This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Where I come from in Texas, y'all means all. In other parts of the country, it’s yous, yinz, or yuns, but however you say it, 70 percent of the American people agree: It's time for Medicare for All.
Other 2020 contenders have already signed on as co-sponsors to Bernie's legislation. But there are far more members of Congress who remain beholden to the private insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Our job is to put the pressure on every day, fighting for the issues, transforming the party, and electing progressive leaders until we have guaranteed health care as a human right.
We do that by building the strongest grassroots movement for Medicare for All our country has ever seen with local Our Revolution groups and showing people every single day what we're fighting for.
It's on! As of 1pm today, 31,000 Stop and Shop workers across New England are on strike. With multi-billion-dollar profits, the company is profiting off of the hard working employees. After years of disrespect in the workplace and relentless requests to accept lower pay and worse benefits, it's time for all of us to stand up and tell Stop & Shop we won't accept this treatment. Sign our petition to pledge not to cross the picket line and let us know that you will join the Stop & Shop workers and the UFCW on the picket line! Make sure to follow our Facebook page andwebsite for updates and solidarity alerts!
After joining your local picket line, join us next Thursday to celebrate Solidarity in action at our Annual Dinner!
Since 1992, Massachusetts Jobs with Justice has been uniting workers, community members, students, and people of faith to defeat bad bosses and stop corporate greed wherever we find it… Whether we’re taking on exploitation on the job, detentions and deportations, underfunding in our public schools, displacement from our neighborhoods, or inaction in the statehouse, we know that together, we are invincible!
Join us for an evening of dinner, drinks, and dancing to celebrate another year of fighting on the side of justice:
Massachusetts Jobs with Justice Annual Dinner
“Solidarity is our Superpower”
Thursday, April 18, 2019 • 6-9 pm
The Bruce C. Bolling Building • 2300 Washington St, Roxbury, MA 02119
Discount tickets are available for seniors, students, and low-income folks. For more information, please contact Gillian Mason at gillian@massjwj.net or 617-470-7409.
This venue is wheelchair accessible, but please let us know if you require any other accommodations in order to attend.
Finally, Don’t Forget To Vote for the People's Voice Award!
The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Ain’t Got No Time For The Harry’s Variety Corner Boys-With Jerry Lee Lewis’ Breathless In Mind
By Allan Jackson
[Sure I have put many a positive spin on my old corner boy Acre neighborhood growing up day in North Adamsville and have extended that wand plenty in comparing notes with other corner boy growing experiences like Josh Breslin’s up in Olde Saco, Maine and Fritz Taylor from up in New Hampshire (not the Fritz Taylor who occasionally writes in this space he was born down in Fulton County, Georgia where they didn’t have enough going to have a corner except some hayseed company general store best kept away from especially if Papa was behind in his land payments).
But know this that corner boy stuff had plenty of backside bad side. Had rough killer guys like the Red Hickey of the sketch below who could kiss your lips or give you the kiss of death and made you wish you never were born. Every Acre urban legend began and ended with some Red exploit just like every fresh breeze thing began and ended with the Scribe a few years after Red’s time, after Red went to the states the first time, but before he got caught in some fucking cops cross hairs down in the South robbing some goddam White Hen for nickels and dimes. The top urban legend story, the story that made him king of the hill around Harry’s Variety where the rough boys stood their ground and kept one foot against the placid brick walls that protected Harry from Red chaos was the time he chain whipped a guy within an inch of his life just because he was from some wrong corner, meaning any corner that Red did not control. Chain-whipped Loosey Goosey, that is the only name I knew him by so go with it, and Loosey was a member in good standing of Red’s corner boys just for not having his white tee shirt ironed like he was supposed to when they stood around the corner looking tough.
Sure it is easy to go chapter and verse on the real hood death battalion corner boys and have we simply bored corner boys with big dreams and swollen cocks look innocent by comparison. And maybe by comparison our hungry was not as great but we were no avenging angels, more like some exterminating angels out of some weird surreal Jean Cocteau play or the rough trade crowd around the waterfront in some Jean Genet our lady of the flowers moment. Sure the Scribe kept our, kept his head full of dreams and misty stuff that we could have given a fuck about listening too until much later when a lot for what he predicted came to fruition. But we also waylaid guys who tried to cut our turf, not chain-whipped but beaten bloody. You already know about our “exploits” with the fags down in Provincetown led by Timmy Riley, the guy who I mentioned before someplace who turned out to be gay and a flaming, his word, drag queen out in Frisco. Spent many a Scribe idea-Frankie Riley operational night doing the midnight creep around the darkened houses of the local version of the Mayfair swells.
Why. Because we could do it, could get away with it one Scribe and Frankie put their heads. And because we were so poor and so desperate that we were willing to do a low-rent version of class war to prove our metal. So pull me up short if I make a myth out of the hard-boiled corner boyt night in the Acre. It wasn’t always pretty. Allan Jackson]
*************
Lewis Jerry Lee Best Of Jerry Lee Lewis
Breathless
Now if you love me please don't tease If I can hold then let me squeeze My heart goes round and round My love comes a tumblin' down You leave me ahhhhhhh Breathtess ahh !
I shake all over and you know why I am sure its love honey thats no lie Cause when you call my name You know I burn like a wooden flame You leave me ahhhhhh Breathless!
OOOOOOOhhhhhh baby Oooooooh crazy! Your much to much Honey I can't love you enough It's alright to hold me tight But when you love me love me riiiiighhhht! Ah come on baby now don't be shy This love was ment for you and I Wind, rain, sleet or snow I am gonna be wherever you go You have left me ahhhh Breathless !
PIANO & GITAR SOLO
WEeeeeeellll
oooooh baby mmmmnnn crazy Your much to much I can't love you enough Well its alright to hold me tight But when you love me love me right Ah come on baby now don't be shy This love was ment for you and I Wind, rain, sleet or snow I am gonna be wherever you go You leave me ahhhh Breathless Ah!
