An Encore Presentation-When Film Noir Private Detectives Lit Up The Slumming Streets Of Whatever Town Could Take Their Weight- Turnabout Is Fair Play-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett in Mind

An Encore Presentation-When Film Noir Private Detectives Lit Up The Slumming Streets Of Whatever Town Could Take Their Weight- Turnabout Is Fair Play-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett in Mind

With A New Introduction By Sam Lowell

[Every guy who dig the gold of film noir and reviewed the material and it was mostly guys in the old days cut his eye-teeth on the film noir detective-guys like Philo Vance, Phil Larkin, Phillip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Jeff Culver, and Jack Dunne. Including one Allan Jackson, who out of respect for a fallen comrade used the moniker Peter Paul Markin for many years although I am not sure what he is using now, maybe Mitt Romney or Madame La Rue, who knows. Allan, formerly the head honcho at this publication and in the interest of transparency an old high school friend of mine, got the big boot, got “retired” a while back partially with my help. Others have written to eternity on this basically “inside the Beltway-type” stuff about his demise, and about where he landed after falling down here so I don’t need to repeat that material here. Except the son of bitch is trying to resurrect himself by stealth or by sucking up to current site manager and his replacement Greg Green or both by portraying himself, partially through me I admit, as the indispensable guy to introduce encore presentations of various series produced under his leadership. (I will admit that Allan sweated, perspired bullets editing, cajoling and squeezing every last writerly effort out of those series, especially the hallmark The Roots Is The Toots rock and roll series.)

I guess Greg has only himself to blame for the Allan creep. (I will take my share as well insisting that Allan was the only one who could do justice to the rock and roll series and dragging him back from exile out who knows wherever he was, Utah with Mitt Romney, San Francisco with his old honey Madame La Rue helping run her high -end whorehouse or slumming with Miss Judy Garland, aka Timmy Riley our old high school friend now the doyen of the drag queens in that same town. I will address my part in the publication shake-up below as the decisive vote for his ouster below in passing.) Greg, maybe insecure in his new position  anointed by only that single decisive vote of no confidence in Allan and saddled with an Editorial Board which Allan would never have put up with but which we insisted on to guard against a return of one-person, one-man rule, had the bright idea that to appeal to the younger crowd that the writers here should abandon their serious pursuits like in-depth political, cultural and social analysis via books, art, cinema and music and go full bore reviewing cinematic comic book character-derived films, video games and tech gadgetry. Christ, for a guy who spent many years as the chief over at American Film Gazette what the hell was he thinking. I won’t even mention that the thing was a total bust since the kids don’t give a fuck about “high- brow,” middle brow,” any brow reviews from a literate publication. They don’t read this kind of stuff however you doll it up and get their tastes from social media-end of story.  

What is not the end of the story although almost sank this publication was the real demographic that reads this material-the so-called baby-boomer generation and what Allan specifically called the Generation of ’68 to ground the audience he was gearing things to rebelled at comic book cinema, video games and tech garbage. Aided by the writers, young and old, who had to write the swill and who threatened murder and mayhem if that continued. So Greg did a “dixie,” did an about face and decided to revive some of Allan’s series from the archives which he thought were pretty good to retain the base. His first attempt at the rock and roll series was to get Frank Jackman to do the introductions. Frank is a good reporter, a crack journalist but knew nothing about the inner workings of that series. I got fed up and after hearing that Allan was back East, back in Maine, after being abandoned by Mitt Romney, getting tired of whorehouse management or when doyen Timmy tired of him take your pick I contacted him with an olive branch to come back to do the encore introductions. He did a bang- up job and while Greg stated that he was worried about Allan hanging around he consented to let him do the very popular Sam and Ralph Stories about a couple of lifelong friends who met via the anti-Vietnam War struggles and have kept the faith all these years. He is at work on that series now.             

Here is where the Allan creep plays out. Greg at my suggestion (I am right now doing my turn as the rotating chair of the Ed Board) has decided to renew, to do an encore presentation on film noir private detectives which a number of readers have asked for in the wake of these other encore presentations. Alan approached Greg telling him that he, Allan, was the only one who could do justice to the encore introductions. WTF. I am the guy who put film noir private detection on the map, wrote the still definitive volume on film noir The Life and Times of Film Noir: 1940-1960. Yes, WTF. After I settled down, after I mentioned to Greg that Allan might know maybe that Humphrey Bogart played Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon that was probably the real extent of his knowledge whatever he tried to con Greg with. So that battle won I am here to introduce the various sketches which several writers have worked on over the years. Enough for now though except to say that Zack James’ take on real-life private detection is kind of interesting although not my cup of tea.  Once we get rolling I will expand on that idea.]    

