Veterans for Peace: Ring Church Bells on Armistice Day

Veterans for Peace: Ring Church Bells on Armistice Day

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8/9/2018

Veterans for Peace is calling on churches to ring their bells at 11 AM on Sunday, November 11 - Armistice Day - in recognition of the futility of war and to show our commitment to world peace.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the original Armistice Day, a day of celebration marking the end of fighting during World War I (the Great War). Today, Armistice Day is a call to Americans, in recognition of the horrors and futility of that war, to rededicate themselves to world peace.

While November 11 was declared Veteran's Day in 1954, Armistice Day legislation (1919; 1926 and 1938) remains in place to this day. Read excerpts from that legislation here.
                     
Veterans For Peace (VFP)  is an international organization made up of military veterans, military family members, and allies dedicated to building a culture of peace, exposing the true costs of war, and healing the wounds of war. Their goal is to change public opinion in the U.S. from an unsustainable culture of militarism and commercialism to one of peace, democracy, and sustainability. They do this primarily, although not exclusively, through grassroots organizing and education at the local level.  

Learn more about the organization  Veterans for Peace, or the local chapter, Smedley Butler Brigade. Contact Doug Stewart, VFP Chapter Leader in Boston and member of the Eliot Church of Newton, a Mass. Conference church,  here.

Ring your Bells on November 11!

After Charlottesvile -The Greensboro Massacre 1979- Never Forget

After Charlottesvile -The Greensboro Massacre 1979- Never Forget

A YouTube film clip about the events of that day in 1979 when right wing thugs in Greensboro, North Carolina murdered five communist workers.

COMMENTARY

This is a repost of last year's commemorative commentary. The struggle remains the same.


REMEMBER SLAIN LABOR MILITANTS-CESAR CAUCE, MICHAEL NATHAN, BILL SAMPSON SANDI SMITH AND JIM WALLER





For those too young to remember or who unfortunately have forgotten the incident commemorated here this is a capsule summary of what occurred on that bloody day:

On November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, five anti-racist activists and union organizers, supporters of the Communist Workers Party (CWP), were fatally gunned down by Ku Klux Klan and Nazi fascists. Nine carloads of Klansmen and Nazis drove up to a black housing project-the gathering place for an anti-Klan march organized by the CWP. In broad daylight, the fascists pulled out their weapons and unleashed an 88-second fusillade that was captured on television cameras. They then drove off, leaving the dead and dying in pools of blood. From the outset, the Klan/Nazi killers were aided and abetted by the government, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who helped train the killers and plot the assassination to the "former" FBI informer who rode shotgun in the motorcade of death and the Greensboro cop who brought up the rear. The five militants listed above died as a result. The Greensboro Klan/Nazis literally got away with murder, acquitted twice by all-white juries.

This writer has recently been raked over the coals by some leftists who were appalled that he called for a no free speech platform for Nazis and fascists (see below) and argued that labor should mobilize its forces and run these vermin off the streets whenever they raise their heads. Despite recent efforts to blur the lines of the heinous nature of and political motivation for these murders in Greensboro by some kind of truth and reconciliation process militant leftists should etch in their brains the reality of the Klan/Nazis. There is nothing to debate with this kind. The niceties of parliamentary democracy have no place in a strategy to defeat these bastards. The Greensboro massacre is prime evidence that any other way is suicidal for militants. No more Germany, 1933's. No more Greensboro, 1979's. Never Forget Greensboro.

REPOST FROM SEPTEMBER 15, 2006

In a recent blog (dated, September 4, 2006) this writer mentioned that one of the Klan groups in this country held a demonstration at the Gettysburg National Cemetery over the Labor Day 2006 weekend around a list of demands that included bringing the troops home from Iraq in order to patrol the borders. Symbols mean a lot in politics and the notion that Klansmen were permitted to demonstrate at a key symbol in the fight to end slavery and preserve the union raised my temperature more than a little. As I said then Gettysburg is hallowed ground fought and paid for in great struggle and much blood. At that time the writer posed the question of what, if any, opposition to the demonstration leftists had put together to run these hooded fools out of town. In response, this writer was raked over the coals for calling for an organized fight by labor to nip these elements in the bud. Why? Apparently some people believe that running the fools out of town would have violated the Klan's free speech rights. Something is desperately wrong here about both the nature of free speech and the nature of the Klan/fascist menace.

