countries for the benefit of the imperialists, mainly Germany and France.

There is a force capable of making national liberation a reality, defeating all these enemies of Catalonia’s freedom: it is the working class, through the mobilization of its enormous social power. However, the Catalan proletariat has not shown meaningful signs of independent struggle, and is instead divided between the [Spanish] chauvinists and the [Catalan] bourgeois nationalists.

Ciutadans: Neo-Francoist Spare Tire

Although the antiquated heirs of El Generalíssimo suffered a sound electoral defeat, their apprentices [Ciudadanos], known in Catalonia as Ciutadans (C’s), received the most votes, getting 25 percent, mainly from Barcelona and its working-class suburbs, formerly dominated by the PSC. The fact that a significant part of the Catalan working class supports the bourgeois-chauvinist C’s is testimony to the betrayals of the PSOE-PSC, pillars of the Spanish capitalist order and loyal subjects of the king (on the throne thanks to the work and grace of Franco).

The working-class vote for C’s does not change in the slightest our position for independence of Catalonia. On the one hand, this vote reflects the fear, propagated by Madrid, that independence would bring with it massive closings of companies in Catalonia. On the other hand, it reflects that a good part of the Catalan working class has historically been formed by immigrants from other parts of Spain, where—in large part thanks to decades of efforts by the treacherous social democrats and Stalinists—anti-Catalan chauvinism is very entrenched in the proletariat.

Lenin forged the Bolshevik Party in the struggle against Great Russian chauvinism and for national liberation struggles in the tsarist prison house of peoples as motor forces for socialist revolution. In Ukraine, the cities—where the working class was concentrated—were majority Russian-speaking, small islands in a Ukrainian sea. After the October Revolution, in the midst of the Civil War, many Russian-speaking workers and even Bolsheviks were opposed to independence for Soviet Ukraine. Lenin wrote:

“We Great-Russian Communists must repress with the utmost severity the slightest manifestation in our midst of Great-Russian nationalism, for such manifestations, which are a betrayal of communism in general, cause the gravest harm by dividing us from our Ukrainian comrades and thus playing into the hands of [counterrevolutionary general] Denikin and his regime.”

— “Letter to the Workers and Peasants of the Ukraine Apropos of the Victories Over Denikin,” December 1919

What C’s rise in Catalonia underlines is the need for an uncompromising struggle against the oppression of national minorities in the entire Spanish state, an oppression that keeps the proletariat divided. Castilian chauvinism acts as an ideological glue to bind the working class to its capitalist rulers: it’s in the interest of the proletariat of all of Spain to fight for the independence of Catalonia and Euskal Herria and for the right of self-determination for Galicia, as an integral part of the struggle for its own social emancipation.

No Support to the Catalan Bourgeoisie!

Our revolutionary program is based on the political independence of the workers movement. We were for a “yes” vote in the October 1 referendum, an elementary application of our line for Catalan independence, but we didn’t support any of the competing forces in the recent elections. The PSOE and the PSC—bourgeois workers parties based on the working class but whose program and leadership are pro-bourgeois—are united with both neo-Francoist variants [PP and C’s] in their anti-Catalan chauvinism, including in regard to the application of Article 155. Voting for the social democrats would have been a betrayal of the working class and of the fight for the emancipation of the Catalan nation. On the other hand, as genuine Marxists we never give an iota of political support to non-proletarian forces, as a matter of principle. The pro-independence parties like Puigdemont’s rightist Partit Demòcrata Europeu Català (PDeCAT) and Junqueras’ Esquerra Republicana belong to the bourgeoisie, i.e., the class enemy. Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP) is also a bourgeois formation in the tow of its older brothers, committed to maintaining capitalism (despite its deceptive “anticapitalist” nickname).

The bourgeois populists of Catalunya en Comú-Podem (which includes Podemos’ Catalan coalition [Podem]) are vulgar Spanish chauvinists with pro-democracy rhetoric: Podemos recently equated the independence referendum and the application of Article 155 as equally antidemocratic; at the same time that they denounce any unilateral declaration of independence as “illegitimate.”