**********

By Zack James

Fred Sims’ tales of his life as a real live private investigator, P.I., gumshoe, shamus, private dick, or whatever you call it in your neighborhood depending on whether you had been in thrall to the old time black and white detective films like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep and picked the lingo there or just heard it on the streets, could only be taken in small doses. So said Alexander Slater, Alex, who for many years ran a print shop on the first floor of the Tappan Building in Carver where Fred had his office on the fifth floor. Many times the pair would run into one another at Dolly’s Diner across the street from the Tappan and they would sit and have their coffee and crullers together. Usually though the talk was on weather, of Alex’s children and grandchildren, Fred’s troubles with his latest girlfriend usually picked up from one of his cases since that was one of the few places where he would run into women who might be interested in him, or how the town of Carver, once the world famous hub of the cranberry industry, had gone to hell in a handbasket over the past few decades who with the place turning into a vanilla no problems need apply “bedroom community” for the young who had flowed to the high tech industry on Interstate 495 about fifteen miles away. If Alex wanted to hear some tale of Fred’s, maybe he had read some story in the Gazette or the Globe from Boston and wondered if Fred had run up against that kind of situation, he would go up to Fred’s office, plunk himself down in one of Fred’s drastically mismatched chairs (old-timer Fred did not believe in putting up a front and so his office did look like old Sam Slade’s cinematic one including the crooked coat rack), Fred would pull out a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, and Fred would answer his question with a story, or if he had no story that would match up with Alex’s inquiry then something from his files.                 

The story about the Malone brothers was just such a story, one that Fred told Alex even before he began to spin the thing was a prima facie case of turnabout is fair place, although he would admit that something about not being your brother’s keeper could have worked too. For this one Fred reached back into the 1950s when he was first starting out in the business, first had gotten himself the office in the Tappan Building and put up his sign, after he had gotten out of the Army where he had served as an MP in Germany during those Cold War days. Chester and Arthur Malone were financiers, or that is what they called themselves, guys who bought and sold stock for various clients’ accounts or for themselves if they saw a tidy profit in some hot stock. Strictly small potatoes around the Boston stock exchange and going nowhere fast until Chester hit upon the idea that he had read about that he, they could use one or more clients’ stock (or bonds although that was dicey) to buy high risk stock but which if it panned out would move them up the stock exchange food chain and into maybe some merger with a larger firm. Who knows what they would have finally wound up doing. This whole stock transfer idea aside from the questionable legal, moral and smart questions was essentially a Ponzi scheme, a scheme that has been around one way or another as long there have been suckers who have looked for high returns for little risk, so they, the suckers, think.

Well the long and short of it was that something went wrong, a few clients wanted their assets cashed in, something like that, and the Malones couldn’t cover fast enough. The clients squawked to the SEC and the boys went on the carpet, were going to jail for a nickel anyway. All the paper transfers though were in Arthur’s name and so they decided that since Arthur’s goose was cooked he wound take the fall, he would cop a plea saying that the whole operation had been his and Chester had nothing to do with his dealings. So he won the fiver, went down for the nickel. Arthur did his time, most of it anyway, but something happened in prison, who knows, maybe he became somebody’s “girl,” maybe he thought he had gotten a raw deal from his brother, maybe he didn’t like that his brother stole his wife away, stole her after she had divorced him when he went to prison. Whatever it was something had been eating at him by the time he got out.

Arthur though had his own game plan, kept his own consul, and when he got out he played the game so that Chester believed they were on good terms. Then Chester started getting threatening telephone calls, calls telling him that the party on the other line, a woman, but Chester though that was just a guy using a dame as a front that they knew he had been watering stock all the time that Arthur was in jail and that unless he forked up dough his life worthless. Chester was no fool though, had not been scamming for all those years to just fold up when some caller called. That’s when he called me, called me to his office saying that he had been getting threatening phone calls and wanted to know who was behind it.  I told him that would be a hard nut to crack but he insisted he needed help, wanted me to pursue the matter.

Here’s where everything got squirrelly though. Arthur, as part of his plan worked in the office after he got out, did his own hustling for accounts. While he had been away Chester had hired a secretary, what they now call administrative assistants but still are really secretaries with computer skills, Ms. Wyman, Bess, a looker about thirty. Arthur made a big play for her, which she tumbled too especially when he started dangling marriage in front of her. Of course, aside from the fact that after prison he could use a few off-hand tumbles which he considered a bonus, Arthur was using Bess to find out everything about Chester’s operations since he had been gone.

It turned out that Chester had been up to his old tricks, another Ponzi scheme of sorts. So one day after he thought he had enough information on his brother he called some of Chester’s clients and made them, a few anyway, believe that their accounts would be in trouble if they didn’t pull out fast. They did and as you might expect Chester couldn’t cover fast enough before the clients complained to the SEC. And so in his turn Chester did his nickel since al the transfers had his signature on them. It turned out that he had been the one who had sold Arthur out to the SEC on the previous scheme to save his own neck. So turnabout was fair play. As for me well I got paid off once the accounts were settled for basically doing nothing except cover Chester from a fall which I couldn’t do. Oh yeah, I got paid off too with a few tumbles with that Bess once she gave Arthur the heave-ho when she figured out he was playing her for a patsy. People are strange, right.

*From The Jazz Age-Fitzgerald Is In The House-The Great Gatsby

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the "Jazz Age" writer F. Scott Fitzgerald.

