Radical Geometries Bauhaus Prints, 1919–33 February 9, 2019 – June 23, 2019 Clementine Brown Gallery (Gallery 170)

Radical Geometries
Bauhaus Prints, 1919–33

February 9, 2019 – June 23, 2019
Clementine Brown Gallery (Gallery 170)

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Celebrate the centenary of this groundbreaking school of modernist abstraction

The Bauhaus—Germany’s legendary school of art, architecture, and design—was founded in Weimar by architect Walter Gropius in the spring of 1919. Gropius assembled an international group of faculty members including Josef Albers (German), Lyonel Feininger (American), Wassily Kandinsky (Russian), Paul Klee (Swiss), and László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian). The school relocated twice during its brief existence (to Dessau in 1925 and Berlin in 1932) before its closure by the Nazi regime in 1933, but its aesthetic of geometric abstraction—and its stated goals of collaboration across disciplines and harmony between form and function—have had a lasting impact on the fields of architecture and industrial and graphic design.

“Radical Geometries” marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus with a group of more than 60 works on paper, primarily prints but also a number of drawings, photographs, and ten of the 20 postcards designed by faculty and students for the first Bauhaus exhibition at Weimar in 1923. The objects on display are drawn primarily from the MFA’s collection, augmented with key loans from private collections. The recent gift of Kandinsky’s dynamic portfolio of 12 prints Kleine Welten (little worlds), the artist’s magnum opus in printmaking, is shown in the exhibition for the first time.

“Radical Geometries” is timed to coincide with a wide range of centennial Bauhaus exhibitions across the country and the globe, including “The Bauhaus and Harvard” at the Harvard Art Museums and “Arresting Fragments: Object Photography at the Bauhaus” at the MIT Museum. A companion exhibition at the MFA, “Postwar Visions: European Photography, 1945–60,” explores the continuing influence of Bauhaus abstraction in the decades following World War II.

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In the News

• The Boston Globe (2/20/19): "At the MFA, it’s the Bauhaus and beyond"

The Geometry Of Innocence -The 100^th Anniversary Of The Bauhaus In Wiemar Germany After World War I

By Laura Perkins

I get to do this short commemoration of the Bauhaus in Germany from 1919 to about 1933 by default. Or because I am currently running an on-line series on art works entitled Traipsing Through The Arts. Although we have no official section titles and have not had them for a while I am the “art go-to person” (maybe an official title like art editor would be better but that is not a battle I want to fight right now when I am being besieged by half the American arts cabal from curators to gallery owners  for my unorthodox views of my self-selected artists). I actually know, or I should say knew, since I have hustled myself through the small Bauhaus exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the more expansive one at the Harvard Museums next to nothing about the movement except for a few names like Gropius and Moholy-Nagy. (Who knows what other museums with even the most tenuous links to the Bauhaus will roll out their red carpets for the commemoration like happened a couple of years ago with the Summer of Love, 1967 where even the MFA had a dinky exhibit down in the dungeon of the American Arts wing closeted from view along with the Native American and Mezo-American art.)   

Aside from learning about the very real connections between Harvard and the movement brought on by the exile of many of the figures associated with the school once Hitler and his wreaking crew pulled the hammer down I was surprised to see how many modernist painters like Klee and Kandinsky passed through the doors either as teachers or students. Also the link between the Bauhaus and the famous Black Mountain College down in North Carolina which produced a significant number of culturati. (Frankly the first reference I knew about Black Mountain was not the college but one of Bessie Smith’s blues, Black Mountain Blues, which is a very different take on that location.)

More than anything else though I was fascinated by how important geometric figures were to that movement not only in the obvious architectural and design areas but in the art. Especially the work of Joseph Albers who would later help found Black Mountain College. That is why I titled this sort piece “geometric of innocence” since 1919 nobody, or almost moody knew what hell was coming down when the Wiemar Republic fell down.