Riding down the old neighborhood streets a while back, the old North Adamsville working class streets, streets dotted with triple-deckers housing multiple families along with close-quarter, small cottage-sized single family houses like the one of Tim Murphy’s own growing to manhood time in the early 1960s. He reflected as he drove on how little the basic structure of things had changed with the changing of the ethnic composition of those streets. Sure many of the houses had been worked on, new roofs, new siding, maybe a deck add-on for the ritualistic family barbecue (barbecues that his family on the infrequent occasions that they actually had one were taken at Treasure Island a picnic area that provided pits for the grill-less like his from hunger family on the site), maybe an add-on of a room if that home equity loan came through (or the refinance worked out). The lawns, manicured or landscaped like some miniature English garden, reflected some extra cash and care that in his time was prohibited by the needs to fix up the insides first or save money for emergencies like the furnace blowing out in mid-winter. In all the tradition of keeping up appearances as best you could had been successfully transferred to the new inhabitants (keeping up appearances being a big reason work was done back then in those old judgmental Irish streets, maybe now too for all he knew).
Whatever condition the houses were in, and a few as to be expected when there are so many houses in such a small area were getting that run-down feel that he saw more frequently back in the day by those not worried by the “keeping up appearances” ethos, the houses reflected, no, exclaimed right to their tiny rooftops, that seemingly eternal overweening desire to have, small or not, worth the trouble or not, something of one’s own against the otherwise endless servitude of days. Suddenly, coming to an intersection, Tim was startled, no, more than that he was forced into a double-take, by the sight of some guys, some teenage guys hanging, hanging hard, one foot on the ground the other bent holding up the infernal brick wall that spoke of practice and marking one’s territory, against the oncoming night in front of an old time variety store, a mom and pop variety from some extinct times before the 7/11 chain store, fast shop, no room for corner boys, police take notice, dark night.
Memory called it Kelly’s (as almost every local institution was Irish called from that small dream of ownership and out of hard manual labor variety store to the Dublin Grille bar that transfixed many a neighborhood father, including his father Michael Murphy to the shanty born, or else had an Italian surname reflecting the other major ethnic group, and at times mortal enemies). Today the name is Chiang’s. From the look of them, baggy-panted, latest fashion footwear name sneakered, baseball cap-headed, all items marked, marked with the insignia (secretly, and with no hope of outside decoding) signifying their "homeboy" associations (he would say gang, meaning of course corner boy gang, but that word is charged these days and this is not exactly what it looked like, at least to the public eye, his public eye) they could be the grandsons, probably not biological because these kids were almost all Asians speckled with a couple of Irish-lookers, shanty Irish-lookers, of the ghost be-bop night guys that held Tim in thrall in those misty early 1960s times.
Yeah, that tableau, that time-etched scene, got Tim to thinking of some long lost comrades of the schoolboy night like the hang-around guys in front of Harry’s Variety several blocks away (Harry O’Toole, the most “connected” guy in the neighborhood after Jimmy Mulvey who ran the Dublin Grille, since he ran the local “book”), although comrades might not be the right word because he had been just some punk young kid trying to be a wannabe, or half-wannabe, corner boy and they had no time for punk kids and later when he came of age he had no time for corner boys being unlike his older brothers, Red and Digger, a serious student and not a hell-raiser like them giving Martha Murphy nothing but the miseries. (He gave Ma Murphy his own miseries later but that was when all of society, all youth nation society, was going through a sea-change and he just travelled in that stream to her angers and dismays, especially in his wardrobe and physical appearance.)
Yeah, that scene got Tim to thinking of the old time corner boys who ruled the whole wide North Adamsville night (and day for those who didn’t work or go to school, which was quite a few on certain days, because most of these guys were between sixteen and their early twenties with very jittery school and work histories better left unspoken then, or else if you wanted to make something of it they would oblige you with some fists). Yeah, got Tim thinking about where the white tee-shirted, blue-jeaned, engineer-booted, cigarette-smoking, unfiltered of course (Luckies the “coffin nails” of choice, sneering (learned from watching, closely watching and repeatedly Marlon Brando in The Wild One and James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause at the retro- Strand Theater up on Main Street), soda-swilling, Coke with a some kicks added, naturally, pinball wizards held forth daily and nightly, and let him cadge a few odd games when they had more important business, more important girl business, to attend to. Either a date with some hot “fox” sitting in some souped up car looking like the queen of the Nile or putting their girls to “work,” pimping them in other words. Tim had been clueless about that whole scene until much later, that pimping scene, he had just assumed that they were “easy” and left it at that. Hell he had his own sex problems, or really no sex problems although if he had known what he found out from Red and Digger he might have paid more attention to those “loose women.”
Yeah, Tim got to thinking too about Harry’s, old Harry’s Variety over there near his grandmother’s house (on his mother’s side, nee Riley) over there in that block on Sagamore Street where the Irish workingman’s whiskey-drinking (with a beer chaser), fist-fighting, sports-betting after a hard day’s work Dublin Grille was located. Harry’s was on the corner of that block. Now if you have some image, some quirky, sentimental image, of Harry’s as being run by an up-and-coming just arrived immigrant guy, maybe with a big family, trying to make this neighborhood store thing work so he can take in, take in vicariously anyway, the American dream like you see running such places now forget it. Harry’s was nothing, like he had said before, but a “front.” Old Harry, Harry O’Toole, now long gone, was nothing but the neighborhood “bookie” known far and wide to one and all as such. Even the cops would pull up in their squad cars to place their bets, laughingly, with Harry in the days before state became the bookie-of-choice for most bettors. And he had his “book”, his precious penciled-notation book right out on the counter. But see punk kid Tim, even then just a little too book-unworldly didn’t pick up on that fact until, old grandmother, Jesus, Grandmother Riley who knew nothing of the world and was called a saint by almost everybody, everybody but husband Daniel Riley when he was in his cups “hipped” him to the fact.