BOOK REVIEW

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Random House, New York, 2002

One would have to be rather pedantic not recognize that F. Scott Fitzgerald was an important, if not the most important, novelistic voice of the Jazz Age in post World War I America. Nobody, with the possible occasional exception of Ernest Hemingway, has chronicled the end of the age of American innocence signaled by the Jazz Age better than Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald certainly was not the only voice of that age, think Hemingway again, but the voice that best exemplified the tensions between the mores of `old wealth' and the emerging sources of `new wealth' that were produced by the huge amount of money available, mainly through government contracts, as result of the war or riches gained through the illegal liquor trade. That is the sociological underpinning that drives Fitzgerald's work.

There is no better example of those tensions than the hero (or is it anti-hero?) of this book, Jay Gatsby. If nothing else it is a dramatic enactment of the strivings of the new money to `make it' in the world of high society, one way or another. And what better way to do that than in the age old tradition of buying one's way into that society through marriage. This is the modern American version of that old story.

And the story itself? One Jay Gatsby, the former Jimmy Ganz, freshly reinventing himself after indeterminate service in the American military in World War I and loaded with cash from questionable financial resources, attempts to win, or rather re-win the affections of one Daisy Buchanan his vision of the perfect life companion and exemplar of the `old money' crowd that he wishes to crash. One little complication, however, gets in the way. She has found herself married to a brutish but very wealthy member of that `old money' crowd. Gatsby's lavish but fumbling attempts to lure her away from the high society of Long Island, then the summer watering hole of the `old money', forms the core of the story.

Gatsby's trial and tribulations on the way as narrated by Nick Carroway (and Gatsby's somewhat unwitting accomplice in the Daisy matter) keeps the story line going until the final deadly ending. The morale- the very rich are indeed very different from you or I. Moreover, someone else will always have to pick up the messes they have made for themselves. They merely move on. This may serve as a cautionary tale for that time and, possibly, today.

A word on literary merits. According to the inevitable changes in literary fashion as well as literary politics Fitzgerald, for long a leading figure in the canon of American literature, has been somewhat eclipsed by other more post-modernist trends. While I firmly believe that the Western canon is in dire need of expansion to include `third world', woman and minority voices Fitzgerald's literary merits stand on their own. His tightly- crafted story line, his sense of language and the flat-out fact that that he knew the subject matter that formed the basis of his expositions merit renewed consideration by today's reader.

Simply put, if you want to understand part of what was going on in America in the 1920's before the Great Crash of 1929 then you have to read the man. If nothing else read the last few pages of Gatsby. If there is a better literary expression of the promise of America as seem by the early Dutch settlers of New York (and the New World) as the last best hope of civilization and the failure of that promise at the hands of the later "robber barons" and their descendants I have not read it.

For Johnny Hodges' 112th Birthday- Once Again -Down At Duke’s Place-With Duke Ellington In Mind

For Johnny Hodges' 112th Birthday- Once Again -Down At Duke’s Place-With Duke Ellington In Mind

Once Again -Down At Duke’s Place-With Duke Ellington In Mind

From The Pen Of Bart Webber  

One night Sam Eaton was talking on his cellphone to his old friend from high school (Carver High, Class of 1967), Jack Callahan about how his grandson, Brandon, the oldest grandson of his daughter Janice from his first marriage (first of three all ending in divorce but that is merely a figure for the Census Bureau and not germane to what follows so enough) had beguiled him recently with his arcane knowledge of classical jazz (the jazz from the age of King Oliver say until the death of the big bad swings bands which died in the late 1940s for the most part giving way to cool ass be-bop and what followed).

Jack braced himself for the deluge, got very quiet and did not say word one, since lately the minute Sam mentioned, maybe even thought about mentioning the slightest thing connected with jazz he knew he was in for it, in for a harangue of unknown duration on the subject. Sam, recently more conscious that Jack, who hated jazz, hated it worse when as a child of rock and roll as Sam was, his father would endlessly play Count this, King that, Duke the other thing and not allow the family record player centered in the family living room to be sullied (his father’s word) by heathen stuff like Roll Over Beethoven or One Night With You, would go silent at the word “jazz” said not to worry he would only say a few words from his conversation with Brandon:        

No, Jack, my man, this will not be a screed about how back in the day, back in the 1950s the time of our complete absorption into rock and roll, when be-bop jazz was the cat’s meow, when cool was listening to the Monk trip up a note, consciously trip up a note to see if anybody caught it and then took that note to heaven and back, and worked it out from there or Dizzy burping then hitting the high white note all those guys were struggling against the limits of the instruments to get, high as hell on tea, you know what we called ganja, herb, stuff like that.

Frankly I was too young, you too but I knew how you felt since I couldn’t listen to rock in my house either as the 1940s Andrews Sisters/Perry Como/Frank Sinatra/Peggy Lee cabal were front and center in our living room and I was reduced to listening on my transistor radio, way too young to appreciate such work then and I only got the tail end, you know when Hollywood or the popular prints messed the whole be-bop jazz “beat” thing up and we got spoon-fed Maynard G. Krebs faux black and white television beatnik selling hair cream oil or something like that, and ten thousand guys hanging around the Village on Saturday night in full beret and whatever they could put together for a beard from the outreaches of Tenafly, New Jersey (sorry but Fort Lee was out) and another ten thousand gals, all in black from head to toe, maybe black underwear too so something to imagine at least from Norwalk, Connecticut milling around as well. Square, square cubed.

