How The Mighty Had Fallen On Hard Times-The Decline And Fall Of The Late Famous Late Private Detective Lew Archer-With The Chalmers Case In Mind-A Book Review-Sort Of

How The Mighty Had Fallen On Hard Times-The Decline And Fall Of The Late Famous Late Private Detective Lew Archer-With The Chalmers Case In Mind-A Book Review-Sort Of       

By Sam Lowell

The Good-bye Look, Ross MacDonald, 1969

[To be honest I had originally no intention of writing this bracketed introduction but am doing so now as the request, damn, make that order of site manager Greg Green. That little command despite the fact that I am chair of the Editorial Board of this publication and am in theory at least his boss, or one of his bosses. However Greg has pulled rank on me since there was great deal of blowback from readers and reviewers from other publications on my previous efforts to understand the demise of a man who would have been the greatest of all the private eye detectives Lew Archer. I had assumed that as a hard-hitting publication seeking the truth no matter I was on solid ground. I had freely posited that Lew’s trouble began (and ended) with his hushed-up sexual impotence sending him to the minor leagues where chasing skirts as well as criminals didn’t matter that much to a P.I.s reputation since that was mainly repo work or security stuff. The blowback mostly was why was I “defaming” a long-gone dead guy who had had some great successes. But they fail to  mention in the end a guy who through the breakthrough Hardman case and a few others looked like he was a shoo in for the P.I. Hall of Fame wound up peeking through keyholes in seedy U.S. 101 motels before “no-fault divorce” put and big crimp in that P.I. money-maker and then after he go this license yanked wound up shagging golf balls at the Bel Air Country Club for an ex-client who felt sorry for him.  

I would have let the whole thing fade to oblivion, easily fade to oblivion except I ran into Lew’s lawyer, his last lawyer who was sitting in a San Francisco gin mill when he spotted me and after the obligatory exchange of a few drinks which will always loosen up tongues he posed the question of questions about Lew’s demise. And like all lawyers thought he had the answer to before he asked the question. See I knew Lew in the old days, in his old age just before the hammer came down from the State of California that maybe for the good of the profession he “retire” meaning they were not going to renew his license after he got caught planting so-called evidence in the Miller case, a missing child case which never did get solved. Knew Lew from the time that I interviewed him for the East Bay Other as a young free-lance reporter interested in the wild crops of private eyes who populated the Left Coast (not called that then but later). Had an intense interest on film private eyes too as I was beginning to start my first steps as a film reviewer and wanted to compare Lew with some earlier immortals like Phil Larkin, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe, all three easily inducted into that hall of fame.          

Look, in the old days the cops, the DA, the police reporters and everybody else would cover for somebody like Lew who had started out as a public copper but those hero-worshipping days are long gone, long gone for guys whose feet were made of clay. Although those days are long gone and now every reporter, young or old, has to have a “hook” to stay in place even on the food chain of this cutthroat business I was prepared before I got this inside information to move on to other pursuits. Since I am “outing” Lew who was exceptional in that he tanked early I might as well mention that a guy like Phil Larkin was actually arrested as a “peeping Tom” on his last case and had to register as a sex offender in Pennsylvania where his graduate student girlfriend met on-line was doing her doctoral dissertation at Penn State. Sam Spade passed on in a mental hospital, that is what they called them then screaming out the name “Brigid” over and over again. Phillip Marlowe after he married Vivian Sternwood of the oil money billions and moved to Poodle Springs lost his edge. Took only high-end clients and cases until Vivian tossed him out after she caught him fooling around with younger sister Carmen in Las Vegas (that before he ran into Dotty Malone, the famous screen-writer who he would later marry). Not a word below has been changed as a result of the “boss’ command so read on.   Sam Lowell]     

***********

Lew Archer had been impotent, sexually impotent, which explains a lot about why he never entered the pantheon, the P.I. pantheon. The famous, or rather almost famous, Hollywood private detective who was expected to light up the 1950s professional firmament after guys like Philo Vance, Same Spade, Phillip Marlowe. Phil Larkin, even Nick Charles, stopped peeking through keyholes or cashed their checks whichever came first. Except poor Lew could not cut the mustard as we used to say in the old North Adamsville neighborhood when we had time on our hands and tried to figure who was homo, a fag, you know “light on their feet, ” a mama’s boy, a Nancy and some stuff I refuse to say in my old age after having learned a thing or two -including it ain’t  my business, or yours, who somebody loves. Except nobody, and I don’t here, is trying to “out” Lew at this late date nor do I think he was into same-sex relationships. I think he just lost steam, lost some sexual desire after maybe taking one, or twenty, too many hits on the noggin, a few off-hand slugs and maybe had some other physical problems like erectile dysfunction in those Viagra-less days as he grew older.