First, let us be clear, militant leftists defend every democratic right as best we can. I have often argued in this space that to a great extend militant leftists are the only active defenders of such rights- on the streets where it counts. That said, the parameters of such rights, as all democratic rights, cannot trump the needs of the class struggle. In short, militant leftist have no interest in defending or extending the rights of fascists to fill the air with gibberish. Now that may offend some American Civil Liberties Union-types but any self-respecting militant knows that such a position is right is his or her 'gut'.

In the final analysis we will be fighting the Klan-types on the streets and the issue will no be rights of free expression (except maybe in defense of ours) but the survival of our organizations. A short glance at history is to the point.
One of the great tragedies of the Western labor movement was the defeat and destruction of the German labor movement in the wake of the fascist Hitler's rise to power in 1933. In the final analysis that destruction was brought on by the fatally erroneous policies of both the German Social Democratic and Communists parties. Neither party, willfully, saw the danger in time and compounded that error when refused to call for or establish a united front of all labor organizations to confront and destroy Hitler and his storm troopers. We know the result. And it was not necessary. Moreover, Hitler's organization at one time (in the mid-1920's) was small and unimportant like today's Klan/Nazi threat. But that does not mean that under certain circumstances that could not change. And that, my friends, is exactly the point.

The Rich Really Are Different, Very Different From You and I, Me, And That Ain’t No Lie-Audrey Hepburn And Humphrey Bogart’s “Sabrina” (1954)-A Film Review

The Rich Really Are Different, Very Different From You and I, Me, And That Ain’t No Lie-Audrey Hepburn And Humphrey Bogart’s “Sabrina” (1954)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Fritz Taylor

Sabrina, starring Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, directed by Billy Wilder,  1954

How the hell did I get this assignment, this woman’s fairy tale romance assignment from site manager Greg Green? And that is posed as a question with about seven riddles since I am basically a stringer, an occasional writer in this publication and moreover when I do write it usually is about some military matter stemming from my now long- ago Vietnam War hell on wheels service. What got me this assignment if you can believe this though from what Greg said was that I had done a good job on a previous film review I was asked to do to give a side glance view of another film and so he thought that I would be ideal to go through my paces on a “women’s film” from back in my youth. Hence my review of Sabrina forthwith.

Since I don’t have much experience with getting what Sam Lowell, a now retired film editor and occasional contributing writer has called “the hook”, the way to lure the reader in to what the film is all about I asked old friend Seth Garth to help me out one day when we were standing around the office water cooler and I was perplexed for an angle on the film. He almost automatically, having seen the film many years ago, threw out the idea gathered from F. Scott Fitzgerald that here was yet another example of the rich, meaning to both Fitzgerald and to Seth the very rich, the old money Yankee-Dutch rich and not the latter day new technology rich like Bezos, Jobs, Musk and that lot who are still wet behind the ears in getting adjusted to the ways of that segment of the ruling class that actually made things and have prospered since Mayflower/Half Moon times.

Funny once Seth grabbed that idea the rest was easy except of course the romance among the Mayfair swells part and Billy Wilder’s ironic and sardonic look at the mores of in this case the New York upper gentry living out in Long Island and not in Manhattan. The plot is simple enough beyond what Seth also called, in the end “the boy meets girl” trope that has saved more than one Hollywood production when the going got slowed down. Sabrina, to the stable born via her father’s job as chauffer to the ultra-rich family, played by sparking vivacious girl next door with a bit of the devil in her eye Audrey Hepburn who almost any guy from my generation would have had at least a momentary crush on, is in love with the younger son, David, a scion to that family wealth played by ruggedly handsome pretty boy William Holden last seen in this publication according to Sam Lowell face down in ancient film star Norma Desmond’s swimming pool in anther Billy Wilder classic Sunset Boulevard and doing the dance of sexy dances with young Kim Novak as an iterant in Picnic. David, starting out anyway has no eyes for her and so that seems like a lot of things about the lives of people to the stable born the end of it.

Except that through a strange twist of funny fate Sabrina is sent to Paris to learn to become, well, a cook well within her station in life. 

But you know as well as I do that Audrey Hepburn is not going to be slaving over hot stoves and steaming kettles for long and she didn’t by virtue of an acquaintance with a French aristocrat of the old school. When she returns to the estate David has nothing but eyes for her as she has become a sophisticated young woman. He is ready to dump everything for her, including a Mayfair swell gal whose family just happens to have extensive sugar cane interests. Enter Linus, the older brother played by aging Humphry Bogart last seen again according to Sam either sending Mary Astor over to save his ass in some stuff of dreams caper in The Maltese Falcon or getting waylaid by come hither young Lauren Bacall in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s  To Have Or Have Not.  