Who Is That Dancing With Rita Hayworth?-Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly’s Cover Girl (1944)-A Film Review

Who Is That Dancing With Rita Hayworth?-Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly’s Cover Girl (1944)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

Cover Girl, starring Rita Hayworth. Gene Kelly, Phil Silvers, 1944     

Turnabout is fair play or at least that is what we learned when we were kids and maybe there is something to the matter. The turnabout here is who is watching who in the film under review the 1944 musical Cover Girl. That watching part was predicated by a remark my longtime friend, companion and fellow writer here Sam Lowell mentioned in a review he did of an earlier musical featuring the dancing pair of Fred Astaire and the female dancer here the vivacious Rita Hayworth. Yes that Rita Hayworth who half the guys, the G.I.s in the muds of World War II Europe or on forsaken Pacific atolls has photos of, pin-ups in the lingo of the times, hanging somewhere to remind them of well, let’s just say reminded them of home. Sam had made a big deal of having previously gushed over Fred’s exquisite and strong-legged dancing in previous efforts with former partner Ginger Rogers where he was the focal point of whatever creation was being performed. Not so when Rita came on board since Sam was at one with those guys in the muds and on those damn forsaken atolls and according to my father who was there they really had pin-up dreams, well let’s just leave it at that.     

Needless to say, that there, as here, although I am bound by my contract to say a few words about the plot of the film, what Sam always called the skinny and that seems right in dealing with musicals the mere presence of Rita as the much sought-after Cover Girl of every dream made the dancing of the usually physically very present Gene Kelly from nowhere. That, my friends, as much as a feminist as I like to think about myself as being in these troubled times is my opinion as well. On this showing. Since Sam and I watched this one together (he would have pouted for about three weeks if he didn’t get his Rita fix) I remarked to him how much Rita’s mere presence in a scene lighted the whole thing up. And this a film over seventy years old.      

Here is that skinny I was mentioning above that I am duty-bound to run through although I have already given anybody, male or female, the reason to see the film if that is what is holding anybody back. Rita and Gene, Rusty and Danny, are slowly working their way up the dancing food chain via Danny’s Brooklyn nightclub (that location unlike today when everything is coming up roses in that borough, a snub, a reference to the backwaters of New York City, nowhere in other words) but mainly they are in love and can go either way on the climb up the ladder business. As long as they have each other. That is until a Mayfair swell, a Manhattan Mayfair swell was slumming one night at Danny’s after seeing Rita apply for the cover girl cover of the title. Then the chase is on. It seems that Mayfair swell was all set to marry Rusty’s grandmother, also a dancer back in her day, who looked amazing like Rusty how did they do that, and thus showing some DNA connection to granddaughter, but she a free-spirit and the bane of Mayfair swell’s mother flew the coop, left him at the alter. A sad but hardly unique tale.

Mayfair swell is not just any bourgeois playboy turning gray but the publisher of Cover Girl magazine which every good-looking young woman who had any ambitions that way would die to be on. Naturally, despite six million false denials, Rusty wanted in. Got in and got on the first rung of the ladder to high society, New York style. Sans Danny, or so it seemed. Mayfair swell even set Rusty up with an up and coming Broadway producer in the days when Broadway was the be all and end all of real acting, of the legitimate theater as they used to tout the tag. Rusty bought into the whole plan, including marriage to said producer. You know where all this substitution is heading so you know that in the end she jilts the guy just like granny did in her time and goes running back to blues struck Danny. I will never ever not say when reviewing a musical that the plotline is nada, not a thing and the thing is the dance and the lyrics to the music. Except here it is really Rita going through her paces. Sorry Gene you will get your chance in An American In Paris so don’t fret.             

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- “The Roots Is The Toots”-Bruce Springsteen Comes Home- “Live In Dublin”-A CD/DVD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bruce Springsteen performing his version of Blind Alfred Reed’s How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live.

Live In Dublin, Bruce Springsteen and the Sessions Band, 2 CD set with DVD, Bruce Springsteen, 2007


I have been all over the American songbook for the past couple of years. Old –time Appalachia hills and hollows (ya, I know hollas but what is a poor city boy to do) stuff from the Carter Family and Clarence Ashley, country blues stuff from the likes of Son House, Skip James, and Bukka White, bluegrass from Doc Watson and Hazel Dickens, swamp cajun stuff from Clifton Chenier, Tex-Mex stuff, electrified come to the city blues via Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Then to the more “refined” playbook from the hills and hollows of, ah, New York City’s Tin Pan Alley by the likes of Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, and Irvin Berlin. Onward to the “founding” fathers and mothers of rock and roll like Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Carl, Wanda Jackson and Lavern Baker. Finally, well almost finally, the 1960s folk revival minute around Cambridge and New York that drove my youth with the likes of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Peter Seeger.

And it is that last name, Pete Seeger, that connects all of the above-mentioned genres with the CD under review, Bruce Springsteen’s epic (okay, okay, just monumental) Live In Dublin album, which is nothing (or almost nothing) but big kudos to his roots and to Pete’s efforts over a very long career to preserve some forgotten aspects of that American songbook. Peter is well known as a left-wing political activist and folksinger. Less well known is his role in keeping roots music alive (a task handed down from his musicologist father). So Bruce Springsteen, a rock and roll guy known to connect to his roots and to the people, is right at home here paying homage to the parts of the songbook that Pete has helped preserve.