No, this will not be some screed going back further in the hard times of the Great Depression and the slogging through World War II when “it did not mean a thing, if you ain’t got that swing” when our parents, the parents of the kids who caught the end of be-bop “swang,” did dips and twirls to counts, dukes, earls, princes, marquises even leading big band splashes to wash that generation clean. Come on now that was our parents and I wasn’t even born so no way I can “screed” about that. And, no, no, big time no, this will not be about some solitary figure in some dank, dusty, smoke-filled café, the booze flowing, the dope in the back alleys inflaming the night while some guy, probably a sexy sax player, blows some eternal high white note out against some bay, maybe Frisco Bay, and I was hooked, hooked for life on the be-bop jazz scene.

No, it never even came close to starting out like that, never even dreamed such scenes. Unlike rock and roll, the classic kind that was produced in our 1950s growing up time and which we have had a life-long devotion to or folk music which I came of age, political and social age to, later in the early 1960s, jazz was a late, a very late acquisition to my understanding of the American songbook. Oh sure I would hear a phrase, a few bing, bang, bong notes blowing out the window, out the door, sitting in some bar over drinks with some hot date, maybe hear it as backdrop in some Harvard Square bookstore when I went looking for books (and, once somebody hipped me to the scene, looking for bright young women who also were in the bookstore looking for books, and bright young men were looking for them but that scene is best left for another time), or at some party when the host tired of playing old-time folk music had decided to kick out the jams and let the jazz boys wreak their havoc. But jazz was, and to a great extent still is, a side bar of my musical tastes.          

About a decade ago, a little more, I got seriously into jazz for a while. The reason: the centennial of the birth of Duke Ellington being celebrated when I was listening to some radio show which was commemorating that fact and I heard a few faint bars which required me to both turn up the volume and to listen to the rest of the one hour tribute. The show played a lot of Duke’s stuff from the early 1940s when he had Ben Webster, Harry Carney, and Johnny Hodges on board. The stuff blew me away and as is my wont when I get my enthusiasms up, when something blows me away, I grabbed everything by the Duke and his various groupings and marveled at how very good his work was, how his tonal poems reached deep, deep down and caught something in me that responded in kind. Especially when those sexy saxs, when Johnny or Cootie blew me away if they let it all hang out.

Funny though I thought at the time that I hadn’t picked up on this sound before, this reaching for the soul, for the essence of the matter, since there are very definitely elements of the blues in Brother Duke’s work. And I have been nothing but a stone blown blues freak since the early 1960s when I first heard Howlin’ Wolf hold forth practically eating that harmonica of his on Little Red Rooster and Smokestack Lightnin’. Moreover I had always been a Billie Holiday fan although I never drew the connection to the jazz in the background since it usually was muted to let her rip with that throaty sultry voice, the voice that chased the blues, my blues, away.

So, yes, count me among the guys who are searching for the guys who are searching for the great big cloud puff high white note, guys who have been searching for a long time as the notes waft out into the deep blue sea night. Check this out. Blowing that high white note out into the surly choppy Japan deep blue seas foaming and slashing out into the bay the one time I was sitting in fog-bound Frisco town, sitting around a North Beach bar, the High Hat maybe, back when Jimmy La Croix ran the place and a guy with a story, or a guy he knew could run a tab, for a while, and then settle up or let the hammer fall and you would wind up cadging swigs from flea-bitten raggedy- assed winos and sterno bums.

On Monday nights, a slow night in every venue you can name except maybe whorehouses and even then the business would  fall off only a little since guys had to see their wives or girlfriends or both sometime, Jimmy would hold what is now called an “open mic” but then, I forget, maybe talent search something like that but the same thing. The “Hat” as everybody called it was known far and wide by ex hep-cats, aging beats, and faded flower child ex-hippies who had not yet got back to the “real” world once those trends petered out but were still looking, as I was, looking for something and got a little solace from the bottle and a dark place to nurse the damn thing where you could be social or just hang out was the place around North Beach where young talent took to the boards. Played, played for the “basket” just like the folkies used to do back in the 1960s when that genre had its heyday, and probably get a few dollars from the mostly regular heavy drinker crowd that populate any gin mill on Monday, whether they have seen their loved ones or not.

Jimmy would have Max Jenny on drums and Milt Bogan on that big old bass that took up half the stage, if you remember those guys when West Coast jazz was big, to back-up the talent so this was serious stuff, at least Jimmy played it that way.