Hollywood though as I just learned recently from Seth Garth, a fellow writer at this publication and one of the guys who gay-baited with me in the old Acre working poor days when we had nothing but time on our hands for such foolishness was very protective of its own back in those same 1950s days. The recent comments he made in this publication in doing a quick review of a new biography about male icon and AIDS victim Rock Hudson and other well-known male hunk figures like Tab Hunter and Rory Calhoun show how well all that stuff was kept from the public in the interest of illusions and profits. At who knows at what cost to the actors and others involved. Hollywood, as is less well known, was as protective of its private investigators as its movie stars so it is understandable that Lew’s reputation as a “lady’s man” lasted so long. (Ironically, no, sadly Hollywood was not so protective of its personnel who were being tarred with the “commie, red” brush in the heart of the Cold War purges orchestrated by the U.S. government. They fed the grist mill with all hands in those days.)        

Naturally anybody would want proof or at least informed speculation to go with the “accusation” against Lew at this far remove and I would suggest that beginning with the Galton case, the case that made him very famous, Hollywood famous and thus fleeting he lost his way. And I will provide proof in due course but first it is necessary to set Lew and his manly failure up against what the public, hell, what the profession expected of its own practitioners. Guys like Phil Larkin, Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, hell, even married to Nora Nick Charles when Nora wasn’t looking, set a high bar for grabbing some serious femmes in their time. Hell a guy like Phil Larkin was still pushing himself forward, and succeeding, with young lovelies, with as the term went, or one of the terms for desirable women went, the frills, grabbing a foxy twenty-something graduate student, a Glennon daughter, when he was almost seventy after the Glennon murder case wrapped up. And Phil was a lesser light in the profession then.     

The two big guys in the profession though who I want to highlight here to set up Lew’s problem were one Samuel Spade whose mother raised no fool and the ubiquitous Phillip Marlowe. First to Sam who, with or without his partner Miles Archer, no relation to Lew, solved many cases including that got him in the P.I. Hall of Fame the Astor case, the case where by the skin of his nose he avoided the noose, the big step off and sent a femme, his femme, Brigid who the hell knows her last name she used a million aliases to face the music. Beautiful and every private detective program from those established by the Pinkertons to those you used to see advertised on match book covers about learning the profession in ten easy lessons without leaving the comfort of your armchair (but leaving a few bucks behind as usual).

That Astor case is informative for it is the first time in public that a P.I. slept with a client, a lying bitch of a client but still a client under most state licensing rules and then turned her over the coppers after she nearly blew his brains out, and few other guys too. The point here being that with a wild one like the Astor dame you had better have, what did we call it up above, plenty of mustard if you are going to go the distance and not fall down in the cracks. I won’t even mention that Chinese beauty over in Chinatown that cleans his whistle in the Tong Wars case or what in the profession was called the “flute-player case,” although in public called the Bergman case, when this Scandinavian femme tried to leave him flat to take yet another fall after doing her thing with him. Great almost heroic mode stuff.      

If Sam set the standard, set the bar high, Phillip Marlowe, another P.I. Hall of Famer, went wild with the women once it didn’t matter, nobody gave a fuck as one wag had it whether you played it straight with the client or jumped immediately under the satin sheets with the femme. Had two sisters going at one point, the younger wilder one, Carmen, Carmen Sternwood, dropping in his lap even before he took his hat off. It is not clear whether he went under the silkies with both her and the older sister, Vivian whom he married for a while mostly for the sex and dough then blew their Poodle Springs mansion for the next best thing. Bopped swell Velma against all odds and against the mammoth client who would have put him six feet under if he got a whiff of that scent she gave off when Phillip came a-calling. Grabbed Honey in the big Hollywood star murder case no problem. I could go on and on but you get the message. Cut the mustard or get the hell out of town.  