Business is business to old Linus and abandoning that sugar interest for some dazzling fairy princess from Paris is not in the program so he is committed to sabotaging David’s plans whatever the cost. Including taking a run at Sabrina himself. 

That would eventually be his undoing and his break from the man in the grey flannel suit 1950s business chain gang existence. See Linus went too far, fell for the much younger Sabrina (Bogie remember had that thing for Lauren Bacall on and off screen, so this was nothing new) but that is where things get interesting. His falling in love complicated things to such an extent that Sabrina agreed to head back to Paris and forget this cagey pair. Then Linus does a double reverse maneuver attempting to send David to Paris with Sabrina but David decided to do the family right thing and confronted Linus with his hangdog look and told him that he would marry that convenient heiress after all and booted Linus out the door to grab the ship to Paris with Sabrina. Yeah, the rich are very different in lots of ways even the way they romance among themselves.

The Trials And Tribulations Of The Lovely Arts-Hugh Grant And Marisa Tomei’s “Rewrite” (2014)- Film Review

The Trials And Tribulations Of The Lovely Arts-Hugh Grant And Marisa Tomei’s “Rewrite” (2014)- Film Review  

DVD Review

By Josie Davis

Rewrite, starring Marisa Tomei, Hugh Grant, 2014

Here is a hard fact that I can impart to the reader  young as I am and only a stringer at this publication where I actually have done more rewriting of other people’s work than pieces for publication under my own name. Hollywood, or wherever other locations films are produced these days chews up writers, screenwriters, and you will very seldom see a screenwriter over forty who is actually doing a script rather than a rewrite no matter how famous or successful he or she was in the past. I should know because of all the writers here young and old, having worked at American Film Gazette or not as many have, I am the only one who succumbed to the lure of Hollywood to make my mark writing scripts for films. (The older writers tell me there was something like used to be the case in the old days among actors, those who would only do legitimate theater, meaning Broadway, and those heathens who went to “debase” their art in Hollywood here in regard to screenwriters.)

After I finished graduate school in Cinematic Studies I went out to Hollywood with the idea of getting a job as a screenwriter. It was kind of unknown territory since none of my friends or the professors had any experience with that end of the business. When I got out there and this is important in the #MeToo era I found out that even in screenwriting the young, mainly young women but I heard of the same with some young men, were expected to have sex with whoever would hire them if they wanted to move up the food chain. We all knew that this was the great unwashed secret among female actors but for those off-camera came it as shock (even something as secondary as getting a freaking job as a “script girl” required some kind of sexual transaction). I didn’t feel that I wanted to go that route and after many rejections, even for rewrite, and feeling that working in a CVS drug store was not going to advance my career I headed back East. The other thing I learned was that even in screenwriting fame is fleeting. If Hollywood uses an older screenwriter’s name the real work, the writing is done by the young and fresh. Mostly and this is sad older writers often wound working rewrite if they wanted to stay in the business. It was no surprise to me that Greg Green would assign me this film Rewrite when he approached me to do my second published review.           

We might as well dig right into the plot because in many ways, except the inevitable romantic interest material, what I mentioned above gets played out here. Keith Michaels, Hugh Grant’s role in which he basically carries the film across the finish, is an older, well, washed up screenwriter who maybe does not realize that fact, or that Hollywood spits out older writers no matter what they did-back in the day. (The only surprising part was that he was not even offered rewrite work although he almost begged the shakers and movers in the film despite his faded fame which in real life any studio would be willing to pay day labor wages for.) Somehow his agent dug deep in her well of contacts and got him a job teaching at a dink college Binghamton U. (dink to him anyway) in cold dark upstate New York where the townies roll up the streets come sundown (the students roll up their joints or whatever universal college kids do wherever they find themselves). Not even a gig in New York City at say NYU despite that big tinny Oscar for screenwriting he had won a million years ago but outer DInktown.

Went to the job holding his nose because if there were certain traditions among Broadway actors long ago and among journalists here about screenwriters that lofty profession held teaching in the same regard-those who cannot write, write the great American novel, play, screenplay-teach. Keith had this added chip on his shoulder, added baggage that there was no sense in teaching writing, screenwriting because you either had the goods or not-end of story. Well, of course not end of story since he must in the process of becoming actually a pretty good teacher, learns that his so-called wisdom was fit for the toilet. Naturally, and I say this naturally after that grinding Master’s program in Cinematic Studies in which I concentrated on screenwriting, his comeuppance, his new found awakening had to come via an off-hand romance which blossomed between him and this older workaholic mother of two student, a type to be found more these days than say the older generations where most students were barely out of their teens. 