The CD compilation I am reviewing is a two CD set with DVD of the Dublin performances complete with probably every known great session player available and, perhaps, every known western instrument from sexy sax to wailing kazoo (nice, right). The stick outs here include Jacob’s Ladder, We Shall Overcome, Jesse James, his version of Blind Alfred Reed’s How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live, and My Oklahoma Home. See the American songbook, and a couple of rock classics thrown in. Got it.

The Cowboy Angel Rides-Paul Newman’s “Hud” (1963) –A Film Review DVD Review

The Cowboy Angel Rides-Paul Newman’s “Hud” (1963) –A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Hud, starring Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal, Brandon DeWilde,

In a recent review of another Paul Newman film, Cool Hand Luke, I mentioned that Mister Newman represented in the post-World War II period an emerging different breed from the hard-boiled take no prisoners macho for the sake of macho earlier class of male lead actors like Bogie and Robert Mitchum. The post-war variety was a little vulnerable, a little less virtuous and showing a lot more signs of alienation that their older brothers. Paul Newman fit that space to a tee bringing his alienated vulnerable, what the hell side out in the film under review Hud (the short name says it all as an emblem of the times). (That alienation business, the sighting of certain disconnect not apparent in the generation who slogged through the Great Depression and the World War manifested itself in many ways from the great mogul California desert rush hot rod drivers, the gas house light gang searching for the perfect wave around the La Jolla lighthouse, and on a different not the hot-riding Hell’s Angel type bad boys to be bad just to be bad)           

Here we have one of the early examples of the way guys raised on a steady diet of Old West legends, everything black versus white in the morality scheme of things surrendering to the ambiguity of the post-war ethos down among the modern cowboys. In a sense this film is a coming of age film since although the action centers of Hud’s wild man gone mad exploits and decisions (or lack of decisions may be better and just drifting along) the other basic story line about his young nephew Lon, played by Brandon DeWilde, coming of age in an age when the Old West was surrendering by the minute to the New West (a New West dragged along by the old ithat will be examined fully in the film The Last Picture Show about a decade later.   

Here is how this one pony’s up though. Hud, as already mentioned is a hard-working, hard-loving, hard-drinking, well, everything hard son of the Texas range. A range created by his father, old Homer played by Melvyn Douglas, with whom he is fatally alienated. Old Homer from the Old West rugged individualism school of life can’t abide the fact that Hud just doesn’t give a damn, is out for the main chance-for Hud.  Throw in that by his dereliction he killed Lon’s father and you have a classic love-hate relationship. Homer having given up on Hud has staked everything on bringing Lon up right-and in the end he does wind up being a decent young man.      

 But along the way there is nothing but trouble for Lon-first about whether he wants to emulate Uncle Hud and second trying to live up to his grandfather’s expectations. Complicating in this male-household is the housekeeper Alma, played by Patricia Neal whom Hud has a lustful eye on and Lon has affection for as well. Even more worrisome though is the fact that the livestock, the cattle that give life to the ranch have contracted hoof and mouth disease and in the end must be destroyed as a public health issue. (The scene where unknowing cattle are slaughtered and bulldozed to a mass grave is quite hard to take.). In the end old Homer is broken by that loss, by the loss of his livelihood. In the end Hud, after a bad attempted rape scene with Alma, has learned nothing by the old man’s death. In the end Lon walks away from what feelings he had for Hud as a model. Yeah, Hud was a man born after his time, after the Old West had been burned out of the countryside and the new cowboy West had left him disarmed against his own hubris.          

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83

By Music Critic  Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in (and the former two never got over since they will still tell a tale or two about the times if you go anywhere within ten miles of the subject-I will take my chances here because this notice is important) all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. That is where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, and a whole crew of younger folksingers who sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.  

But there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some other colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s where some of those names played but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83 in June 2017.