Now to the case against Lew, why he didn’t measure up, why he was never even close to being voted into the P.I. Hall of Fame despite a fistful of nominations. There was a lot of speculation around over the years that Lew was never the same after the, what did they call it, oh yeah, the Ivory Grin case where he got egg all over his face when he was unable to figure out what happened to the guy his client was looking for. The client a fox if there ever was one but Lew never got to first base with her, never tried to get to first base which is worse from the story I heard from a very reliable source who knew the client and knew the guy she was looking for and couldn’t find through Lew. The public coppers wrapped it up in a week once there was another murder committed by the same warped doctor who couldn’t keep his hands off the women, some other guys’ women.       

Personally, and bear me out on this I think the turning point was when he balled up the Galton case, couldn’t connect the dots, couldn’t navigate the bevy of dames who passed his way and if that was the case then no way could he solve the case. As mentioned before, and if not then now, the public coppers had to come and save his bacon, Jesus, against a guy who hung himself rather than go back in stir, rather than face the inevitable California big step-off.

Funny how you will get information on the subject you are reporting on, the back channels connections that never get made public, by you or any reporter made public, not if you want to move up the tough racket food chain that is journalism the toughest racket of all except maybe film critics, reviewers whatever they call themselves these days. The operative word is you “dug” the nuggets out by the sweat of your brow like some coalminer rather than having it handed to you by some poor drunk like happened in the Johnny Cielo case down in Key West back in those same 1950s. But at this far remove I am not telling any tales out of school by saying that impotence theory was the opinion of a well-known lawyer who should know and whom I met when I was just starting out as a journalist at the East Bay Other, a place where a few other writers here did some free-lance work. Hell, it was all free-lance or free then since you never knew if you would get paid or not, paid enough at least to keep the wolves from your door. I had been sitting with that lawyer having drinks at the notorious KitKat Club in San Francisco in the days when “drag queen” culture was very much underground, and I was on assignment to write about it for the Eye. He was defending the establishment and the exotic entertainers against the city and against various violations of the health moral codes then existing. This in the days before Timmy Riley was the owner, when he was just working out his act, doing a lame impersonation of Miss Bette Davis and hardly keeping the wolves from his door. Somehow the subject of great private detectives came up, probably I brought it up since I knew that he had defended a number of famous private eyes, famous California ones anyway when they got into legal trouble.

Got Phillip Marlowe, yes that Phillip Marlowe from the Sternwood case P.I.s still talk about, still do case studies on in those matchbox cover ads touting how to be a detective in ten or so easy lessons-for hard cash and no refunds, buddy- out from under the big step off when they tried to wrap old-time gangster Eddie Mars’ murder, murder by his own bodyguards on Marlowe when he, Marlowe,   was allegedly doing a burglary of one of Eddie’s properties. Got Phil off in a million other cases too like the time he wasted some doctor, some pill-pusher who filled him up with junk to get him to spill where a guy named Moose Malone, no relation to Dorothy below, was to stop him from finding some femme who did not want to be found-by giant Moose anyway. From a million other cases and who I had found out later at that time had been married to Dorothy Malone, the famous screenwriter who just died this year at 98 and was the last living link to the great Marlowe legacy.

Got Nick Charles into a 12- Step program after he had attempted to “fly,” Nick’s drunken sot term on the QT after a million DUIs without his wife Nora, his mistress Jenny, or any Frisco cops who had an interest knowing about it. Got one Samuel Spade out from under about six felonies and the loss of his license when some twist named Brigit, Mary, who knew in the end what her real name was pointed the finger at him. That was the one where that Brigit femme walked to the big house and took some gaff for stuff, a fistful of murders, that she had attempted to tie to our boy Sam. So that lawyer and if you don’t know who he is by now then you just don’t lawyers who make their kale off the troubles of private detectives and giving the name would mean nothing to you knew from whence he spoke.

What would mean something, name or no name, was that lawyer’s theory about private detectives, and here he zeroed in specifically on Lew Archer and how he blew the Galton case, a few others too but the Galton case was pure fuck-up and made his point. What that big-time lawyer said was that any P.I. who wasn’t half crazy trying to get under the silky sheets with some femme is strictly impotent, can’t get it up. Not gay, asexual, intersexual, bi-sexual or anything like that that stuff is okay, was okay for him back then since he was hanging around such people in the KitKat Club before Timmy Riley, aka Miss Judy Garland, broke out of the pack with the Garland gag, took over and made the place a Mecca for tourists who wanted to take a quick walk on the wild side.