Mercifully this student Holly, played by winsome Marisa Tomei, just wanted to see if she could learn something about screenwriting skills from the great man starting out and was not in some shadow competition to beat him at his own game. And yes in true feel-good form they go off in the sunset at the end as a couple after some sullen foreplay.   

Naturally as well Keith must be dragged down in the mud before he realizes his affections for Holly and his joy in teaching. This is where the film shows its time. Time before #MeToo anyway which might have changed the axis of the film if made today when political correctness has taken another of its lazy turns. Keith, good-looking award-winning Keith is the target of a young woman trying to move up the screenwriting food chain or at least the English Lit branch who winds up sleeping with him in the time-honored or maybe dishonored is better tradition among some college students of sleeping their way to the top. And down at the heels divorced Keith buys into that scenario thinking that this was similar to the Hollywood ethos for moving up the food chain. No harm, no foul.

Except, except under the table so to speak, this is a no-no in academia no matter who initiated the affair. Keith winds up on a very hot seat when the English department honchos find out and are ready to ride him out of town on a rail. Especially one straight- assed tenured female professor who is the font of political correctness and frankly took a total dislike to Keith from Day One when he trivialized her work as a Jane Austen scholar (I love Jane as well so I too thought he was boorish particularly when his frames of reference were from the many film adaptations of Ms. Austen’s works). Since I have already telegraphed the sunset scene you know Keith barely made it through, but he made it through. Mercifully we were not treated to the big Derrida and friends “deconstructionist” theories that ran through the colleges when I my older sister was in college. Yes, Hugh carried this one off well but I suddenly realized that I am very happy I am not out in the market grind of Hollywood even if does not look like I am going to get a by-line here anytime soon.  

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth

As The 100^th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –

By Seth Garth

A few years ago, starting in August 2014 the 100^th anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the cultural effects, some of them anyway, of the slaughter which mowed down the flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets, writers and other cultural figures. Those culturati left behind, those who survived the shellings, the trenches, the diseases, and what was then called “shell shock,” now more commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is duly recognized, and compensated for at least in the United States by the Veterans Administration in proven cases reacted in many different ways. Mainly, the best of them, like the ordinary dog soldiers could not go back to the same old, same old, could not revive the certitudes of the pre-war Western world with it distorted sense of decorum and went to what even today seem quirky with moderns like Dada, Minimalism, the literary sparseness of Hemingway, and so on. I had my say there in a general sense but now as we are only a few months away from the 100^th anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which effectively ended that bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of creative artistic works by those who survived the war and how those war visions got translated into their works with some commentary if the spirit moves me but this is their show-no question they earned a retrospective.

Poets’ Corner-In The Aftermath Of World War I- Poets Take A Stab At Visually Understanding A Broken World After the Bloodbath    

By Lenny Lynch

I don’t know that much about the Dada movement that swept through Europe in the early part of the 20^th century in response to the creation of modern industrial society that was going full steam and the modern industrial scale death and destruction such mass scale techniques brought upon this good green earth by World War I. (Foreshadowed it is agreed by the industrial carnage at places like Cold Harbor in the American Civil War, the butchery of the Franco-Prussian War and subsequent river of blood by its own rulers of the Paris Commune and the Boer War.) The war to end all wars which came up quite short of that goal but did decimate the flower of the European youth, including vast swaths of the working class. Such massive blood-lettings for a precious few inches of soil like at the Battle of the Somme took humankind back more than a few steps when the nightmare ended-for a while with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. An event which in observing its centennial every serious artist should consider putting to the paint. And every military veteran to take heart including the descendants of those artists who laid down their heads in those muddy wretched trenches. Should reclaim the idea behind Armistice Day from the militarists who could learn no lessons except up the kill and fields of fire ratios. 

I don’t know much but this space over this centennial year of the last year of the bloody war, the armistice year 1918 which stopped the bloodletting will explore that interesting art movement which reflected the times, the bloody times. First up to step up George Groz, step up and show your stuff, show how you see the blood-lusted world after four years of burning up the fields of sweet earth Europe making acres of white-crossed places where the sullen, jaded, mocked, buried youth of Europe caught shells and breezes. Take one look Republican Automatons. Look at the urban environment, look at those tall buildings dwarfing mere mortal man and woman, taking the measure of all, making them think, the thinking ones about having to run, run hard away from what they had built, about fear fretting that to continue would bury men and women without names, without honor either.         