In counterposition to all these forces, we Spartacists fight to forge Leninist-Trotskyist parties, tribunes of the people. Such parties would instill in the working class irreconcilable hostility to all the capitalist exploiters, and the consciousness of its historic mission at the head of all the oppressed.

Pseudo-Trotskyists Cross the Class Line

The self-proclaimed Trotskyists of Izquierda Revolucionaria (IR), section of the Committee for a Workers’ International, based in Great Britain, called to “defeat PP, Ciudadanos and PSC-PSOE” in the elections. This is a call to vote for any of the other forces, which are all capitalist (izquierdarevolucionaria.net, 30 November). IR crosses the class line with the greatest of ease; what it finds more difficult is leaving behind its chauvinism. Up until a few months ago, it denounced the fight for independence for Catalonia and Euskal Herria as counterposed to “socialism,” which would be achieved through the good services of Podemos (see “For Class Struggle Against Spanish Prison House of Peoples!” WV No. 1112, 19 May 2017). Pressured by the Catalan masses in the streets, it wasn’t until literally the eve of the October 1 referendum that IR finally called for a “yes” vote, a call that was simply lip service.

The maximum program of IR is expressed in the slogan for a Spanish “federal socialist republic,” in which, a priori, they would like to keep Catalans, Basques and Galicians penned; and their supposed “socialist republic” will come from the hand of bourgeois chauvinists: IR still promotes “a united front of the left that fights against the regime of ’78” in Spain, in which they include Podem; in France they’re buried in the party of the anti-Catalan Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Similarly—with one foot in each camp and no adherence to Marxist principles—there is the Corriente Revolucionaria de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras (CRT), section of the Trotskyist Fraction-Fourth International based in Argentina. The CRT called for abstention in the October referendum, clarifying that “we are neither independentistas nor do we share the republican and constitutional process proposed by Junts pel Sí [former ruling coalition between PDeCAT and Esquerra] and the CUP” (izquierdadiario.es, September 2017). But none of this, not even the bourgeois class character of the CUP, stopped the CRT three months later from calling for a vote...for the very same CUP! (izquierdadiario.es, December 2017).

The CRT’s response to the CUP’s capitalist “republican project and constitutional process” is: “The struggle for the republic can’t be separated from the struggle for its social content, that is, which class holds political power. For that, we fight for a truly free and sovereign constitutional process” (December 2017). Old poison in a new bottle: the slogan for a constituent assembly is a call for a capitalist government. The working class won’t hold political power through the institutions of bourgeois democracy, but rather through socialist revolution led by a revolutionary workers party. Such a revolution would destroy the entire capitalist state apparatus as well as the democratic institutions for the rich, replacing them with workers soviets. We genuine Trotskyists work towards the realization of this perspective.

In Honor Of Black And Women's History Months-From Women And Revolution-The Grimke Sisters-Pioneers For Abolition And Women's Rights

In Honor Of Black And Women's History Months-From Women And Revolution-The Grimke Sisters-Pioneers For Abolition And Women's Rights

Race, Gender And Space-The Black Women’s Place-“Hidden Figures” (2016)-A Film Review

Race, Gender  And Space-The Black Women’s Place-“Hidden Figures” (2016)-A Film Review     

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Hidden Figures, starring Taraji Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, 2016  

Come on now when you are thinking  about the super-duper advanced mathematicians, computer whizzes or aerospace engineers who put men and women into space and to the moon  you are thinking about short-haired crew-cut  white guys in white shirts with those plastic sleeves in their shirt pockets filled with off-hand pens sitting in mission control at Houston calling the shots as part of a vanilla team of anonymous figures (except the head guy whose head was always being fitted for the platter with each early rocket failure back in the late 1950s and early 1960s after the red scare Cold War Russians put an object and then a man in space leaving the United States of America flat-footed and looking kind of foolish what with all the expertise and dough around).