The funny thing as our lawyer described it was that Lew had about five opportunities to bed some dame starting when he first got on the case with Mrs. gallons of oil money Galton’s home companion, Ava, who was a knockout from the photos of her in a swimsuit when the case went to court (the case of officially adopting Granny Galton’s lost grandson as her sole heir not the murder case of her son which some lawyer had forced her to look into and which was a cold case, a frozen solid cold case when Lew put his grimy paws on the thing and screwed almost everything up before he was done and the public coppers had to come in and solve the damn thing, a rare occasion indeed then but the start of the downward spiral, the road to repo and keyhole peeking work). Then there was the guy who fingered Mrs. gallons of oil money son back in the 1930s whose wife, since remarried, practically threw herself at Lew to avoid her second husband, a good man according to all parties including Lew, finding out she was married to a shiftless bum, a con artist and accessory to murder of that Galton son. Passed her by.

We won’t even speak of the easy pickings he would have had, could have had if he had paid the least bit of attention to the wife, the second wife of the lawyer who hired Lew to find Mrs. Galton’s son (I won’t continue with that “gallons of oil money” gag you know who I mean now). Not only was she drugged to the gills, half naked at least half of the time in his presence at the nursing home she was placed in after she had a nervous breakdown over her role in the murder of that guy who fingered Galton’s son for the executioner’s ax back in the 1930s but she believed, when her lawyerly husband brainwashed her to perdition, she had killed that ex-lover. A piece of cake. Blown to perdition.

It doesn’t end there, and maybe I will miss a few other opportunities today when I think about the long-ago case but I will give you enough examples that my lawyer friend gave me to condemn Lew to strictly third-rate private detective-dom. There was the grandson’s college time, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan girlfriend who had enough dough to sink a ship, was ready to give the kid cars, and whatever else he wanted. The kid walked away, went to greener pastures. When Lew interviewed the twist, trying to find out what she knew about the kid’s whereabouts, what made him tick, and why he was the pawn in some nefarious scheme to dupe Mrs. Galton into believing that he was really her grandson, she was as ready to have a soft shoulder to cry on as anybody in the world. Lew walked. Wouldn’t give her the time of day, made some excuse up about his time of the month, male version. Hell even ancient Phil Larkin, he of the famed Simmons case which made his name, grabbed some twenty-something graduate student from Penn State, led her a merry chase, and he was almost seventy. Poor Lew.

(My lawyer checking into that Big Blue dame’s fate just because he was interested, maybe grab her on the rebound told me she already had a new boyfriend about five days after Lew talked to her although he still was able to get a date with her since she and the new lover were not “exclusive,” whatever that meant.)  

Now I think that the next women Lew passed on maybe he wasn’t wrong to not take a run at although my lawyer was infuriated that I would say such a stupid journalist kind of thing. This was a dame, an older dame but not that old who frankly didn’t keep up her appearances as they used to say in the days before body-shaming became taboo, very taboo whether for good or evil. She would have been easy pickings too, maybe a one-night stand but here is what she was about. She had actually been married to Mrs. Galton’s son, has seen him killed out on the coast south of Frisco where they were staying, had had an affair or two with the finger man and her husband’s murderer before under threat of murder to her son, that Galton heir grandson, she had married the guy and fled to Canada with him. Stayed with him trying to protect her son she said-likely story. No go for Lew though even though she had locked the door behind them when he was “interviewing” her. No, not poor Lew, sad sack Lew.

Here is the one I don’t figure, the one he should have taken a run at with all hands. Once Mrs. Galton found out that her son had been murdered but that she had a grandson who had been missing for years and who turned up during Lew’s tenure as her private investigator that case was over. Still there were plenty of people who for their own reasons believed the kid, John was the name he used but as usual any name will do since they are all aliases, was an impostor, was in it for the big payoff when Granny croaked. One was Mrs. Galton’s doctor who had a young daughter whose was at just that age when she was as flirtatious to older guys as young guys. The doctor wasn’t happy when he found out that said daughter was having an affair with John after Lew basically frosted up on her. Jesus how many chances can a guy have and flub everyone.

My lawyer friend also had a theory about the cause of Lew’s impotency which led to his royally screwing up the case so badly. It is tough being third or fourth fiddle in the private detective game (and that was only in California we won’t even discuss the whole country). Lew tried I think, maybe to be a lady’s man but it didn’t work, so he tried a different route, the no sex with clients or persons of interest. It didn’t work but that is that. It now makes perfect sense that he didn’t believe John was the real deal, that the lawyer who hired him played him like a yo-yo. That everybody lied through their teeth to him and he bought it, or at least followed more false flag leads than you could shake a stick at. The funny thing was that all the loose ends got collected up without him. The Galton son's murderer hung himself rather than going back to jail. The finger-man’s ex-wife got redemption from her second husband. John got his girl and his mother’s forgiveness. Mrs. Galton got her real heir, despite the murderous machinations of her scoundrel lawyer and his bedazzled wife got a clear conscience. Lew, well, Lew got egg on his face, lots of egg and a lonely roll-away bed in his low-rent rooming house.                     