The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. She was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember her cover of Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 

The Stuff Dreams Were Made Of-With The Late Sam Spade In Mind

The Stuff Dreams Were Made Of-With The Late Sam Spade In Mind

By permission of Bart Webber

“Hey, sailor buy me a drink I am feeling a little blue today because I just read in the Times that my old boss Sam Spade what did he call it, oh yeah, cashed his check, has gone to the pearly gates or wherever ex-private dicks go to,” Effie Perrine was loudly calling to a guy in a three piece suit a few bar stools down who certainly was not a sailor. Not a sailor, or if so was totally lost in the Garden Bar of the Grand Hotel in New York City. The guy who seemed sober enough slid down beside her and offered her that drink. Scotch, neat so you knew, if you knew Effie as she had advanced in years, nice way to put it, was definitely feeling blue as the bartender brought her a drink and a whiskey sour for the three-piece suit. When Effie asked his name he gave it as War Bond and had started to give his line when she stopped him cold asking if he remembered the name. Barton answered that if that was Sam Spade of the Samuel Spade Investigation Agency which had after the war given the Pinkerton organization a run for its money then he had heard of the organization but had not known that the founder was still alive.

Effie used that acknowledgement as her entre into telling her new friend why she was feeling blue this day. “Back in the day, back before the World War, back in the late 1930s Sam Spade was the last of the tough guy private investigators, the last of the guys who could take a punch, give a couple back, take a slug and throw back some too, get some flame in the sack and have time for lunch all in a day’s work. Not like the no-name private dicks today excuse me with no balls and no way to get them watching too much television with their pansy detectives like that Nick Charles everybody is raving about. Punk, nothing but punk,” Effie effused as she eyed her empty glass and point to Barton. As the bartender went to fill the order Effie said the following, “Do you remember the black bird case that was in all the papers back then, the case that made Sam’s career?” Ward gave a look of bewilderment and said “No.” Effie retorted, “If you don’t interrupt a girl and let me tell the story then for kicks you can take me upstairs to my room and we can see what we shall see.” Ward perked up to that offer, said the unnecessary yes and gave Effie the floor.                   

“I met Sam back then out in San Francisco when I first hit town after blowing dust off my shoes from nowhere dust bowl Nebraska at the height of the Depression. Actually I met his partner Miles, Miles Archer, when they were partners before Miles was killed on a case. I had met him in the Farrell Hotel on Post Street when I was doing the best I could working the bar for drinks and for tumbles to keep my head from wasting away on some park bench. This Miles was nothing but a lady’s man, nothing but soft-touch jobs and I knew I could handle him. Had handled guys tougher than him when I was nothing but a teenager in Omaha. He had this wife whom he didn’t like, and she didn’t like him either. During the time Miles and I ran together Sam was boffing Miles’ wife, Iva, I think her name so there were no problems. Miles, like guys like Miles always do, got tired of me and was ready to leave me high and dry until I put the bug in his ear that if he didn’t watch out his every loving wife might be getting a little call from me. The way things worked out though was that Miles brought me into the office to be the office secretary and that is where I met Sam.               

“I was immediately attracted to Sam and after that barely talked to Miles except on office business. I, once I honed in on him, grabbed Sam for a while, lived with him even, but I knew that I was just a plaything for him and so when Harry came along I latched onto him. But being in the office, working with Sam when he was in his prime, when he was the real deal detective was how I was up to my skinny ankles in the black bird case.[Ward looked down with an approving look, a look complete with lips smacking.] 

“You know this was the heart of the Depression so after sleeping my way into a job and after the communal lusts wore off I proved to be a very competent office manager which is really what I was. Sam would depend on my judgement a lot, would ask me to evaluate a client if for no other reason than would the party pay up for services rendered. That’s how I got involved with this Wonderly, LeBlanc, O’Shea whatever her real name was, I’ll call her Bridget, which to this day I am not sure what it was since we never wound up billing her. Sam maybe got a few hundred dollars out of her in cash and that was all we ever got. She had come walking into the front office where I worked (and screened the clients) all boas, feathers, and the scent of jasmine looking for some detective help. Told me that a guy named Dashiell Hammett, who I had never heard of although Sam told me later he knew the name, had recommended Archer& Spade to help with her secret problem. I personally although I let her into Sam’s office thought when all the dust settled and Sam and I were laughing about the roller coaster ride we had just been on that she had just grabbed the first name in the telephone book and would have worked her way down until she got her claws into somebody who would do her bidding after a whiff of that jasmine.      

“The story that she gave Sam, the story that got poor Miles Archer an early grave, was she was looking for a sister who was running around with some hardnosed gangster and she needed some heft to face the guy and whatever his demands were down. Her hundred dollar bills (Sam told me Miles had seen her wallet and they had plenty of brothers) a couple Sam said for the record got the services of Archer& Spade. Miles licking his chops all the while volunteered to meet this bad guy, this Thursday, Thursby something like that I have trouble with names of late later that night at the Majestic Hotel.