Until then Tim didn’t think anything of the fact that Harry had about three dust-laden cans of soup, two dust-laden cans of beans, a couple of loaves of bread (Wonder Bread, if you want to know) on his dust-laden shelves, a few old quarts of milk and an ice chest full of tonic (now called soda, even by New Englanders) and a few other odds and ends that did not, under any theory of economics, capitalist or Marxist, add up to a thriving business ethos. Unless, of course, something else was going on. But what drew Tim to Harry’s was not that stuff anyway. What drew him to Harry’s was, one, his pin ball machine complete with corner boy players and their corner boy ways, and, two, his huge Coca Cola ice chest (now sold as antique curiosities for much money at big-time flea markets and other venues) filled with ice cold, cold tonics (see above), especially the local Robb’s Root Beer that Tim was practically addicted to in those days (and that Harry, kind-hearted Harry, stocked for him).
Many an afternoon, a summer’s afternoon for sure, or an occasional early night, Tim would sip, sip hard on his Robb’s and watch the corner boys play, no sway, sway just right, with that sweet pinball machine, that pin ball machine with the bosomy, lusty-looking, cleavage-showing women pictured on the top glass frame of the machine practically inviting you, and only you the player, on to some secret place if you just put in enough coins. Of course, like many dream-things what those lusty dames really gave you, only you the player, was maybe a few free games. Teasers, right. But Tim had to just watch at first because he was too young (you had to be sixteen to play), however, every once in a while, one of the corner boys who didn’t want to just gouge out his eyes for not being a corner boy, or for no reason at all, would let him cadge a game while Harry was not looking. When he thought about it though, now anyway, Harry was so “connected” (and you know what he meant by that) what the hell did he care if some underage kid, punk kid, cadged a few games and looked at those bosomy babes in the frame.
Yeah, and thinking about Harry’s automatically got Tim thinking about Daniel (nobody ever called him that, ever) “Red” Hickey, the boss king of his schoolboy night at Harry’s. Red, the guy who set the rules, set the style, hell, set the breathing, allowed or not and when, of the place. He didn’t know if Red went to some corner boy school to learn his trade but he was the be-bop daddy (at least all the girls, all the hanging all over him girls, called him that) because he, except for one incident that Tim will mention below, ruled unchallenged with an iron fist. At least Tim never saw his regular corner boys Spike, Lenny, Shawn, Ward, Goof (yes, that was his name the only name Tim knew him by, and he liked it, that is Goof like his moniker), Bop (real name William) or the Clipper (real name Kenny, the arch-petty Woolworth’s thief of the group hence the name) challenge him, or want to.
Yeah, Red, old red-headed Red was tough alright, and has a pretty good-sized built but that was not what kept the others in line. It was a certain look he had, a certain look that if Tim went to the trouble of describing it now would go way overboard describing it as some stone-cold killer look, some psycho-killer look but that would be wrong because it didn’t show that way. But that was what it was. Tim thought he had better put it this way. Tommy Thunder, older brother of his junior high and high school best friend and a corner boy king in his own right, Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, a big bruiser of a legendary North Adamsville football player and human wrecking machine who lived a few doors up from Harry’s went out of his way not to go near the place. See, Red was that tough.
Red was like some general, or colonel or something, an officer at least, and besides being tough, he would “inspect” his troops to see that all and sundry had their “uniform” right. White tee-shirt, full-necked, no vee-neck sissy stuff, no muscle shirt half-naked stuff, straight 100% cotton, American-cottoned, American-textiled, American-produced, ironed, mother-ironed Tim was sure, crisp. One time Goof (sorry that’s all he knew him by, really) had a wrinkled shirt on and Red marched him up the street to his triple-decker cold-water walk-up flat and berated, berated out loud for all to hear, Goof’s mother for letting him out of the house like that. And Red, old Red like all Irish guys sanctified mothers, at least in public, so you can see he meant business on the keeping the uniform right question.
And like some James Dean or Marlon Brando tough guy photo, some motorcycle disdainful, sneering guy photo, each white tee-shirt, or the right sleeve of each white tee-shirt anyway, was rolled up to provide a place, a safe haven, for the ubiquitous package of cigarettes, matches inserted inside its cellophane outer wrapping, Luckies, Chesterfields, Camels, Pall Malls, all unfiltered in defiance of the then beginning incessant cancer drumbeat warnings, for the day’s show of manliness smoking pleasures.
And blue jeans, tight fit, no this scrub-washed, fake-worn stuff, but worn and then discarded worn. No chinos, no punk kid, maybe faux "beatnik," black chinos, un-cuffed, or cuffed like Tim wore, and Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, king of the faux beatnik junior high school night, including among his devotees Tim, a little too bookish Tim, who was as tough a general, colonel, or some officer anyway, as corner boy Red was with his guys. Frankie example: no cuffs on those black chinos, stay home, or go elsewhere, if you are cuffed. Same kingly manner, right? Corner boys blue-jeaned and wide black-belted, black always, black-belt used as a handy weapon for that off-hand street fight that might erupt out of nowhere, for no reason, or many. Maybe a heavy-duty watch chain, also war-worthy, dangly down from those jeans. Boots, engineer boots, black and buckled, worn summer or winter, heavy, heavy-heeled, spit-shined, another piece of the modern armor for street fight nights. Inspection completed the night’s work lies ahead.
And most nights work, seemingly glamorous to Tim’s little too bookish eyes at the time, was holding up some corner of the brick wall in front or on the side of Harry’s Variety with those engineer boots, one firmly on the ground the other bent against the wall, small talk, small low-tone talk between comrades waiting, waiting for… Or just waiting for their turn at that Harry luscious ladies pictured pinball machine. Protocol, strictly observed, required “General Red” to have first coin in the machine. But see old Red was the master swayer with that damn machine and would rack up free games galore so, usually, he was on that thing for a while.
Hey, Red was so good, although this is not strictly part of the story, that he could have one of his several honeys right in front of him on the machine pressing some buttons and he behind pressing some other buttons Red swaying and his Capri-panted honey, usually some blond, real or imagined, blonde that is depending on the bottle, swaying, and eyes glazing, but he thought he had better let off with that description right now, as he was getting a little glassy-eyed himself at the thought, and because like he said it was strictly speaking not part of the story.