It never really got better for Lew as the cases got fewer, as the femme world got the cold shoulder fast even before they could coo a few words. Take the odd-ball Shafer case, an odd-ball case because he took the thing on “spec” from his lawyer who was trying to help a long time neighbor and his wife, The Chambers, whose son had been off the rails, had been as they said in those day, looney, cuckoo ever since he had been abducted as a child had killed the abductor the minute he got a chance. This neighbor, Jim, the man had bags of money either inherited from his late mother or gathered from some unknown sources, and had been too boot a war hero, World War II version, as a pilot out in the briny Pacific death traps. Jim had a wife, a beauty named Oona, nice right who once Lew got on the case could tell was not in love with her husband, was going through the motions. She had looked Lew up and down the minute he came into view but despite being in her presence for a goody part of the case, passed.     

Jim and Oona’s kid really was in a bad way after two events one the so-called robbery of a bunch of his father’s letters to his mother and the stacking up of bodies like cordwood anytime Nick was within fifty miles on any murder. He blamed himself and found his way into the nearest mental hospital which just so happened to be run by a psychiatrist, and his wife Moira, more on her in a minute, trained as a social worker whose benefactor, whose “angel” in funding the clinic had been Jim after Nick got away from that bad ass abductor. Of course anytime the Nick name came up in Lew’s lawyer’s presence he went apoplectic since he did not want his young daughter, young at twenty-five several years younger than Lew but very appealing. She was looking for a shoulder to cry on, another unhappy California woman who seemed to have populated Lew’s life. She could not have been more obvious about her needs but again Lew turned his face away. 

We need not go into the stack of dead bodies that Lew always wound up having to figure out who the murderer was, in the early days he would have had this thing nailed down before sunset by he was clueless for a long while, just like that horrible end to the Galton case when started him down the road to cheap street. What was important though is that he ran through about three other women who would not have turned him down with slightest encouragement. By now you know the drill though.  

I mentioned that Moira, that buxom, curvy woman, Lew’s description not mine I never saw her, married to the shrink who was treating young Nick, the natural fall guy for any bad stuff in the neighborhood. No question she was brighter and kinder than her husband whom she hated with a passion since he went off the deep end running the clinic factory. She was ripe for Lew’s arms, ready to “do the do” as we used to say in the old neighborhood. Why I bring this up with what we know about Lew’s state of mine at the time one story that was circulating at the time was that they, Moira and Lew let’s be clear, went off to some vacant clinic bed and did the “deed.” That was the story then then went around and people were relieved that at least Lew was back on track to be a real private detective.

Baloney, the real story that my lawyer friend who gave me the skinny on the Galton screwups ran into Moira one night in some gin mill in Brentwood. Since he knew her slightly from sending some of his clients to her husband’s in attempts to make a mental incapacity case for them when all else failed he bought her a drink and the subject of Lew Archer and the Shafer case came up. She turned seven shades of red and probably knew right there where the discussion would lead. My guy brought up the subject by way of thanking her for saving Lew’s reputation, for bringing back his “ladies’ man reputation which every serious P.I. needed or got knocked down to repo work or worse. She told him the real story, the story Lew made her tell certain persons who would make sure it got around. Despite about six different attempts arouse him usually every trick she knew from the Kama Sutra nothing. Being a kind if sexually frustrated by the encounter she went along with his wishes. That night hubby got a joy ride she blurted out.  

As for the fate of poor Nick, well, things got better for him once he figured out he was no stone-cold killer. The solution as Lew’s lawyer figured out and passed on to the coppers was simplicity itself, P.I. 101. Nick was set up by somebody who knew he was vulnerable and knew he knew “what was what” about the stolen letters. His “father” Jim had set the poor kid up having committed a burglary of his mother’s house for dough and those damn letters. Jim was a fake, was not Nick’s father, was a worse fake in general because he was one of those “stolen valor” guys, had washed out of pilot school because he got airsick or something. Wound up doing KP, shining officers’ shoes, and policing the grounds around the naval station in San Diego being laughed at by real pilots who had flown serious missions in the Pacific. The only good thing he did when exposed, or about to be, was to slit his worthless throat. As for Lew he got a reprieve from his fading reputation and that was it. Tough slide for a guy who could have been a hall of famer. 