Look too at honor denied, look at the handless hand, the legless leg, the good German flag, the Kaiser’s bloody medal, hard against the urban sky. The shaky republic, the republic without honor, shades of the murders of the honest revolutionary Liebknecht walking across Potsdam Plaza to go say no, no to the war budget and grab a hallowed cell the only place for a man of the people in those hard times and gallant Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution, mixed in with thoughts of renegade burned out soldiers ready for anything. Weimar, weak-kneed and bleeding,  would shake and one George Groz would know that, would draw this picture that would tell the real story of why there was a Dada-da-da-da-da movement to chronicle the times if not to fight on the barricades against that beast from which we had to run.

A View From The Left-The Marxist Theory of the State

A View From The Left-The Marxist Theory of the State Workers Vanguard No. 1120	20 October 2017

TROTSKY

LENIN

The Marxist Theory of the State

(Quote of the Week)

As the proletarian revolution in Russia was unfolding, V.I. Lenin wrote The State and Revolution to reclaim the Marxist theory of the state from the distortions of the opportunists. Lenin underlined the need for the working class to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie and replace it with the dictatorship of the proletariat, which, extended internationally, would lay the basis for the withering away of the state in a communist society.

The completion of The State and Revolution was “‘interrupted’ by...the eve of the October revolution,” as Lenin noted in the postscript, concluding, “It is more pleasant and useful to go through the ‘experience of the revolution’ than to write about it.” He continued his critique the following year in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky.

Marx continued:

“Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”...

Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people—this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.

Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists has been completely crushed, when the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes (i.e., when there is no distinction between the members of society as regards their relation to the social means of production), only then “the state...ceases to exist,” and “it becomes possible to speak of freedom.” Only then will a truly complete democracy become possible and be realised, a democracy without any exceptions whatever. And only then will democracy begin to wither away, owing to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copybook maxims. They will become accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for coercion called the state.

—V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (August-September 1917)

It Ain’t The Singer It’s the Song-Townes Van Zandt’s A Far Cry From Dead (1999)-A CD Review

It Ain’t The Singer It’s the Song-Townes Van Zandt’s A Far Cry From Dead (1999)-A CD Review

CD Review

By Zack James

A Far Cry From Dead, Townes Van Zandt, Arista Records, 1999

[The world of on-line editors and named bloggers is actually rather small when you consider what cyberspace can allow the average ingenious citizen to do. I have been highlighting some of the conversations between long-time music critic Seth Garth and some of his growing up in Riverdale (that is in Massachusetts west of Boston) friends as he/they discuss various older CDs which reflect a certain period in their then youth lives growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Part of this latest series of sketches by me is based on information that Seth has provided comes under the sign of the Summer of Love, 1967 out on the West Coast, especially in the San Francisco and Bay area.      

I am a bit too young by about a decade to have had anything but a nodding acquaintance with the Summer of Love experience. That era’s music did not form the basis for my musical interests although I heard it around the house from older siblings but rather the music of the 1970s which when I get a little bored with book reviews or general cultural pieces I write about for various publications including this one I write some music reviews. Knowing that let me take a step back so that you will understand why I made that statement about the review world is really a small place.

As I said earlier I was a little too young to appreciate the music of the Summer of Love first hand but my eldest brother Alex was not. Had in fact gone out to the West Coast from our growing up neighborhood the Acre section of North Adamsville that summer along with a bunch of other guys that he had hung around with since highs school. He wound up staying in that area, delving into every imaginable cultural experience from drugs to sex to music, for a couple of years before heading back to his big career expectations-the law, being a lawyer. The original idea to head west that summer was not his but that of his closest friend, the late Peter Paul Markin forever known in town and by me as the Scribe (how he got that is a long story and not germane to the Seth sage). The Scribe had dropped out of college in Boston earlier in 1967 when he sensed that what Alex said he had been yakking about weekly for years that a “new breeze,” his, the Scribe’s term, was going to take youth nation (and maybe the whole nation) by a storm and headed west. A couple of months later he came back and dragged Alex and about six others back west with him. And the rest is history.            

I mean that “rest is history” part literally since earlier this year (2017) Alex, now for many years a big high-priced lawyer after sowing his wild oats and get “smartened up” as he called it once the bloom of the counter-culture they were trying to create faded had gone to a business conference out in San Francisco and while there had seen on a passing bus an advertisement for something called the Summer of Love Experience at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. He flipped out, maybe some latent recoil from those long ago drugs, and spend one “hooky” afternoon mesmerized by the exhibit of poster art, hippie clothing, photographs and music. That was not all though. When he got back to Boston he contacted all the old neighborhood guys still standing who had gone out there in 1967 to put a small memoir book together. One night they all agreed to do the project, do the project in honor of the late Scribe who had pushed them out there in some cases kicking and screaming (not Alex at the time). That is when Alex, knowing that I have had plenty of experience doing such projects contacted me to edit and get the thing published. Which I did without too much trouble.   