What is part of the story is that Red, when he was in the mood or just bored, or had some business, some girl business, maybe that blond, real or imagined, just mentioned business would after Tim had been hanging around a while, and Red thought he was okay, give him his leftover free games.
Now that was the “innocent” part of Red, the swaying pinball wizard, girl-swaying, inspector general part. But see if you want to be king of the corner boy night you have to show your metal once in a while, if for no other reason than the corner boys, the old time North Adamsville corner boys might be just a little forgetful of who the king hell corner boy was, or as Tim will describe, some other corner boy king of some other variety store night might show up to see what was what.
Tim must have watched the Harry’s corner boy scene for a couple of years, maybe three, the last part just off and on, but he only remembered once when he saw Red show “his colors.” Some guy from Adamsville, some tough-looking guy who, no question, was a corner boy just stopped at Harry’s after tipping a couple, or twenty, at the Dublin Grille. He must have said something to Red, or maybe Red just knew instinctively that he had to show his colors, but all of a sudden these two were chain-whipping each other. No, that’s not quite right, Red was wailing, flailing, nailing, chain-whipping this other guy mercilessly, worse, if that is possible. The guy, after a few minutes, was left in a pool of blood on the street, ambulance ready. And Red just walked way, just kind of sauntering away.
Of course that is not the end of the Red story. Needless to say, no work, no wanna work Red had to have coin, dough, not just for the pinball machine, cigarettes, and soda, hell, that was nothing. But for the up-keep on his Chevy (Chevy then being the “boss” car, and not just among corner boys either), and that stream of ever-loving blond honeys, real or imagined blonde depending on the bottle, he escorted into the seashore night. So said corner boys did their midnight creep around the area grabbing this and that to bring in a little dough. Eventually Red “graduated” to armed robberies when the overhead grew too much for little midnight creeps, and graduated to one of the branches of the state pen, more than once. Strangely, his end came, although Tim only heard about this second- hand, after a shoot-out with the cops down South after he tried to rob some White Hen convenience store. There is some kind of moral there, although Tim thought he would be damned if he could figure it out. Red, thanks for those free games though.
Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night- Humphrey Bogart’s “The Enforcer” Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Humphrey Bogart’s The Enforcer
DVD Review
The Enforcer, starring Humphrey Bogart, Everett Sloane, Warner Brothers, 1951 I have been on something of a Humphrey Bogart tear of late. And when I get in the occasional tear mood I tend to grab everything of an author, singer, artist, or actor in sight. And hence this review of a very much lesser known Humphrey Bogart film, The Enforcer. If you are looking for the oddly charismatic Humphrey Bogart of To Have or To Have Not, Casablanca, The Big Sleep or even the lumpen thug, Duke Mantee, of The Petrified Forest then you will be disappointed. Here Bogie goes over to the other side of the law and plays a hard-working, tough (naturally) District Attorney who will stop at nothing to put the bad guys in this quirky police procedural. Quirky because the film switches between the film's 1950s present and an earlier time in order to figure out why a woman was killed by her gun-for-hire boyfriend. As it turns out what Bogie and his police crew have stumbled into is the film version of Murder, Inc. a real phenomenon of professional killers who kill strictly for the dough, and no regrets. Except, as always, there is a weak link in the chain. That weak link is the that the woman killed by her boyfriend for seemingly no reason allegedly saw the psycho head capo of the murder for hire operation (played by Everett Sloane) kill a guy and he needed to cover it up. Was she the right woman? See the film and see if Bogie can figure things out. Figure the bad guys out as well as Phillip Marlowe or Sam Spade could.
On the 102rd Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution-A SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC VIEW OF LEON TROTSKY
BOOK REVIEW
LEON TROTSKY, IRVING HOWE, HOLT,RHINEHART, New York, 1978 As readers of this space may know I make no bones about being an admirer of the work of Leon Trotsky (see archives). I also believe that the definitive biography of the man is Isaac Deutchers’ s three-volume set. Nevertheless, others have written biographies on Trotsky that are either less balanced than Deutscher’s or come at it from a different angle with a different ax to grind. Irving Howe’s, self-defined quasi-biography is a standard social-democratic take on Trotsky’s life and work. The late Mr. Howe, long time editor of the political journal "Dissent" and a political 'godfather' of today's neo-conservatives, takes on the huge task of attempting to whittle down one of the big figures of 20th century history against the backdrop of that mushy social-democratic ‘State Department’ socialism that the left New York intelligentsia gravitated to in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. That standard response invokes admiration for the personality and intellectual achievements of Trotsky the man while abhorring his politics, especially those pursued as a high Soviet official when he was in political power. In the process Mr. Howe demonstrates as much about his weak ‘socialist libertarian’ politics grounded in a theory of Soviet ‘bureaucratic collectivism’ than a serious examination into Trotsky’s politics. There are some chasms that cannot be breached and this is one of them. In classic fashion Howe sets up Trotsky’s virtues early. Thus he recognizes and appreciates the early romantic revolutionary and free-lance journalist in the true Russian tradition who faced jail and exile without flinching; the brilliant, if flawed, Marxist theoretician who defied all-comers at debate and whose theory of permanent revolution set the standard for defining the strategic pace of the Russian revolution; the great organizer of the revolutionary fight for power in 1917 and later organizer of the Red Army victory in the Civil War; the premier Communist literary critic of his age; the ‘premature’ anti-Stalinist who fought against the degeneration of the revolution; the lonely exile rolling the rock up the mountain despite personal tragedy and political isolation. However, my friends, Howe’s biographical sketches are about an intensely political man by one who was a political opponent of everything that Trotsky stood for. Thus, all the patently obvious and necessary recognition of Trotsky as one of the great figures of the first half of the 20th century is a screen for taking Trotsky off of Olympus. And here again Howe uses all the points there are in the social democratic standard catechism. The flawed nature of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution as applied to Russia in 1917 and also to later semi-colonial and colonial countries; the undemocratic nature of the Bolshevik seizure of power in regard to other socialist parties; the horrors of the Civil War which helped lead to the degeneration of the revolution; Trotsky’s recognized tendency as a Soviet official to be attracted to administrative solutions; his adamant defense of the heroic days of the Bolshevik party and the Soviet Union, even in its degenerated state, against all comers until the end of his life; his weakness as a party political organizer in the fierce intra-party factional struggles and later, in attempting to found new communist parties and a new international; and, the inevitable ‘crime of crimes’ for the social democratic set- his failure to politically bloc with the Bukharinite Right Opposition after its defeat by Stalin. Of course the kindest interpretation one can make for Howe’s polemic is that he believes like many another erstwhile biographer that Trotsky should have given up the political struggle and become- what? Another bourgeois academic or better yet an editor of Partisan Review, Dissent or Commentary? Obviously Mr. Howe did not pay sufficient attention to the parts that he considered Trotsky’s virtues. The parts about the intrepid revolutionary with a great sense of history and his role in it. And the wherewithal to find a place in it. Does that seem like the Trotsky that Howe wrote about? No. A fairer way to put it is this. Trotsky probably represented the highest expression of what it was like to be a communist man, warts and all, in the sea of a non-Communist world. And that is high historical praise indeed.