Yeah, you are thinking in those days, somewhat still true now as well of guys who went to big time science schools like Cal Tech and MIT maybe an oddball from Stanford (although now you will see at least at MIT which I am most familiar many Asian guys and gals filling the classrooms with their computers at the ready but also with those plastic sleeves still holding their pens-the gals too.) What you would not be thinking about is three black women (complete with kids at home something you don’t associate with those white-shirted guys too busy figuring out the latest orbital trajectory) who did not go to Cal Tech, MIT or even an oddball at Stanford but in the case of one Podunk West Virginia and another having to attend night school at some previously all white high school to get up to speed in order to become an aerospace engineer. But that hard if long delayed acknowledgement is what drives the film under review Hidden Figures about those three black women who were pioneers in a man’s world (along with help from other black women from the “colored” pool of human computers from which they were selected). Hell there weren’t even that many white women come to think of it but this film is a black-etched story not a generic women’s story.          

Here’s the way the plot-line played out and why we should admire the tenacity and their sense of patriotism of those women. As mentioned above the U.S. was caught flat-footed by the Russians in the late 1950s with Sputnik first of all and so NASA down in Virginia was pushed hard, pushed hard politically to show some results-to catch up and surpass the Ruskkies (with the object of winning the big prize-landing on the moon not in the distance future but as per Jack Kennedy by the end of the 1960s). So everybody needed to pull some weight-all those highly prized Cal Tech and MIT guys had to push the envelope. Aided of course by those human computers who if you can believe this in the age of the personal computer and an average eight year old’s ability to handle the damn thing with ease used adding machines and pocket calculators-maybe slide rulers too. They appear to have been mainly women-“colored” (hey that is the term of the time so let’s let that stand here as well) and white women working in separate areas of the complex at Langley.           

That seemingly ancient situation which may seem weird in our so-called “post racial” society was however the social reality in early 1960s Virginia due to the Mister James Crow laws and their strict enforcement  in that state despite whatever the courts had proclaimed in the 1950s (or for that matter the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution from the 1860s). This is the “race” part of the “race and space” title of this review. Those laws and “customs” extended right up to those highly educated white- shirted guys who in a very  telling scene put a separate “colored” coffee pot in their break area (and in another scene it took almost a second civil war to get convenient restroom facilities against the previous distant “colored” women’s restroom- Jesus)               

Why was all this breaking down of the social norms of post-bellum Virginia necessary beyond the national goals and pacing set in far-off Washington? Well one Katherine Johnson, played here by Taraji Henson, a natural and brilliant mathematician, was put on the team on her merits which would be fully tested as the white guys were behind the curve most of the time on the critical trajectory tight numbers needed to insure a safe reentry from orbit to “splash down.” One Dorothy Vaughn, played by Olivia Spencer, who was in charge of the “colored” human computers and for a long while not given her due with the actual rank of supervisor who brought her “girls” over after learning the Fortram computer language which was the wave of the future in the computation world. And one Mary Jackson, played by Janelle Monae, who at great effort would become the first African-American (not “colored”) aerospace engineer at NASA. Their neglected contributions to the space program and their having to facing with dignity the skewed racial ethos of the time made this an enjoyable and thoughtful two hours. Yeah, move over Cal Tech and MIT the sisters are in town.         

***Poet’s Corner- Langston Hughes -50-50

***Poet’s Corner- Langston Hughes -50-50

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman



February is Black History Month

50-50



I’m all alone in this world, she said,
Ain’t got nobody to share my bed,
Ain’t got nobody to hold my hand—
The truth of the matter’s
I ain’t got no man.

Big Boy opened his mouth and said,
Trouble with you is
You ain’t got no head!
If you had a head and used your mind
You could have me with you
All the time.

She answered, Babe, what must I do?

He said, Share your bed—
And your money, too.