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	Saturday, December 23rd (Orginally sent out 2017) Remembering the Christmas Truce Veterans For Peace is celebrates the anniversary of the Christmas Truce. We urge our leaders to follow the example set by the Christmas Truce soldiers who rejected militarism and the glorification of war. We call on the nation to honor veterans and all those who have died in war by working for peace and the prevention of war. Who better than veterans who work for peace to tell the story of these soldiers' celebration of peace in the midst of war? There is no better way to honor the dead than to protect the living from the fear, terror and morale deprivation of war. Our society needs to hear this story that peace is possible. Here are ways that you can be involved in the efforts to celebrate the Christmas Truce: Check out our website for some great resources! Check out the Christmas Truce Podcast Read and share Christmas in the Trenches Check out and share VFP-UK's amazing song on the Christmas Truce Spread the message on social media.  Be sure to join in the conversation! Back to Top The Christmas Truce by Charlotte Koons At 18, drafted into the Austrian Army After having spent time in London As an apprentice waiter, he would tell a Christmas story That I always thought was just him spinning a charming fairy tale. Only much later, did I learn That he was part of that 1914 Christmas Truce and was telling the truth Read Charlotte's Full Poem Back to Top VFPUK's Christmas Truce Song A few years ago, VFP UK and Tom Morello’s new Firebrand Records release “Christmas Truce” a holiday single and video to promote the ideals behind that truce - soldier-led resistance against war and militarism. 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Read Richard Greve's Poem Back to Top		In This Issue: Remembering the Christmas Truce Significance of the Christmas Truce by Brian Willson The Christmas Truce by Charlotte Koons VFP UK Christmas Truce Song Christmas Truce Speech by Bill Gilson Christmas Eve, 1914 by Jay Wenk Lessons from the Vietnam War by Becky Luening The Christmas Truce by Kathryn Louise Sugg Willard The Great Truce by Margarita Asencio Lopez The Christmas Truce a poem by Richard Greve Christmas Truce Poem by Gerry Kamke Save the Dates: Upcoming Event Significance of the 1914 Christmas Truce by S. Brian Willson "Thus, humans desperately need to re-discover and nourish examples of disobedience to political authority systems which have created 14,600 wars since the advent of civilization some 5,500 years ago. Over the past 3,500 years there have been nearly 8,500 treaties signed in efforts to end warfare, to no avail because the vertical structures of power have remained intact which demand obedience in their efforts to expand territory, power or resource base. The future of the species, and lives of most other species, are at stake, as we wait for humans to come to our right mind, both individually and collectively. The 1914 Christmas Truce of one hundred years ago was an extraordinary example of how wars can only continue if soldiers agree to fight. It needs to be honored and celebrated, even if it was only a flash of a moment in time. It represents the potential of human disobedience to insane policies. As German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht proclaimed, 'General, your tank is a powerful vehicle. It smashes down forests, and crushes a Hundred men. But it has one defect: it needs a driver."15 If commoners refused en masse to drive the tank of war, the leaders would be left to fight their own battles. They would be brief." Read Brian's Full Reflection Back to Top Christmas Truce Speech by Bill Gilson This speech was delivered by Bill Gilson, President of NYC Chapter 34,  to Peace Action of Staten Island and The Humanist Society of New York in 2014. "The real message of the Christmas Truce is that with human empathy we can reach across trenches of indifference and honor each others humanity. In the words of Dr. King: “peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of justice.”  The bigger question I believe is what would that justice look like ?  In keeping with this question, the Veterans for Peace national board recognizes that the violence of war has been epidemic in this country since its founding. We acknowledge the 500 year war on the indigenous peoples, the ongoing war and racism against black and brown communities, the long history of racist immigration policies, the economic war against the poor of all colors, the war against Muslims right here in the United States since 9/11 and unending violence against women. We see a connection between violence and police militarization here in the United States and in U.S wars abroad. With this in mind, “Justice at Home, Justice Abroad” is the new slogan of VFP.  It is also a reminder to the peace community that the peace and justice we seek has to start with us in our very own communities, involving ourselves in the struggles of the Other.  We all share the same address:  Planet Earth - there is no “Planet B." Read Bill's Full Speech Back to Top Lessons from the Vietnam War: What it means to be human by Becky Luening "In our society, indoctrination starts early. Toys, games, school curricula, and recruitment materials are just the beginning of an endless stream of media messaging designed to inculcate an unquestioning glorification of war and the “brave troops” who “fight for our freedom.” But there are other voices, perhaps very soft, nagging voices at first, inviting us to question these messages and encouraging us to find our own voices—to speak out against the immoral madness of forever war, and to point out the very clear meaning behind all the images and first-person accounts (and there are many) of the horrors of war. It is our right and our duty to share and to celebrate the stories, found in every generation, of soldiers who have discovered their own humanity by recognizing it in others, whether World War I vets who survived to tell of the amazing 1914 Christmas Truce or the hardcore individuals of another generation who survived to form Vietnam Veterans Against the War." Read Becky's Full Article Back to Top The Christmas Truce by Kathryn Louise Sugg Willard But the nature of War is to fight, And it did not stay far from that night. The Christmas Truce soon became a memory. 100 years hence, and we all now see They had something special that we must find For the world to share with all mankind. Read Kathryn's Full Poem Back to Top Christmas Truce Poem by VFP Member Gerry Kamke The Holidays are upon us with consumerism and show, While old-veterans like me are kind of waiting for snow. It didn’t snow in Southeast Asia and I didn’t get cold, A big old snow-storm would have felt as special as gold. We’re into the 100th year of this truce, That’s special and I wish it could be wrapped all up in Spruce. In 1914 British and German soldiers on that special day, Stopped fighting on the western front - just to pray. The concept caught-on and I wish it could last, But today’s wars are continuous and seem never in the past. I pray the tradition continues all over the world, And bullets plus bombs are no longer hurled! Save the Dates: Upcoming Events  January 10 - Friday, January 18, 2019 Peace with Iran Delegation Jan 19 - Women's March, Washington D.C. March 30-April 4 - NO To NATO events in Washington D.C. May 4 - May 6 - 6th Seminar for Peace & Abolition of Foreign Military Bases, Guantanamo Cuba August 15-18 - Annual Veterans For Peace Convention in Spokane, Washington Back to Top