The Mayfair Swells Without The Music-Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant And Jimmy Stewart’s “The Philadelphia Story” (1940)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Associate Film Critic Alden Riley
The Philadelphia Story, starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, directed by George Cukor, 1940
[A while back my “boss” in this space Sandy Salmon the long time film critic for the American Film Gazette who took over the chores here from the retiring Sam Lowell did a review of Howard Hughes’ production of the film adaptation of the successful Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur play The Front Page where he ruminated that he thought that he had already reviewed the film since the story line seemed very familiar. Sandy thought he was having a senior moment, thought maybe he had seen one too many films and had scratched his head over the plotline and message behind too many such efforts as well. As it turned out he had merely “confused” himself with the fact that he had previously reviewed His Girl Friday starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell which was just the distaff perspective, Sandy’s word, of the same story, in other words a woman is the ace reporter who can’t give up the newspaper rat race when a big story hit her right in the face despite her avowal she was going for the white picket fence, dog, three point two children and a nine to five guy to bring home the bacon.
The same thing, that deja vu thing has happened to me recently, and I am far younger and less fragile than Sandy, when I reviewed a 1950s musical extravaganza called High Society starring vivacious Grace Kelly in her last role before becoming a fairy queen, princess, you know royalty, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Somebody, maybe Sandy, had shortly thereafter suggested that I check out the film to be reviewed below which except for the music is very much the same freaking story. Let me tell you this and be done with it this is the last time I will be reviewing this story line although somebody, not Sandy, says there is yet another version of this same sappy, soapy story line if I want to disturb my sleep futher than it already had been to no good purpose. Enough. Alden Riley]
******
The Mayfair swells whether in plush Main Line Philadelphia (of which the very underrated novelist from nowhere Pottsville, Pennsylvania made a literary career out of detailing starting with Appointment At Samarra if you really want to get the load down on their work habits and sexual inclinations) or high end summer watering holes like Newport which a guy like Henry James would have had a field day “celebrating” if he hadn’t gone Anglo-exile, certainly have their problems. Whether or not they have musical abilities or not. Can croon to make the angels blush for their inadequacies or not. And no matter what time frame from the edge of the Great Depression which they, at least the survivors of 1929 had heard about in passing or in the dead of the red scare Cold War night as one film critic has described the 1950s. When I first saw this film I said to myself in some disbelief that I had already seen the film, or at least knew the story-line because I had just reviewed a Technicolor production of High Society with Grace Kelly (before she went off to be the real queen of Sheba or some kind of royalty in some fake kingdom by the sea), crooner Frank Sinatra (last reviewed in this space as a psycho hired assassin in Suddenly, no that is not right it was his well-deserved Oscar-winning performance in the film adaptation of James Jones’ From Here To Eternity) and crooner Bing Crosby (last seen probably in an un-reviewed Going My Way ) getting into mischief down in sunny Newport during the Jazz Festival.
That mischief, as here, involved the nefarious, yes, nefarious schemes of one Dexter Haven a high-end Mayfair swell tunesmith (figures for crooner Crosby) to get his ex-wife comely high-spirited and high-minded Tracy Lord (played by Princess Grace before she was Princess Grace) back in the fold. Problem: a big problem was that Ms. Tracy was getting ready to democratically marry a non-Mayfair swell the very next weekend. Here Dexter, played by cavalier Cary Grant, is nothing but a scheming high-end nautical architect slumming in the leafy suburbs of Main Line Philadelphia (you know among the Quaker-influenced old line gentry). Old Tracy, played by handsome and bright Katharine Hepburn, though is hard to get what with those high-spirited and high-mined ways that either version of the Mayfair swell assertive young Tracy held in hand. So the chase was on to see if old Dexter, or somebody could make Tracy see reason and dump this snobbish upstart who is looking to go up the social food chain by this timely marriage.
Enter Spy magazine in the person of frustrated writer Mike, played by Jimmy Stewart, who is hack writing for this scandal rag to keep the wolves from his door. In fact to have a door to keep them at bay with otherwise tossed out on the mean streets. This tainted high society marriage idea is meat for that publication. Mike, a hard-boiled, realistic, witty, sardonic guy is smitten, seriously smitten, by the upscale Tracy. Now the chase really was on. The three suitors spent the rest of the film jockeying for Tracy’s affections. Naturally the upstart guy she is supposed to marriage will be left at the altar and was a non-starter. Mike almost made the whole distance when Tracy had an epiphany after a drunken pre-nuptial reverie and was ready to go down and dirty to push Mike onto that serious writer’s career he longed for. But in the end, in the almost inevitable end among the Mayfair swells old-line class and breeding won out as Dexter’s anaconda strategy paid off.
Like I said I have already covered this plot-line. Enough. No mas. Even if it is a great story well- acted.