Most of the stuff early on that night was so-so some riffs stolen from more famous guys like Miles Davis, Dizzie, Coltrane, the cool ass jazz from the fifties that young bud talent imitates starting out, maybe gets stuck on those covers and wind up, addled by some sister habit, down by the trolley trains on Market Street hustling dollars from weary tourists waiting to get up the damn hill. So nothing that would keep a steady drinker, me, from steady drinking in those days when I lifted low-shelf whiskeys with abandon. Maybe half a dozen other guys spread out around bar to prove they were there strictly for the drinking and chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes to fill up Jimmy’s ashtrays and give Red the bartender something to do between pouring shots (otherwise the guys hungry for women company would be bunched near the dance floor but they must have had it bad since Monday night the serious honeys were not at the “Hat” but home getting rested up for the long week ahead of fending guys off).

Then I turned around toward the stage, turned around for no particular reason, certainly not to pay attention to the talent, when this young guy, young black guy, barely out of his teens, maybe sixteen for all I know and snuck out of the house to play, Jimmy wasn’t taking ID cards in those days and if the kid wasn’t drinking then what did it matter, to get play to reach the stars if that is what he wanted, slim a reed, dressed kind of haphazardly with a shiny suit that he probably wore to church with grandmother, string tie, clean shirt, couldn’t see his feet so can’t comment on that, maybe a little from hunger, or had the hunger eating him up. Kind of an unusual sight for ‘90s Frisco outside of the missions. But figure this, figure his eyes, eyes that I know about from my own bouts with sister, with the just forming sad sack yellow eyes of high king hell dope-dom and it all fit.

The kid was ready though to blow a big sexy tenor sax, a sax as big as he was, certainly fatter, blew the hell out of one note after another once he got his bearings, then paused, paused to suck up the universe of the smoke filled air in the place (a whiff of ganja from the back somewhere from some guy Jimmy must have known since usually dope in the place was a no-no), and went over to the river Jordan for a minute, rested, came back with a big blow that would get at least to Hawaii, rested again, maybe just a little uncertain where to go like kids always are, copy some somebody and let it go at that for the Monday crowd or blast away, but even I sensed that he had something going, so blew up a big cloud puff riff alternating with pauses hard to do, went at it again this time to the corner of paradise.

Stopped then, I thought he was done, he looked to hell like he was done, done in eyes almost closed, and then onward, a big beautiful dah, dee, dah, dee, dah, dee, blow, a “max daddy” blow then even an old chattering wino in a booth stopped to wonder at, and that big high white note went ripping down Bay Street, I swear I could see it, on into the fog-bound bay and on its way, not stopping until Edo, hell maybe back to Mother Africa where it all started.  He had it, that it means only “it” and if he never blew again he had that “it” moment. He left out the back door and I never saw him at the “Hat” again so maybe he was down on Mission or maybe he went somewhere, got some steady work. All I know was that I was there when a guy blew that high white note, yeah, that high white note. So yeah count me too among Duke’s boys, down at Duke’s place where he eternally searched for that elusive high white note.

See I didn’t take too long, right.             

Will The Real Bond, James Bond Stand Up-Once Again On The War Of Words About The Man-And The Legend-With “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969)-A Film Review

Will The Real Bond, James Bond Stand Up-Once Again On The War Of Words About The Man-And The Legend-With “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, starring Diana Riggs, Telly Savalas, George Lazenby, based on the novel by Ian Fleming, 1969

Young up and coming young writer Will Bradley, folded like an accordion, folded int one of those origami constructions when divine site manager Greg Green asked him to once again do “dueling” reviews with me on the world historic question of who the real James Bond, you know Bond, James Bond, was, is since they are still cranking the bastards out and are even talking about bringing in a black Bond to reflect the times and despite Brexit the changing demographics of the British Empire, or whatever they call the remnant of an empire upon which the sun never. Of course that world historic question finally resolved itself around my championing the original cinematic James Bond, ruggedly handsome and every young women’s wet dream at the time Sean Connery who could probably still pull his weight in the role and young wet behind the ears and clueless Bradley plucking pretty boy and prissy Pierce Brosnan out of his slumber. Needless to say I beat poor young Will like a gong every time he even tried to put these two in the same paragraph. Made him look silly and naïve to think that somehow a guy like Pierce’s Bond who admittedly was nothing but a technie wonk and had no inner resources to get him through the hard parts could cut the mustard. So when the question came up about reviewing this post-Sean venture, On His, No Her Majesty’s Secret Service drawn from an Ian Fleming book he pleaded illness or something. Seeing that non-descript mercifully one-off George Lazenby was to do the Bond role that might have been the beginning of wisdom for the lad, for him to learn his craft a bit by bowing out. (Christ would anybody, even Will, want to champion a Bond named George against guys with names like Sean and even Pierce.)           

It is probably just as well Will bowed out since although I am feeling mellow these days while I am working with my protégé Sarah Lemoyne trying to get her up the vicious film reviewer food chain I am nevertheless ready for some verbal fisticuffs. I have stayed on the sidelines while Sarah learns the ropes, learns how to take on all-comers including the legendary Sam Lowell on his own turf, his film noir expertise. (In the inevitable need these days for transparency I have to admit that Sam and I have known each other forever, grew up together, which however does not preclude me from being miffed at him for hanging around too long and not letting the younger set go through their paces and so I was, am happy to help sweet young Sarah out and she appreciates me giving her the real deal lowdown.)