Present At The Creation- Marvel Comics “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011)-A Film Review

Present At The Creation- Marvel Comics “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Kenny Jacobs

Captain America: The First Avenger, starring Chris Evans, Sebastian Stan, Tommy Lee Jones, 2011, Marvel Productions

[Now it is my turn to say WFT, although I could have probably gotten what the initials stood for long before my fellow reviewer on this site long time contributor Phil Larkin decoded the latest shorten terms in modern text-twitter-Internet world. His WTF reason, Phil’s, was that he went here on this site publicly to grouse about having to do another film in this so-far Captain America trilogy rather than what he considered should have been his plum assignment doing a review of his hero actor Humphrey Bogart’s  in one of his lesser later films from the 1950s Deadline-USA. A film about the even then declining (against television) newspaper racket’s struggle for the big story and how to beat off the stiff competition of the other news sources in the big cities.     

Under the new regime, manager Greg Green and the newly instilled Editorial Board, which Phil showed great disrespect for by calling that panel toadies of Greg’s, each writer has the option of airing his or her grievances in the introduction to their articles. With no particular role for either Greg or the board except as something like “gatekeepers” to avoid letting any personal obscure animosities spill into cyberspace. New as I am to this site I have no quarrel with that policy which seems right after what other writers have told me the previous manager Allan Jackson’s never-ending attempts to sweep any writerly controversies under a very deep rug. I have no quarrel either with Phil grousing in public about how he was short-shifted on what he expected to be his assignment. What I do object to and feel a need to mention if only in passing is my “cred” to do the Bogart review.        

Phil seems to believe that if you were not at least alive, as neither I nor my parents were, to have seen the film you are reviewing then that mere fact disqualifies you from reviewing the damn thing. He probably got that idea, an old idea in any case, from his buddy-buddy relationship with Allan Jackson and the coterie of older writers he surrounded himself with until a few years ago. Jackson  seeing the writing on the wall that the older writers were either running out of creative steam or were so hung up on the 1960s when most of them came of age, including Jackson, that they needed younger writers to stop the drainage of younger reader away from the site. While, in general, we younger writers will write material reflecting our coming of age experiences I reject the idea in this specific case that Phil was the only one who could do justice to the Bogart piece.