Over the past year, the Spartacist League has formalized the publication of semi-regular issues of suplementos en español de Workers Vanguard and the inclusion of bilingual pages in the press. These Spanish translations of WV articles help bring our revolutionary Marxist program to Spanish-speaking working people in the U.S. Our articles in Spanish are also aimed at reaching the Puerto Rican people, who are oppressed as U.S. colonial subjects and who have suffered massive repression in their struggles for independence.
The suplementos and bilingual pages are an expression of our commitment to addressing in Spanish Latino oppression, as well as the black question, the key to the American socialist revolution. This propaganda is an extension of lessons codified at the Seventh International Conference of the International Communist League in 2017, which reaffirmed the need to communicate in the languages of the workers and the oppressed as a counterweight to the “English only” chauvinism of the U.S. capitalist ruling class. (See “The Struggle Against the Chauvinist Hydra,” Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 65, Summer 2017.)
Our goal is to build a party dedicated to leading the proletariat in sweeping away this capitalist system and establishing workers rule. For that purpose, we want to arm the working class, including its white majority, with a program to fight on behalf of itself as well as the black and Latino masses. It is necessary for the labor movement to mobilize in opposition to anti-immigrant repression, raising the demands for full citizenship rights for everyone in the country and no deportations.
Another crucial demand to address the oppression of Latinos is the right to bilingual education, to learn English and also to preserve Spanish capacity. In the Southwest of the U.S. near the border with Mexico, many people speak Spanish fluently but cannot read or write it because there is no real access to quality bilingual education. As part of our opposition to privileges for English, we are for the elevation of Spanish to a recognized standard language in the Southwest.
The struggle for bilingual education is not limited to Spanish speakers but is vital for all immigrant communities and beneficial for those born here regardless of their ethnic origin. When workers speak more than one language, it helps to counter the divisions within the working class. Bilingual education is an essential component of the fight for free, quality, integrated public education. We also seek to break down the walls of the ghettos and barrios—that is, we fight for quality, low-cost, integrated housing, where black people and Latinos can live among whites as equals.
Today, Spanish-speaking workers make up a strategic component of the American proletariat, with many representing a living bridge to the struggles of its class brothers and sisters in their countries of origin. The Spartacist League seeks to build a party whose membership and leadership is 70 percent black, Latino and other minorities. Our work toward publishing propaganda in Spanish here in the belly of the imperialist beast better enables us to win over the most advanced Latino workers, who will fight under the banner of the Fourth International to construct the multiracial and multilingual vanguard party that will lead the working class to power.
Our readers in the U.S. and Puerto Rico who subscribe to Espartaco will also receive suplementos en español de WV. The archive of the suplementos can be found on the ICL website: www.icl-fi.org.
Traipsing Through The
Arts-All Serious 20th Century Art Is About Sex-Forget That Stuff You
Learned In Art Class About The Search For The Sublime- Colorist Grady Lamont’s
117th Dream (Sex Dream, Oops, Erotic Dream) With His “Pinetops”
(1982) In Mind
By Laura Perkins
Sometimes these
assignments drive me crazy, not the art part or whatever Greg Green the site
manager, the guy who gives out the assignments gives me but the necessity for
disclaimers, the incessant replies to weirdoes who have plenty of time on their
hands and need some lonely hearts club partners and occasionally as here a
confession that I screwed up. I have just finished up what I thought was a very
nice assignment reviewing three books on art by the late novelist and essayist
John Updike (all with various aspects of “looking” in their titles which is
what Updike loved about viewing art over his long career). Most of the essays
originally breathed life in the pages of The
New York Review Of Books which I read on occasion (and my “ghost” advisor
here Sam Lowell reads religiously and has for years thus having some of his
critics in the old days before the twelve-step program sobered him up a bit
from those three to five day drunks claiming he “copied” half his sketches from
that source) or in some other art-friendly journal. It was a pleasant to read
them and to comment on them with my take on this whole series of mine about the
centrality of sex and eroticism of serious 20th century art in the
back of my mind when I compared his views to mine. No question whatever sexual
urges Updike charted among his suburban-angst driven mainly male characters in
his novels his approach to art, something he has been interested in since he
was a kid and may reflect that wide-eyed wonder that kids’ views bring to this
jaded old world, his view is probably from the well-worn school of the search
for the sublime that started maybe with Vasari, and his narrow-minded little
book come Renaissance visions and carried on up to the current day by the likes
of Bill Hazlitt and that holy goof and doped up junkie Johnny Raskin.
Frankly and here is
where the “confession” part comes in I overreached when I attempted to override
Updike’s views to fit my own theory. Tried to full-court press his small
observations on the sexual nature of modern art into a major theme. I knew I
was in troubled waters on this score when I, rightly, suggested that Edward
Hooper was a sexual pervert dressed in American realist clothing and tried to
buttonhole Updike into that belief which was forced, although an unforced error
on my part. That is the major error I will admit too. The other “sin” is that I
attempted to rush my whole theory over many works of art rather than as before
the Updike book series taking on one work of art at a time and see where that
fit in to my general scheme. Not every work of every serious 20th
century artist is driven by sex and sensuality (although I would suggest the
best work does but I refuse to overreach, again) For example, a most recent
example before I got caught up in the book review assignment Jackson Pollock’s
drip painting Number 31 from 1949 which is a classic case of sex-drive, no,
sex-obsessed paintingwhich not only
buttressed my argument but had the added virtue of bringing to public attention
a little- known fact about the circumstances surrounding the production of that
masterpiece and others like it by Pollack if we can’t tar his comrades with the
same brush so to speak.
Not only did Jackson
Pollock have some kind of sex out in the shed in Long Island with who knows who
while he was doing that painting but some of his “love” drippings wound up on
the canvass giving me a double hit on my sex theories. I read somewhere, yes,
that drivel put out by Clement Greenberg when he was king of the hill of the
art world when it was centered by default in New York after World War II that
Pollack’s drips were his search for the divine, just another loose-leaf word
for, ah, sublime. Hell even Updike upchucked that drivel and showed that old
Jack was driven by Freudian-Jungian dreams, in short subconscious sex
stuff.