“The next thing I know is l got a call in the middle of the night from Sam saying Miles had taken the big send-off, had cashed his check and could I break the news to this Iva whom Sam went back to fucking, excuse my English which would not have been sued then but now we can say whatever we want. I did but what a bitch to settle down. He also asked me to call Bridget and was pissed off at me when I told him she had flown the coop. The situation got worse when some coppers came to his door to shake him down not only about Miles and what he was working on but that this guy Thursby whom Miles was to meet had been blasted to kingdom come later in the evening. Sam kept saying that he could feel the noose tightening around his neck and I could see it in his eyes.       

“You never know about men though, especially tough guys like Sam, guys who are tough and good in bed which Sam was and not all tough guys are-some believe me are pansies no doubt. Bridget wound up calling him saying she was in fear of her life and could he please, pretty please stand by her. She probably spread her legs, spread then wide or gave him a quick blow job but an hour later he called me and told me that Bridget had laid five hundred bucks on him to stay on the case. He was in, all in come hell or high water.

“The next I heard from Sam he had just finished blowing smoke at the cops investigating the cases of Archer and Thursby when Bridget and this fag who had come to the office looking for Bridget, looking for what he said was the black bird she knew about had tangled. The cops bought whatever he was selling but it was a close call. That mention of the bird and what it was worth in human life and death was what the whole thing would turn out to be about. Who had it, who thought they had it, and who was willing to pay cold hard cash to get it.

“That is when the Fat Man, a guy named something Street got on his high horse with Sam and tried to get him to betray Bridget. Sam wasn’t buying that line just then but he definitely saw that whatever sexual promises laid ahead with Bridget he was going to have the cash nexus in mind as well. Was going to get out from under the cheapjack back office in some failed office building with losers and fakers and go uptown. Said he would take me there with him. I was in, all in too.      

“The deal on the black bird was that it was supposed to have been loaded with jewels as tribute by some monks or knights back in the dark ages to the Spanish king. The thing never got to him so the damn thing was whoever had control of the item who would profit from the possession. The Fat Man, a clever guy from the one time I saw him tried to cut corners on Sam since he knew, or thought he knew it was. Put the bang-bang on Sam. Did the Fat Man no good because this guy, this ship captain that Bridget had conned into working with her when she was working in some Hong Kong whorehouse from what Sam told me later wound up in our office with the bird. Wound up dead too from the Fat Man’s hired gun. But we had the bird although seeing that guy die right before my eyes was one of the worse things that I have ever seen in my life.         

“We had the advantage now since Sam had put the bird in storage somewhere and mailed the ticket to me for safekeeping. Sam was off to deal with the Fat Man, with Bridget or whoever had dough to win the bird. That was his story anyway.  He negotiated, negotiated up front for Bridget but I think really for himself, with the Fat Man at his apartment. He was to get ten thousand up-front for delivery of the bird to the big man. That is where I came in. I was to pick up the bird from storage since I had the ticket and bring it to the Fat Man’s apartment. I brought it and then left.      

“Sam told me later that all hell brought out when the Fat Man and his associates found out that the bird the Captain had delivered to us was a fake, worthless. He left with his confederates after flashing some guns. Leaving Sam and Bridget to face the coppers. That is where Sam went into his magic act, where he sent Bridget over. See she had killed Miles for her own reasons, probably had killed Thursby too. Sam was not taking the fall for her, no way. She was going to the big-step off, and while he would not forget her he had to take her down, let her take the fall for his profession, for Miles whether he liked him or not. Bad for business letting civilians run amok over the dead bodies of private investigators.

“Here’s the part that never got in the newspapers which was just what the cops gave the newspapers. Bridget and the Fat Man were not the only one’s smitten by the idea of the stuff of dreams. Sam saw this bird as his way out of cheap street. That fake bird was not the bird the Captain had delivered to the office. The one I had innocently delivered to the Fat Man’s apartment. Sam had squirreled it away in another storage box. Later after cashing in on the jewels he gave me more than enough to set me up here. And that is the real story of how the Sam Spade Investigation Agency got its start. The real story of the days when guys did private investigation for keeps. Sam Spade RIP. Now you can take me upstairs and see what is what.”             