The publication and distribution of that book while not extensive got around to plenty of people who were involved in the Summer of Love, or who knew the Scribe. And that is where Seth Garth comes in. While he was not part of the Summer of Love experience he did drift out west after college to break with his Riverdale growing up home in the early 1970s. As a writer he looked for work among the various alternative presses out there and wound up working first as a free-lancer and then as staff as a music critic for the now long defunct The Eye which operated out of Oakland then. Guess who also was working as a free-lancer there as well after he got out of the Army. Yes, the Scribe who was doing a series of articles on guys like him who had come back from Vietnam and couldn’t relate to the “real world” and had established what amounted to alternative communities along the railroad tracks and under the bridges of Southern California. So yeah it is a small world in the writing for money racket. Here is what Seth has to say right now. Zack James]    

Recently in reviewing a bluesy CD by outlaw cowboy singer Willie Nelson (at least that designation was the basis for my introduction to him back in the early 1980s) I mentioned that I was reminded by my oldest brother Alex’s high school friend, Seth Garth, who like me became a writer and later a music critic for many alternative newspapers and rock and roll scholarly journals and publications, that back in those late 1970s and early 1980s I was drawn to such outlaw cowboy music that had broken sharply with the traditional stuff out of Nashville that I could not abide., always associated with the Grand Ole Opry and stuff like that, redneck music.    

I also noted that just then, just that late 1970s, early 1980s, rock and roll was taking one of its various detours, a detour like in the late 1950s when the soul went out of rock for a while before the storm of the British invasion and “acid” rock saved it which I could not follow, folk music, the social protest kind anyway that had attracted me in my youth was fading fast even among aficionados as more mundane concerns filled that niche, and the blues was losing its star mostly black performers by the day and the younger crowd, mostly black, was leaving the field to white aficionados like Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn and heading to what would become hip-hop tradition so I was up for listening to something different. Something that might catch my ear for roots-based music, the music of the “big tent” American songbook beyond Tin Pan Alley.

What Seth hadn’t remembered was the genesis of that outlaw cowboy moment. My finding of an old used record by artist under review Townes Van Zandt at Cheapo’s Records in Cambridge (still there) of all places to find such music. And of course once I get on to a sound I like I tend to look just like every other writer, writer for publications with dead-lines, for everything I can find by the artist (film-maker or writer too). Done. But more than in that outlaw moment I actually saw Townes in person at, well, several places over a couple of years, but all of them in the heart of “outlaw country” music, ah, Harvard Square. So in those days I was not alone in looking for a new sound since all the venues were sold out.        

What drew me Townes then, and drew me to this CD recently although it had been put out in 1999 a few years after his untimely death in 1996 was he command of lyrics that “spoke” to me, spoke some kind of truth of things that were bothering me just then like lost loves, not understanding why those loves were lost, and about just trying to get through the day. Yeah, that gravelly voice on that first record kind of fit my mood then, and it still sounds good although unlike that first live in Houston album this one is much more a produced product of the studio. Still the searing burning messages and lyrics are there for to help you get through those tough days that creep up and pile up on you. Listen up.  

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Dane Clark’s “The Gambler And The Lady” (1952)

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Dane Clark’s “The Gambler And The Lady” (1952)

DVD Review

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

The Gambler and the Lady, starring Dane Clark, Naomi Chance,  Hammer Productions, 1952

You know I really only have myself and my furtive furious need to take a “run” when I find something of interest to review and need to go overboard to cover every bet. Been that way since I was a kid and even in retirement and not having to face the daily grind has not deterred me from this overkill. The overkill in question is my interest in of all things a bunch of B-film noirs, B at best, produced over in England during the early 1950s. Starting out when I came across a first DVD at a book sale at the local library I thought that was it until looking at dreaded (on this occasion) Wikipedia I found there were ten in the series. So once started here I doing another one. And guess what while some have a certain merit none is going to break me from my classics-that is for sure. But enough of my woes as I trek another offering out for your perusal.        