It
is possible to learn something both ways. Clearly I overreached in trying to
bring every possible artist Updike took aim at brushing the whole operation
with my own theory (although the charges of child sexual molestation against
Degas for his actions with those innocent ballerinas and other underage girls and
pandering for who knows what reason his lovely wife Camille against Monet have
held up very well as have Renoir’s latent homosexuality with his womanly
baby-faced bathing nudes). From here on in I will take one work of art at a
time and place it in context and if I get another book assignment will handle
it as a traditional review. That policy was easy to follow for an upcoming Marsden
Hartley look see with his rough trade homoerotic late sex paintings and Pollack
as it will be with my first new regime task whipping up a storm over Grady
Lamont who has made no bones that sex is what has driven his work and if not
that then sensuality. Grady has been quoted as saying that even painters like
Mark Rothko who one does not associate with being driven by sex as he has reeks,
his term not mine, of sex. Let see how things work out. Just don’t shoot the
messenger like a number of people have tried to do since I started this series
which I hope to continue for a while.
Now
to the inevitable disclaimers:
Apparently,
as fellow writer here Sam Lowell had warned me, doing the chores in the art
world, especially without the official imprimatur of the wicked art cabal, and
especially not bowing down to their totem artists and art works is as tough a
racket as doing film reviews. The few film reviews that I have done, as Sam or
Seth Garth the senior film reviewers here can witness, have created plenty of
blow-back in what I have now come to recognize is a dirty cutthroat business
with everyone in the profession living out some Hobbesian version of how to
survive. The evil eyes are always upon you in that not for the faint-hearted
profession for one little slip, one little too quirky remark and even more
venom will be thrown at you if you branch out like here to do other kinds of
cultural reviews. I know I received plenty of crazed messages from younger film
reviewers trying to make their mark in the world by leaving a bloody trail as
they move up what is called “the food chain” calling me a dilettante and worse
when I took on this series.
That
abuse from the cinematic crowd who after all are only as good as their
subjective opinions and can be construed as no better that your average
thoughtful movie-goer though is child’s play, kids’ stuff compared to the
vicious responses that I have received from so-called art critics in the short
time I have been running this project. (I won’t even mention the initial
blow-back from the troll religious evangelicals, the Brethren of the Common
Life from which I come, the religion of my youth the worst, who care nothing
for art, wouldn’t know an art work if they tripped over it but, quoting chapter
and verse from the Bible know that what I had to say about in my quirky remarks
about the relationship between sex and art were degenerate. Were and it still
perplexes me willing to call down fire and brimstone on me as Keil, the devil’s
servant.) Among the professional art critics and their press agents,
flak-catchers and strong arm hit men I have taken more than my share of abuse
for not being a member or the club, never claiming to be, and what amounts to my
being Nelly Telly the secular version of Keil, the devil’s servant that the
evangelicals kept accusing me of being as I moved along.
Those
barbs thrown at me not as an attack on my major theory that all serious 20th
century art is intimately tied to sex, sexuality and erotism but for what amount
to side observations about earlier works. I drew venomous hatred for pointing
out that John Singer Sargent’s infamous Madame X not only was a woman of easy
virtue to use a quaint old term but had a horrible bird-like nose that only a
mother could love causing her to refuse to do frontal portraits. Apparently if
that truth were known the price of her portrait would plummet in value causing
horrible shockwaves at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and maybe the
greater art world. (Since then known leftist
art critic Kenneth Rexford has come to my defense noting that what I had said
about Madame X’s motherless nose was absolutely correct and even Singer
Sargent’s earnest attempts to powder the beak cannot salvage that even though
the idea of beauty, professional beauty did not dwell on monstrous noses.) I gained
more crazed responses when I called things by their right name when I declared
the famous Isabella by John White
Alexander a stone-cold junkie (opium-crazed) growing the stuff out of a pot
where her dead lover’s severed head was being kept as part of the ritual of a
kinky cult started in ancient times and still around in secret hideouts today. (Rexford
left me high and dry on that one not “buying,” his term, my idea the fair
maiden was a junkie although conceding my point that she was a member of the
still growing cultists whose religion depended on severed heads.)
Almost naturally the
beast art critics went into crazed spasms when I mentioned the simple fact that
James Abbott McNeil Whistler, dear “Jimmy” who they tried to pawn off as a
devoted son on that so-called Mother painting was really a pimp, a procurer I
guess they called them in the 19th century. Why? For simply pointing
out that in his infamous The White Girl
now at the National Gallery which the collective cabal has deemed to be the
epitome of the struggle between innocence and the wicked world he was very
cleverly “advertising” his wares by putting a wolf’s head and fur beneath her
feet. That the classic “come hither” symbol in use since the times of the
courtesan Whole of Babylon and effectively used ever since then by the up-scale
crowd doing their nasty business on the sly with coded references unlike the
poor street whores and brothel damsels. They give dear “Jimmy” a pass since his
was hustling his mistress to make the rent money or to keep those repo wolves
from the door, the unfriendly door.
On “advice of counsel” I
stopped making reference to 19th century sex ploys and headed to the
20th century which has proven no better except that the evangelicals
have dropped away since they “know” all 20th century art, sexual or
not, is degenerate apparently takingtheir cue from the SS boys around Hitler and Goebbels and would not let
their kids near a modern art museum. I won no friends when I pointed out that
lustful dirty old man Edward Hopper painting every young woman he could find
without her knowing it while going about in full awareness of her sex had
flunked facial drawing in art school or wherever he learned to draw. I
speculated that he had actually drawn one mopey male and one mopey female,
poorly, made many copies and when he had to paint people would attach, maybe by
glue or some other substance, those faces on his finished drawings. That one
rocked the whole Hopper merchandise empire and it was a close call whether I
would survive the onslaught once the cabal decided to send a strong man hit man
team out to try to intimidate me. Fortunately, the powers that be here
intervened and we settled the matter once they were assured I would not write
about Hopper again in that vein. Would only write that he did not glue each
mopey figure on by actually did each on the canvas even though to an untrained non-art
critic eye they all looked alike. More than that I cannot say.