A Haters’ Elegy, Of Sorts-Swerving A Big Detour From Simple “Traipsing Through The Arts”

A Haters’ Elegy, Of Sorts-Swerving A Big Detour From Simple “Traipsing Through The Arts”

By Laura Perkins   

Maybe it is because I am in chloric mood having just gone through a bunch of medical procedures, been poked and prodded to perdition but today I am nothing but an old-time flame-thrower, not those tunnel rat throwers that my friend Sam Lowell keeps telling me about from his time in Vietnam but the ancient stoic Greek warriors who batted burns with the best of them and maybe that will help me feel better.

I hate in no particular order: two million-word writers (excluding revered Jack Kerouac who at least wrote a few great novels and some passable ones too and who at least did his work the hard way via some nubbed pencils and a ten-cent notepad purchased at some off-hand Woolworth’s when that was a go-to place for such things among the young and then to secret cave libraries and mind adventures); terminal word junkies (not serious writers, see above,  although if my medical condition gets worse maybe them too but guys and gals who prattle on endlessly assuming just because they don’t consider their time valuable they assume everybody else is in step and that getting the last word is the idea of great literary/debate style); Jimmy Swag “hit men” (the last one, let’s call him X in case shows up in this country again and maybe take umbrage that I didn’t show him quite enough respect either calling him a lowlife hitman or that he left Jimmy cold and dry not doing his contract leaving the Swag to do a nickel in State Pen and who has rumored of late to have been seen in Argentina working as a gunsel for a high-end Madame at a Buenos Aires bordello; “fixer man” (no, not the beautiful backroom cigar-smoke, whiskey drinking guy of politics like sainted Mayor Daley of Chic town when he had that place wired, was so wired he was so wired that he was electric and who could “deliver” those last three crucial votes to your guy from his opponent to put him over the top by threatening to expose them as respectively having had carnal knowledge of animals, being a sodomite, and having sent fifteen years in a mental hospital but the guy down your street wearing high-belted yellow pants, floral jacket and a soft fedora with a feather in the band flailing little white packets yelling out “let me make your nightmares into dreams, ” let sister turn cousin in tricks in the night);Primitive Baptists( a primer, not the grand army of the post-flood who need to have their sins washed away in some rushing river or non-fetid swamp but the ones who insist that those adults, no children under twelve need apply thankfully resolved that issue without too deep a cut in the congregation, to be baptized in a muddy creek or swamp to signify they have been dirty little harlots who left alone for a minute covet every wife’s man or in a pinch every man’s wife, the whores, and con artists shaking some innocent girl out of her maidenhead by claiming ye are the Jesus and she the bride, bullshit with gravy,  so not the more well-known General Baptists who do their nasty rituals in fast-moving rivers without life-preservers daring the penitents to survive the torrents those few not drowned, the Remnant, are “saved” or the Particular Baptists who don’t care where it is done except everybody has to get naked as jaybirds for the cameras even the kids);Mountain Methodists (here I know from whence I speak unlike that flock Baptists, since my father, born and bred as I was, in Upstate New York, land “burned over” during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19^th century had been raised in that faith whose central tenet was that all would be saved come End-Times, come Judgement Day some might have to wait at the gate a little longer  that was all but would alms, welfare checks to day I guess, and who differed from the merciless Wesley boys and their factory pallor who would make the “saved” jump through hoops to get in the pearly gates and bums, tramps, winos, lay-abouts, junkies and usurers had best look elsewhere because the joint would be sealed with seven seals against them);Brethren of the Common Life (another place which I know from whence I speak, my mother was purebred Brethren, and I pretty much followed the religion as a girl, which was a breakaway operation from the more famous Monrovian Tabernacle the split issue there which I never really understood and then would care about less when I was old enough to have investigated had to do with doctrinal differences over how long and at what rest points did God create Earth the Brethren arguing five days on, two days off against the more traditional view); Clarence Dewar, a professional art critic for Art Today who I am calling out today by name for his boorish and deluded view that I have nothing important to say about art because I am not a professional art critic, which I have never claimed to be, that has stirred up the fire-eaters, dingbats, hopelessly deranged, a few irate art patrons, some museum volunteer guides, the Grey Ladies, here’s the dagger- back in the day to feed his horrible opium addiction he would take old copies of say Art Wave , maybe cut and paste, literally in those days before word processors saved our butts,                    