Even Sam recently admitted that she had talent despite his salacious remarks that there was “something going on between us,” between Sarah and I which has gotten her in trouble with her companion Clara. For the record, and both Sarah and Clara know this since I spoke about it one night when I took them both on to dinner, if I wanted to have a romance with Sarah I would not be shy about taking dead aim at her (and made Clara laugh that night when I mentioned just as she had done in her turn with Sarah). But I am not doing so for a couple of very good reasons which should end the gossip-I still am shell-shocked by my three unsuccessful marriages with its attendant brood of college worthy kids whom I am still paying off college tuitions on and for crying out loud I am no Johnny Silver with his young Penn State graduate student for I am old enough to be Sarah’s grandfather, have kids older than her. Done.       

To the film which is what I get paid to do. Whatever short-comings I found in Pierce Brosnan’s Bond by comparison with this Lazenby guy he seems like a ruggedly handsome virile, energetic character not afraid to speak more than one sentence at a time. Where the fuck they got this guy and why after Sean left is beyond me. Maybe he reflected the serious decline of the Empire or whatever the configuration, Commonwealth I guess they call the neo-colonial set-up and the inability as in Sean’s time to single-handedly save the Queen’s bacon. Lazenby could only save the queens, you, know the guys that in the old days we called light on their feet, prissy, silly which is a polite way to say not manly enough for the job. The plotline such as it reflects that since if you can believe this Lazenby’s Bond has only one lady-love, fetching Diana Riggs as a countess. No love them and leave them for dear George. Sickening.     

Here’s the play. Bond is still hot as hell in attempting for many reasons to nail this bastard Blofeld who has been nothing but a nemesis for a long time. Looking for leads he runs across the Countess whose father is a king hell king leader of a mob, a well-connected mob. The price for the Blofeld info-from Papa charm daring apple of his eye, or rather spit in his eye daughter. And Jimmy buys in. In any case the leads from Pa get him to Switzerland and Blofeld’s latest front-a research lab for ravenous young women. Real deal-they are the latter day “angels of death” evocative of the old Nazi crowd who are brainwashed into ruining the world’s food supply via various toxics which is really what dear Mr. B, played by hard-ass television star Telly Savalas and his private army of thugs and hangers-on are about. Naturally with a world-wide apparatus of deadly agents B makes his big play-pay or die world. And the world crumbles including sweet boy M (who never got over being roasted alive by Kim Philby and the Cambridge boys) of MI5-Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

But not Jimmy, not the Countess and more importantly not Papa who has his own ax to grind with blowhard B. Together they take down or think they have taken down B and his nefarious plans. Figuring B was toast Jimmy got all swoony over the Countess and they got married and  all lovey-dovey. Except remember this is loner Bond, love them and leave them Bond, and we have to think of the next film and whoever will do the Bond role since George rightfully bowed out -Blofeld didn’t die and came back to machine gun the poor Countess down leaving Jimmy bereft. WTF even Will would have to back off on this one.           

When The Whole World Reached Out For One Sweet Breathe Of Hollywood Glamour When It Counted-In Honor Of The Commemoration of 100th Birthday Of Rita Hayworth- A Different Look At The Women Question –Once Again, On Jumping Through Hoops- Rita Hayworth’s “The Lady From Shanghai”- Hey, She Ain’t No Lady

When The Whole World Reached Out For One Sweet Breathe Of Hollywood Glamour When It Counted-In Honor Of The Commemoration of 100^th Birthday Of Rita Hayworth- A Different Look At The Women Question –Once Again, On Jumping Through Hoops- Rita Hayworth’s “The Lady From Shanghai”- Hey, She Ain’t No Lady

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for The Lady From Shanghai.

DVD Review

The Lady From Shanghai, Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Columbia Pictures, 1948

Recently I reviewed Rita Hayworth’s classic femme fatale performance in Gilda in this space after some delay from the time of watching, on doctor’s advice, until such time as my blood pressure when down enough to safety do the film justice. At the end of that review I nevertheless had to cut it short because I could definitely feel that old pressure rising again. But I am okay now and can review a later Hayworth femme fatale effort, The Lady From Shanghia. Old Rita still has them (and me) jumping through hoops but I am not worrying about my blood pressure on this one.

Let me repeat some of that previous Gilda review to make sure that we are all on the same page here:

“….But enough of introductory justification, let us get to the heart of the matter- a film review of 1940s “hot” (you can see where I am going with this already) film star Rita Hayworth in her most famous film, the film noir classic, Gilda, and the men, the legions of men in the film and in the audience, including this writer, whom she had (or could have had in my case) jumping through hoops (and much more).

Now the last time that devilishly sweet-smiling, buttery-voiced, long-legged, big-haired, been around the block and is still standing, femme fatale Rita’s name came up for this writer was when her photograph, just her big blow-up photo nothing more, was used to cover (literally) actor Tim Robbins’ escape route in the film, The Shawshank Redemption. Of course, that flash got me to thinking about the film Gilda and there you have it. So naturally I had to see the thing, again. I have had to wait until now though to write this little commentary until my doctor said that I my blood pressure went down a little.”