Digging deeper into 20th
century art, the time of the big deal abstract impressionist uprising led by
guys like Jackson Pollock and Barney Newell proved no better although I won’t
bore the reader with the scandalous recent findings of human fluids on many of
his famous dripping works. That brings us to the recent barrage over my remarks
about Georgia O’Keeffe’s works. How not only her vaginal flowers reeked of sex
but that her New York sky-scrapers, Lake George farm houses and Southwest
mountains did as well. Yes, I know I am lucky to be around to tell the tale taking
on this super-iconic art figure.
I am glad that I let Sam
Lowell unwind, tell his take as far as it goes on what I have been up to in
this on-going hopefully quirky and what I think is a better word irreverent series
on self-selected art works that have grabbed my interest. That way my attack on
Art Today art critic Clarence Dewar
will make more sense. Mr. Dewar had taken me to task for not being a
professional art critic or having any entanglement with the cabal that runs the
art establishment, the official art academy in this country like they used to
have in Europe to run newcomer artists through the rules-driven gauntlet, the
mega-project driven art museum directors, the hungry to be monogram published
or mega-show essay writing art curators, the greedy little art collectors who
collect art like stock options, the hired gun press agents and flak-catchers
who protect every mega-show like it was the Oscars or something and worse, the
flitty hard as nails gallery owners trying to unload unsaleable inventory on a
naïve clientele.
More bothersome of late Mr.
Dewar has taken umbrage, his term, that my sense that all serious art, modern
art has sex or eroticism, sensuality if you prefer at its core. (That theory
shared by agreement with Sam who went after it hammer and tong in that
long-winded essay he wrote. (For Sam’s spiel see Archives dated February 20,
2019 Traipsing Through The Arts-All 20th
Century Art Is About Sex-Forget That Stuff You Learned In Art Class About The
Sublime-Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock Unchained- In The Midnight Hour
Gliding Through “Number 31” (1949) Without Wings-Sam Lowell Unchained)
Mr Dewar’s main
contention is rather than down and dirty sex and getting turned on something
greater, something more terrible and beyond compare is at stake. The search for
the sublime. Don’t laugh, please he is serious. All art and here we agree for
once that this is about modern art, post-Impressionist art when those bastards
went mano a mano with the camera view and decided to worry (fret according to
Degas) about giving impressions rather than exact detail which the camera would
win hands down is the search by humankind through its painter for something
greater than they could achieve. In the old days God but now art, art though as
a far remove from what you see in reality. In other words what is fake, what is
beyond expression.
Well I suppose to earn your
daily bread and to keep those gallery cocktail hour invitations arriving in the
mails that might be a tenable position in, maybe, 1750 but is far removed from
the more plebian concerns of the now diminishing number of artists who as we
entry into deep space Internet world consider what they do modern art, or even
post-modern art. Mr. Dewar made the fatal mistake though of selecting one Grady
Lamont as his candidate for the sublime, adding in that Lamont had reached
something like the epitome in his of disassociating line from form which had he
claimed preoccupied the modern artist at least since Cezanne (and I, we agree
that Cezanne is key to this concern although as an end not as a beginning since
he, Cezanne, was the last guy who gave a damn about capturing fruits and wine
on misshapen tables and wooden clapboards. Meaning he is last guy who you can
claim is a modern who did not care one way or the other about sex, about
sensuality, about eroticism (unless of course and I have never heard, and I
have asked Sam as well, that he was into some cult of erotic, exotic fruits and
such but one never knows.)
Even better that that
sublime gag, that sublime grift that has kept more art critics and curators
working that one would think humanly possible Mr. Dewar yawned at us is the old
chestnut about art for art’s sake that he claims Lamont is the first artist
since Whistler to proclaim as the real role of the artist. Lame gibberish.
First of all Whistler was much more interested in hustling his what did he call
them, oh yes, muses, the models he worked to death in the studio, in his bed
and when dough got short, chronically short as was the usual case out on the
misty foggy London streets. The art for art sake gag was an idea his press
agent Walter Middleton or maybe Bill Hazlitt though up to justify putting the
somber sullen symphonic works in the gallery windows. Why else would anybody
except his mother buy any of that downer painting when you could just go out
the door and get depressed for free. Even his mother thought he was being his
usual boorish self when he labeled her portrait a study in black and white or
gray. Jesus his poor bedazzled mother sat for him for hours and he “disrespected”
her that way.
But now on to Grady and
the real meaning of his work. Apparently Mr. Dewar did not bother to read the
very long article by the late art critic Tim Lewis in Mr. Dewar’s own
publication Art Today in 1983 when
the whole art world was in awe of Grady’s breakthrough painting Pinetops (1982) which made his nut (and
was recently sold in a private sale for eleven million dollars, the top price
for a real Lamont). In that article (strange Mr. Dewar didn’t see the article
since it preceded just in front of his then latest outpouring of the “search
for the sublime” in Chinese art of the 19th century) Lamont when
asked point blank by Tim Lewis what the painting had been about, what drove him
to express himself like that he answered candidly and I quote so there is no
misunderstanding “I wanted to pay homage to Georgia O’Keeffe’s pioneer work in
drawing the viewer to the similarities between certain opened flowers and the
vagina except I wanted to concentrate on the sexual act itself. The deep what
we could call holes in which the elongated poles sit are the consummate acts of
copulation. I think that is what draws the viewer to the painting, why it has
made an impression not seen since her times when she did true work and not that
crap out the desert or wherever she was hiding out.” Bingo.
As for Mr. Dewar’s idea
that Lamont had made a final breakthrough in what he asserted was high
symbolism over form he laughed (or at least that is how the transcript read)
and said it was more a question of his having a lot of silver paint, not a big
seller in the art supply stores left when he was short of money. On the art for
art’s sake argument he laughed and said essentially “what are you kidding, he
did the painting to earn his daily bread and maybe buy some other paints now
that the silver was getting low after he used so much for the Pinetop project. Case closed as Sam says
in his lawyer-like moments.
.jpg)