an article by Clement Greenberg and sent it along under his own name.); People who blather on about art being the search for the sublime (when we have the names Clarence Dewar and Clement Greenberg on the grille we might as well tackle this sawdust bit that has saved more bogus careers in the art world than you can shake a stick at when these dingbats go off on their tangents and proclaim, yes, that is just the right word, that the best artists rather than trying to sell a few items to keep the wolves from the door are really pushing the human experience forward a thimbleful thus saving themselves from having to work up a sweat over what the artists really had to say in their productions); Edgar Degas the pervert(there is no room even in hell for this degenerate who spent his life bothering, girls, children really, and young women around ballet schools and riding stables clutching his wretched cigars in his moth-eaten hands and taking a million hits of his bong pipe no among of reparations can repair that savagery but would help and while we all know that this stuff went on, goes on, witness the #MeToo movement the coppers knew wat he was doing, had the complaints in their archives gathering dust but sat on their hands when the art mavens and their bosses pulled down the hammer);Whistler’s “theory of art for art’s sake” (following ever so closely behind that sublime business that has saved more wretches clueless about art is the idea that nobody but the artist should give a fuck about their artistic production and not be floored by conventions and again every bum of the month has held on to this beauty for dear life when trying to get those last thousand words on some freshman term paper or glossy art journal entry although strangely Whistler himself, the old dog, used that idea to hustle his mistresses when the rent was due and when he couldn’t figure out what the hell he was doing with all those fireball, color ball, bombast ball paintings that did make sense otherwise including hanging his poor dear mother out to dry as some color study, not nice);Claude Monet’s Camille (Jesus why would anybody in their right minds pick on his poor first wife especially if one, I, am setting aside the whole idea of cultural appropriation associated with the painting La Japonaise but this allows me to get at the bastard through the back door since what I really want to get at is artistic whoring after having argued how fetching and sexy Madame posed and then found a photograph of her from an earlier time and she looked like like a lunger, had consumption or something);and, art gallery owners (I had intended to finish up with whorish press agents and flak-catchers but they are down in the cesspool of the food chain which runs the Cabal but I saw a better moving target and a grouping more central to the so-called trends which only means that they are always hustling to avoid being stuck with some goods that even flea marketeers would have a hard time getting the fuck rid of I know because some of it is in my living room).

Why all this, why all this venom. Why this surly mob of disparaged elements. One way or another these loss-leaders have been the bane of my existence of late as I have tried to blast some small hole in the entombed Art Cabal for the benefit of the art devotee public. Strangely the strands they represent could give one a very good look at the yahoos and b.s. artists who have attempted to defend the “academy” against the onslaught. You know already I feel better maybe I will take on the literary lightweights as an encore.        

The Stuff Dreams Were Made Of-With The Late Sam Spade In Mind By permission of Bart Webber

The Stuff Dreams Were Made Of-With The Late Sam Spade In Mind

By permission of Bart Webber

“Hey, sailor buy me a drink I am feeling a little blue today because I just read in the Times that my old boss Sam Spade what did he call it, oh yeah, cashed his check, has gone to the pearly gates or wherever ex-private dicks go to,” Effie Perrine was loudly calling to a guy in a three piece suit a few bar stools down who certainly was not a sailor. Not a sailor, or if so was totally lost in the Garden Bar of the Grand Hotel in New York City. The guy who seemed sober enough slid down beside her and offered her that drink. Scotch, neat so you knew, if you knew Effie as she had advanced in years, nice way to put it, was definitely feeling blue as the bartender brought her a drink and a whiskey sour for the three-piece suit. When Effie asked his name he gave it as War Bond and had started to give his line when she stopped him cold asking if he remembered the name. Barton answered that if that was Sam Spade of the Samuel Spade Investigation Agency which had after the war given the Pinkerton organization a run for its money then he had heard of the organization but had not known that the founder was still alive.

Effie used that acknowledgement as her entre into telling her new friend why she was feeling blue this day. “Back in the day, back before the World War, back in the late 1930s Sam Spade was the last of the tough guy private investigators, the last of the guys who could take a punch, give a couple back, take a slug and throw back some too, get some flame in the sack and have time for lunch all in a day’s work. Not like the no-name private dicks today excuse me with no balls and no way to get them watching too much television with their pansy detectives like that Nick Charles everybody is raving about. Punk, nothing but punk,” Effie effused as she eyed her empty glass and point to Barton. As the bartender went to fill the order Effie said the following, “Do you remember the black bird case that was in all the papers back then, the case that made Sam’s career?” Ward gave a look of bewilderment and said “No.” Effie retorted, “If you don’t interrupt a girl and let me tell the story then for kicks you can take me upstairs to my room and we can see what we shall see.” Ward perked up to that offer, said the unnecessary yes and gave Effie the floor.                   