And seeing Gilda of course let to this review. Know that the points made in the quoted commentary still stands here, except that she, Rita that is, is a blonde femme fatale this time. And know not all femme fatales are born equal. Some like Gilda are capable of good and some like the lady from Shanghai here are not.


Here are the high points of the plot quickly. Down and out seaman “Black Irish” O’ Hara (Orson Welles) hits New York looking for… something. And he finds it without much trouble, although in the end it will be nothing but trouble. Enter Elsa (Rita Hayworth) who just happens to be slumming on a horse and buggy ride in Central Park and who, as fate would have it, a not uncommon fate at least in Central Park, is waylaid by some hooligans. Black Irish comes to the rescue and is immediately smitten. Black Irish, please, please she is poison, even I can tell that. But, no, old Blackie is bound and determined to pursue this deadly course, also a not uncommon occurrence when one is smitten.

Of course problem number one is that said Elsa is married, married to a great criminal lawyer, Arthur Bannister (played by Everett Sloane) with some serious physical disabilities and a perverse mental make-up that has old Elsa fed up. Problem number two is that Elsa and said hubby are going on a long sea voyage via the Panama Canal to their home port ‘Frisco on their yacht. Hey, Blackie, you’re a sailor why don’t you come along as a crew member. Okay Blackie, second chance, please, please don’t do it. Damn, he signs on. From there you know he is a goner.

Why? Well, up front old Arthur has a partner, Grisby, who is also under Elsa’s spell, at least enough to try to assist her in getting rid of the old goat by any means necessary. I don’t have to draw you a diagram on that proposition. The rest of the plot centers on making Blackie the fall guy for the murder of old Arthur. But as such things do, the best laid plans of mice and men sometimes go awry. Old Grisby winds up dead, Blackie winds up framed for murder and, naturally, Arthur feels duty-bound to defend him. Of course such a defense has a double-edge as Blackie will soon enough find out. And will find out soon enough as well that not all femme fatales are on the level when the heat is turned up. Love will only take you so far though, and then justice, rough justice anyway has to come into play. Still, if you ask Blackie in the sober light of day whether he would do it again, hell, you know the answer. Black Irish is just another of old Rita’s hoopsters. Stand in line brother.

Okay, now for the finale. How does this film, this great director Orson Welles’ film, compare with Gilda? Well…let’s say I’m partial to redheads, if I have a choice. And I am partial to “good” femme fatales with a little heart, as well. Especially if they can dance, strum a guitar, sing (okay, lip synch) and give that look (you know that look, right?) like old Rita did in Gilda. But, I am a man of the ocean so maybe, just maybe, I would sign on for that cruise. Hey, I never said I wasn’t just another Rita hoopster. But this time my blood pressure is okay at the end.

Happy, Happy Birthday Brother Frankenstein-On the 200th Anniversary Of The “Birth” of Mary Shelley’s Avenging Angel “Frankenstein”-A Comment

Happy, Happy Birthday Brother Frankenstein-On the 200^th Anniversary Of The “Birth” of Mary Shelley’s Avenging Angel “Frankenstein”-A Comment 

A link to a 200^th anniversary discussion of Mary Shelley and her “baby” Frankenstein on NPR’s On Point. 

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2018/02/12/working-in-the-lab-late-one-night

By Lenny Lynch

We all know in the year 2018 that it is impossible to create a human being, maybe any being, out of spare stitched up human parts, and a few jolts of electricity. At least I hope everybody short of say Hannibal Lecter, Lucy Lane or some such holy goof who thought he or she could “do God’s handiwork” on the cheap, out of some “how to manual” knows the ropes enough to have figured that out. You have to go big time MIT scientist and MGH doctor routes running through DNA, RNA, genetic matching and such to do what back in the day only a scary primitive amateur guy working in some foreboding isolated mountain retreat would even dare to contemplate. Back in that 1818 day when Mary Shelley (she of the thoroughbred breeding via Earth Mother feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft and French Revolution-saturated  anarcho- philosopher William Godwin and later channeling Romantic era poet husband Percy Shelley who hung around with ill-fated heroic Lord Byron and that crowd ) wrote her iconic classis Frankenstein former idea, the stitch and sew part, seemed pretty far out on the surface and would go on to sell scads of books to titillate and disturb the sleep of fevered.  

I like the Modern Prometheus part of her title better since like I said science was pretty primitive on that count, not much better that the Greeks creation from earth’s laden clay process, about the way our brother was put together in a slapdash manner but provided an impetus to further discovery. Today where through genetic engineering we have a better understanding of science and medicine who knows what the possibilities are for good or evil. Although at times we need to treat science, maybe medicine too, like a thing from which we have to run. (Example, a very current example, running the rack on discovering everything there is to know about the atom and then have such a discovery threatening a hostage world with nuclear weapons once the night-takers latched on to the military possibilities. At that point running away from the results of the creation like cowardly Victor Frankenstein doesn’t mean a thing, not a thing.)      