*****

I am now deep, too deep but also too deep to given my personality stop now, into my retro-reviews of the classic Hammer Productions film noir in which an American producer, the well-known Robert Lippert and his organization, contracted with that organization to do a series of such efforts, the now woeful ten films, using known, although maybe fading American film stars, down on their uppers film stars, backed by English character actors to do the whole thing on the cheap. My whole operation started the day I went to a book sale at the local library and spied a Hammer Production DVD which led to a review of the film Terror Street (distributed in Britain as 36 Hours which actually made more sense since the star had that amount of time to find the murderer of his wife otherwise he was going  to be taking the big-step off for it and would not have worry about the time at all and there was no particular terror that I saw going on) and subsequently another entry The Black Glove (distributed in Britain as Face The Music probably a better title since the plot involved a well-known trumpet player turning from searching for that high white note everybody in his profession is looking for to amateur private detective once a lady friend is murdered and he looked for all the world like the natural fall guy to take the big step-off for it) I noted that long time readers of this space know, or should be presumed to know, of my long-standing love affair with film noir. Since any attentive reader will note this is my sixth such review of B-film noirs and hence proof positive that I am now in deep and that I still have the bug.

I mentioned in that review some of the details of my introduction to the classic age of film noir in this country in the age of black and white film in the 1940s and 1950s when I would sneak over to the now long gone and replaced by condos Strand Theater in growing up town North Adamsville and spent a long double feature Saturday afternoon watching complete with a stretched out bag of popcorn (or I think it is safe to say it now since the statute of limitation on the “crime” must surely have passed snuck in candy bars bought at Harold’s Variety Store on the way to the theater). I would watch some then current production from Hollywood or some throwback from the 1940s which Mister Cadger, the affable owner who readily saw that I was an aficionado who would pepper him with questions about when such and such a noir was to be featured would let me sneak in for kid’s ticket prices long after I reached the adult price stage at twelve I think it was, would show in retrospective to cut down on expenses in tough times by avoiding having to pay for first –run movies all the time. (And once told me to my embarrassment that he made more money on the re-runs than first runs and even more money on the captive audience buying popcorn and candy bars-I wonder if he knew my candy bar scam.)

That is where the bulk of my noir experiences were formed but I should mention in passing as well that on infrequent occasions I would attend a nighttime showing (paying full price after age twelve since parents were presumed to have the money to spring  for full prices) with my parents if my strict Irish Catholic mother (strict on the mortal sin punishment for what turned out to have been minor or venial sins after letting my older brothers, four, count them four, get away with murder and assorted acts of mayhem) thought the film passed the Legion of Decency standard that we had to stand up and take a yearly vow to uphold in church led by the priest exhorting to sin no more and I could under the plotline without fainting (or getting “aroused” by the fetching femmes).

Readers should be aware from prior series that when I found some run of films that had a similar background I would “run the table” on the efforts. Say a run of Raymond Chandler film adaptations of his Phillip Marlowe crime novels or Dashiell Hammett’s seemingly endless The Thin Man series. That “run the table” idea is the case with a recently obtained cache of British-centered 1950s film noirs put out by the Hammer Production Company as they tried to cash in on the popularity of the genre for the British market  That Terror Street mentioned at the beginning had been the first review in this series (each DVD by the way contains two films the second film Danger On The Wings in that DVD not worthy of review) and now the film under review under review the overblown if ominously titled The Gambler and the Lady (distributed in England, Britain, Great Britain, United Kingdom or whatever that isle calls itself these Brexit days as unlike others in the series by the same title although one cannot say much for their choice of titles under any circumstance) is the sixth such effort. On the basis of these seven viewings (remember one didn’t make the film noir aficionado cut so that tells you something right away how bad it must have been to take the toss in the B-world) I will have to admit they are clearly B-productions none of them would make anything but a second or third tier rating. (I have already wailed in my introduction about my extreme tiredness over the whole project already.)         

After all as mentioned before in that first review look what they were up against. For example who could forget up on that big screen for all the candid world to see a sadder but wiser seen it all, heard it all Humphrey Bogart at the end of The Maltese Falcon telling all who would listen that he, he Sam Spade, no stranger to the seamy side and cutting corners life, had had to send femme fatale Mary Astor his snow white flame over, sent her to the big step-off once she spilled too much blood, left too long a trail of corpses, for the stuff of dreams over some damn bird. Or cleft-chinned barrel-chested Robert Mitchum keeping himself out of trouble in some dink town as a respectable citizen including snagging a girl next door sweetie but knowing he was doomed, out of luck, and had had to cash his check for his seedy past taking a few odd bullets from his former femme fatale trigger-happy girlfriend Jane Greer once she knew he had double-crossed her to the coppers in Out Of The Past.