As I mentioned in my review, and either Phil missed or consciously ignored, I was spoon-fed on Bogie movies as a kid because my parents who met in the 1980s in Ann Arbor were crazy for Bogie (and for the four films with his honey Laruen Bacall especially) after having gone to the campus film department’s periodic retrospectives on the age of black and white films. Later too when they had their version of nostalgic for Bogie they would traipse me along with them to some commercial retro-theater like the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts when they were graduate students. So I will special plead my “cred” on that film. In any case Greg, to placate Phil I guess although that era was supposed to be over with the departure and what some writers have called the exile of Allan Jackson, has assigned me what was supposed to be Phil’s second review in the Captain America trilogy. Truth is I know and care less about that whole Marvel comic book operation than Phil could ever know but being a good sport and also able to feast off of his first review to avoid any heavy lifting I consented. I am, unlike the apparently more paranoid Phil, confident that this introduction will see the light of day. Kenny Jacobs]          

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Phil Larkin in his review of 2016’s Captain America: Civil War made the appropriate point that these basically mutant creations of humankind’s off-beat fantasies who squared off in that film pale in comparison with a guy like hard-boiled no nonsense private eye Phillip Marlowe, sea-worthy Captain Harry Morgan, closet anti-fascist resistance fighter Rick of Rick’s Café Americian out in the Kasbah, or for that matter unjustly convicted for murder escapee Vincent Parry Bogie. See I am stealing Phil’s stuff already. I won’t deal with the other mutants here since they, except for bad guy Winter Soldier, played by Sebastian Stan and a cameo by youthful inventor Stark aka Ironman, play no role here in The First Avenger saga but this Captain America specimen aka Steve Rogers out of Brooklyn, played by hulky Chris Evans, is a good example of why I shunned such matter when I was a kid. Phil was beautiful in noting that the idea of taking a ninety-eight pound weakling right out of a matchbook cover Charles Atlas “kick sand in your face” advertisement and turning him in 1945, or anytime, in a humanoid monster and then conveniently deep freezing him is kind of a hoot. Filling him up with a ton of what were, are, probably toxics did wonders for his ability to leap, do the 400 meters fast, and collide into people with his trusty shield but left his short on the brains side. Strictly a bronzed beauty-male version in a tight outfit for all the girls, young women, regular women in the theater audience to ogle over.      

Well enough of bursting the bubble and let’s take what we are given for a plotline which Greg Green, the managing editor, now rather irritatingly,  has again insisted that I make sure to outline to give the reader a leg up on what the thing is about. So using the “present at the creation” 1945 motif from the headline let’s get to how this whole mess started when the kid who used to have sand kicked in his face by girls or get his ass whipped by guys got to be on humanity’s short-list of saviors. First off blame it on some screwy doctor who convinces the scrawny weakling to be a trial balloon in one of his experiments to make super-human fighters by the bushel load to fight the bad guys, real bad guys the Nazis and their friends and hangers-on. Bingo he is in although not knowing he was not the first to go into the program. A Frankenstein, who will go by the name Red Skull once he arrives on the scene, is running amok trying to seize some advanced technology which will make him the numero uno bad guy pulling guys like Hitler and Mussolini off their pedestals.

So the quest for the golden fleece, for the fountain of youth, or whatever they are searching for is on. In this case a super-powerful energy source to do the do with Red Skull’s mad scientist colleague’s mad world-controlling inventions. Red Skull has it but not for long as the newly minted Captain America chaffing under the bit doing war bond drives instead of off-handedly saving the world (and creating as Phil noted many more innocent casualties than lowering the count on bad guys). So he moves off dead center and goes mano a mano with Red Skull finally grabbing the valuable energy elixir in a big air fight in which Red Skull comes up with the short end of the stick. Problem is our good Captain is left to guide the plane to safe harbors but can’t avoid crashing into big cities if he does so he “falls on his sword” taking the plane down in the Artic to wake up some seventy years later a stranger in a strange land-New York City. To continue saving a world even wackier than when he wound up in that deep freeze. End of story.

No, not quite, because comic he-man adventures or not there has to be a love interest here his Peggy, a British intelligence agent and all around whizz which naturally fizzles out when duty calls. As well we have a preview of what will come up in future episodes when his high school buddy, Barnes, who is presumed dead, will give his old buddy the masked man more trouble than he could shake a stick at. Yeah, I am with Phil, WTF, yawn.