Still Mary Shelley was onto something, some very worthy thoughts about human beings, about sentient and sapient beings, about where women fit into the whole scheme of things if we can at the flip of a button create life without human intervention which has already accrued to us today in marginal cases and probably would have shocked her 19^th sensibilities. A better result if humankind can make itself out of odd spare parts, a little DNA splicing here and there, that also puts a big crimp in the various ideas about God and his or her tasks once he or she becomes a sullen bystander to human endeavor. Not a bad thing not a bad thing at all. But the most beautiful part of her story is the possibility, once again, that we may get back to the Garden to retrofit that Paradise Lost that the blind revolutionary 17^th poet John Milton lost his eyesight over trying to in verse form how we lost our human grace. Yeah, tell us that we might be able to get back to the Garden. Nice choice Ms. Shelley. 

We know, or at least I know, that Frankenstein aka Modern Prometheus, has gotten a bad rap. Prometheus remember him from subtle Greek mythology and how he was able to create his brethren out of clay. Nice trick. Better, the brother did not leave humankind hanging by offering the gift of fire to move human progress at a faster clip. To keep the race from cold and hunger. Took a beating from psychopath Zeus for his lese majeste by having to roll that rock for eternity. Mister Frankenstein really has been misunderstood especially since the rise of the cinema starting from that first libelous presentation in 1931 which turned him from that misunderstood and challenged youth who was orphaned by a unfit “father” into a scary monster who made kids afraid on nighttime shadows on bedroom walls. There are a million ways that piece of bad celluloid got it wrong but if you will he remember actually learned English, despite being “born” out in the wilds of 19^th century Germany, so movie audiences could understand what he was saying. Does that sound like a monster to you? I thought not.

The bad ass in the whole caper is this dolt Victor Frankenstein, the human so-called scientist who built a thing from which he had to run like some silly schoolgirl. If the guy had the sense that God, yes God, gave geese he would not have abandoned his brethren, his avenging angel. Wouldn’t have started a string of murders for which he not his so-called “monster” was morally responsible for. Instead the dink just let the bodies stack up like a cord of wood as he let his “creation” get out of control.

On this site my fellow writer Danny Moriarty has recently taken it upon himself to smash what he has called the unearned reputation of one Lanny Lamont, aka Basil Rathbone, aka Sherlock Holmes the so-called deductive logic detective who also let innocent bodies pile up before he got a bright thought in his dope-addled head about how to stop the carnage. That Danny’s take, Danny not his real name by the way but an alias he had been forced to use to protect himself and his family who have been threatened by a bunch of hooligans who are cultist devotees and aficionados of this Lanny Lamont known as the Baker Street Irregulars.

I don’t know enough about the merits of Danny’s crusade to decide whether he too is also an avenging angel, a blessed brethren in the fight for human progress against the night-takers, against the “alternate fact” crowd. But I do know that the idea behind what he is trying to do is solid. In his case the bare knuckle blowing up of an undeserved legend. This bicentennial year of the existence our beautiful Mister Frankenstein, the Old Testament avenging angel, I am proud to defend his honor against all the abuse he has taken for far too long. That may be a tough road but so be it.         

Mary Shelley started something for us to think about on letting things get out of hand though and now we have to try to put the genie back in the bottle. 

Blues Legend Henry Butler Passes To The Great High White Note Search Beyond

Blues Legend Henry Butler Passes To The Great High White Note Search Beyond 

The Forces That Wonder About The Universe Have Grown Shorter By A Head-Physics Made Easy-Kind Of -Wizard Stephen Hawkings Passes At 76

The Forces That Wonder About The Universe Have Grown Shorter By A Head-Physics Made Easy-Kind Of -Wizard Stephen Hawkings Passes At 76

By Frank Jackman

I have always been stricken by that commentary by narrator Nick on the last page of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal The Great Gatsby  where he speculates about an earlier virgin time in the Long Island Sound where the greatest part of the action takes place (kind of virgin although Native Americans were plentiful on the ground in the area). The time when the lusty, thirty, grubbing Dutch sailors saw the land for the first time which sparked their sense of wonder-wonder at what lay before them in the new land. Well in the 21^st century, 20^th too where he came of age of wonder the discovery of land held fewer sources of wonder and so the whole universe became the source of wonder, of speculation about what was ahead for Stephen J. Hawkings who passed away recently at the age of  76 after a very long and tough fight to stay alive with a rare debilitating condition.       

Not silly wonder like some schoolboy, not the wonder of “alternative facts” and damn lies but the wonder created by the scientific method which honored, valued, hell lived for facts AND theories based on hard plausible facts about what made the cosmos turn the way its turns. Here is the big score, here is where he stood head and shoulders above many others in the same profession, the same wonder business. Brother Hawkings made some very tough dollars of facts understandable to those not in the “fraternity.” Well kind of-okay. Who will take up his standard. For now though RIP, Brother Hawkings, RIP.