Ditto watching the horror on smart guy gangster Eddie Mars face after being outsmarted because he had sent a small time grafter to his doom when prime private detective Phillip Marlowe, spending the whole film trying to do the right thing for an old man with a couple of wild daughters, ordered him out the door to face the rooty-toot-toot of his own gunsels who expected Marlowe to be coming out in The Big Sleep. How about song and dance man Dick Powell turning Raymond Chandler private eye helping big galoot Moose Malone trying to find his Velma and getting nothing but grief and a few stray conks on the head chasing Claire Trevor down when she didn’t want to be found having moved uptown with the swells in Murder, My Sweet. Or finally, tall lanky and deceptive private eye Dane Jones chasing an elusive black box ready to explode the world being transported across Europe by evil incarnate if gorgeous Marla Sands in European Express who would stop at nothing including whoring although in those days that would have been inferred not shown to get what she wanted. Those were some of the beautiful and still beautiful classics whose lines you can almost hear anytime you mention the words film noir. The entries in this series are definitively not ones with memorable lines or plots.  

In the old days before I retired I always liked to sketch out a film’s plotline to give the reader the “skinny” on what the action was so that he or she could see where I was leading them. I will continue that old tradition here to make my point about the lesser production values of the Hammer products.  In the Gambler and the Lady not surprisingly the two main characters are Jim, an ex-pat American gambler from nowhere seeking in Merry Olde England to get in tight with the Mayfair swells and Lady Susan, played by Naomi Chance, as the Mayfair swell, well, Lady. Jim had clawed and climbed his way from nothing to the top of the gambling rooms in London and intended to stay there-with plenty of backup to enforce his will. But instead of craving more dough like a real racketeer like Johnny Rocco in Key Largo Jim has big ideas about crushing high society not knowing that those bastards are worse than the scumbags he had to deal with back in the say. Christ Jim even had some old biddy teaching him table manners, you know what spoon or folk to use with which course, Jesus.          

One of Jim’s clients, a Lord no less, bounced a check and that is where the trouble began. One of Jim’s boys got rough without permission (Jim didn’t even want a dead-beat Mayfair swell touched-double Jesus). This Lord had a sister though, the Lady Susan in question and she and Jim became against all good sense by either party an item. (Not without the others swells ripping him apart for trying to crash the gate to their class.) Everything was going fine until two things happened. One some foreign tough guys wanted to crash the London gambling scene and before it was over Jim had cashed his chips and sold out to them in order to get “legit.” And second he invested all his dough in a project he got conned into by that deadbeat Lord and his father with a little assist from Lady Sue. That thing turned out to be a Ponzi scheme and Jim went belly up. But not before an irate ex-heavy put the bad news on him and an ex-girlfriend who was crazy for him tried to take him down in her speeding car. All this to grab the lapels of decadent nobility gone wrong. Jim, I thought you were a smart guy.         

This one almost got that Wings of Danger treatment mentioned above, a non-review, but with an actor like Dane Clark who seems to have been down on his uppers more than most of those fading American stars recruited for this series since he is in at least three and a couple of minutes on my hands I figured once again what the hell.     

Better that Terror Street but not as good as The Black Glove although it also can’t get pass that Blue Gardenia second tier in the film noir pantheon. Sorry Hammer.                 

In Boston November 11th - Time to reclaim Armistice Day as a day of PEACE-The Vets are organizing! The people are marching!

In Boston November 11th - Time to reclaim Armistice Day as a day of PEACE-The Vets are organizing! The people are marching!

The Smedley Butler Brigade of Veterans for peace in Boston, long prohibited from being in the Veterans Day parade (too political), will again be having the "follow up" parade (20+ years??), but this year we want to make it as clear as possible that our event is an Armistice Day commemoration.  US legislation calls for a period of silence, to reflect on the horror of war, and then for church bells to be rung as a sign of rededication to world peace.  THIS IS A LEGITIMATE US HOLIDAY FOR PEACE!!  We need to take it back from the Military Industrial Complex and we want you to join us.

Here is the legislation which created, in the United States, Armistice Day:

President Wilson’s Proclamation of 1919

“To us in America the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn

pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude

for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because

of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and

justice in the councils of the nations...”

We would love to have your organization become a part of this important event. We will gather between 12:00 pm (noon) and 12:30 pm on the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets.

1st Parade steps off at 1:00 pm – our parade will follow the same route then we will continue to Faneuil Hall for our

Armistice Day for Peace Event includes Veterans from different eras who will recite original works of Poetry, Prose and Song

. The only way to get our government and media to take notice of our demands is to put large numbers of people in the street. We need to work together. Our strength is in our numbers.

This is also a fun and festive activity with music and lots of energy. Bring your banner, make a sign, raise your voice, and spread the word. The Vets are organizing! The people are marching!