Langston Hughes



The whole world knew, or at least the important parts of that world, that summer of 2012 downtown Boston world (near the Common say from the Public Gardens to Newbury Street but also near birth place Columbus Avenue), knew that Larry Johnson was Ms. Loretta Lawrence’s every day man (and it goes without saying her every night man too). Make no mistake, girls, women, even though they didn’t hold hands in public or throw public kisses at each other, they were an an “item.” Loretta at five-ten and rail thin, fashion model day thin and what in the old days was called a very light “high yella,” mixed blood from some old South Mister’s wanting habits and some “passing for white” along the way but in any case very highly sought after just then for coffee table magazine shoots didn’t look like trouble, but anytime a a woman gave Larry a side glance look Loretta’s eyes said keep your hands off. And they did, those in the fashion industry, mostly her fellow models, and maybe a few longing sidewinder guy designers too. But somebody had Larry’s attention and Loretta was going to get to the bottom of it.

It had all started back in February when Larry asked her for a hundred dollars one night, out of the blue. Now Larry had been on a tough stretch ever since the financial collapse in 2008 (although it only bagged him in early 2010) when the markets went crazy and he got caught short, and since business was bad he eventually got that old dreaded pink slip from the big finance company that had hired him straight out of the Harvard Business School MBA program to diversify their employee mix. (Larry found out later that one manager, who had publicly said he was crazy to get him had told a friend of his that he hired Larry to add “color” to his staff). Nobody was hiring so he had just been kind of living off his old time bonuses, and a little of this and that.



Funny, funny now, Larry and Loretta had met at a bar down in the financial district where he had stopped off for a drink after passing his resume around for about the umpteenth time and she had just finished a shoot (for a cosmetic company as they were trying to expand their markets that had keyed on her for her ravishing looks, brown hair, brown eyes, very light brownish high cheek-boned skin which was a plus since whatever diversity there was in the fashion market the hard fact was there was a drop off when dark as Africa black women graced the covers of most magazines or other advertising venues) down near the water at International Place and her photographer had offered to buy her a drink. His eyes met hers, her eyes met his in return and before anyone really knew it he had moved in on her like something out of one of those old time thriller romance novels that you read and at the end can’t believe that you spent your good hard-earned rest reading and cannot believe either that the “she” of the story would be so stupid in the end to have gotten mixed-up with a wacko like that.

Larry had moved in on her too, literally, after a few weeks of downy billow talk and his argument (which she was okay with, she wasn’t saying she wasn’t) that two could live as cheaply as one (which isn’t true but close enough) and he could cut down on expenses during his rough patch. And it was nice, nice to have a man around, with man’s things, a man’s scent, and a man’s silly little vanities that she had not experienced since Phil (she would not use a last name because Phil was well known, too well-known) had left her a few years back. Every once in a while though she would notice a ten here or a twenty there missing from her pocketbook but figured that either she, spendthrift she, had spent it on some forgotten bobble or Larry had taken it for some household thing and didn’t report the fact (although she, they, had insisted on a collective counting of expenses). Then came the night of Larry’s official request. And she gave it to him, a loan, a loan was all it was. The first time.

After a few more requests for dough, and the granting of those requests, Loretta started to try to figure out what the heck he was doing with the dough (he said it was to help get a job, or he needed new shirts, or something, something different each time). Then she thought about Phil, not about the money part (Jesus, he had thrown his dough at her when he was strong for her, called her his little money-machine and laughed) but as he started losing interest in her he stopped showering the money because he was seeing another woman on the side and showering it on her (that “her” being a friend of hers, and not even beautiful, just smart). And so she started thinking that Larry, Larry the guy who was sharing her bed every night (every night so it had to be a daytime dalliance), was having another affair. She resolved that Larry would get no more money, no more loans, as he called them and if she found out that he was two-timing her that woman had better leave town because, two-timer or not, bum-of-the-mouth or not, he was her man and she had told one and all hands off. And she meant it.