“I met Sam back then out in San Francisco when I first hit town after blowing dust off my shoes from nowhere dust bowl Nebraska at the height of the Depression. Actually I met his partner Miles, Miles Archer, when they were partners before Miles was killed on a case. I had met him in the Farrell Hotel on Post Street when I was doing the best I could working the bar for drinks and for tumbles to keep my head from wasting away on some park bench. This Miles was nothing but a lady’s man, nothing but soft-touch jobs and I knew I could handle him. Had handled guys tougher than him when I was nothing but a teenager in Omaha. He had this wife whom he didn’t like, and she didn’t like him either. During the time Miles and I ran together Sam was boffing Miles’ wife, Iva, I think her name so there were no problems. Miles, like guys like Miles always do, got tired of me and was ready to leave me high and dry until I put the bug in his ear that if he didn’t watch out his every loving wife might be getting a little call from me. The way things worked out though was that Miles brought me into the office to be the office secretary and that is where I met Sam.               

“I was immediately attracted to Sam and after that barely talked to Miles except on office business. I, once I honed in on him, grabbed Sam for a while, lived with him even, but I knew that I was just a plaything for him and so when Harry came along I latched onto him. But being in the office, working with Sam when he was in his prime, when he was the real deal detective was how I was up to my skinny ankles in the black bird case.[Ward looked down with an approving look, a look complete with lips smacking.] 

“You know this was the heart of the Depression so after sleeping my way into a job and after the communal lusts wore off I proved to be a very competent office manager which is really what I was. Sam would depend on my judgement a lot, would ask me to evaluate a client if for no other reason than would the party pay up for services rendered. That’s how I got involved with this Wonderly, LeBlanc, O’Shea whatever her real name was, I’ll call her Bridget, which to this day I am not sure what it was since we never wound up billing her. Sam maybe got a few hundred dollars out of her in cash and that was all we ever got. She had come walking into the front office where I worked (and screened the clients) all boas, feathers, and the scent of jasmine looking for some detective help. Told me that a guy named Dashiell Hammett, who I had never heard of although Sam told me later he knew the name, had recommended Archer& Spade to help with her secret problem. I personally although I let her into Sam’s office thought when all the dust settled and Sam and I were laughing about the roller coaster ride we had just been on that she had just grabbed the first name in the telephone book and would have worked her way down until she got her claws into somebody who would do her bidding after a whiff of that jasmine.      

“The story that she gave Sam, the story that got poor Miles Archer an early grave, was she was looking for a sister who was running around with some hardnosed gangster and she needed some heft to face the guy and whatever his demands were down. Her hundred dollar bills (Sam told me Miles had seen her wallet and they had plenty of brothers) a couple Sam said for the record got the services of Archer& Spade. Miles licking his chops all the while volunteered to meet this bad guy, this Thursday, Thursby something like that I have trouble with names of late later that night at the Majestic Hotel.

“The next thing I know is l got a call in the middle of the night from Sam saying Miles had taken the big send-off, had cashed his check and could I break the news to this Iva whom Sam went back to fucking, excuse my English which would not have been sued then but now we can say whatever we want. I did but what a bitch to settle down. He also asked me to call Bridget and was pissed off at me when I told him she had flown the coop. The situation got worse when some coppers came to his door to shake him down not only about Miles and what he was working on but that this guy Thursby whom Miles was to meet had been blasted to kingdom come later in the evening. Sam kept saying that he could feel the noose tightening around his neck and I could see it in his eyes.       

“You never know about men though, especially tough guys like Sam, guys who are tough and good in bed which Sam was and not all tough guys are-some believe me are pansies no doubt. Bridget wound up calling him saying she was in fear of her life and could he please, pretty please stand by her. She probably spread her legs, spread then wide or gave him a quick blow job but an hour later he called me and told me that Bridget had laid five hundred bucks on him to stay on the case. He was in, all in come hell or high water.

“The next I heard from Sam he had just finished blowing smoke at the cops investigating the cases of Archer and Thursby when Bridget and this fag who had come to the office looking for Bridget, looking for what he said was the black bird she knew about had tangled. The cops bought whatever he was selling but it was a close call. That mention of the bird and what it was worth in human life and death was what the whole thing would turn out to be about. Who had it, who thought they had it, and who was willing to pay cold hard cash to get it.

“That is when the Fat Man, a guy named something Street got on his high horse with Sam and tried to get him to betray Bridget. Sam wasn’t buying that line just then but he definitely saw that whatever sexual promises laid ahead with Bridget he was going to have the cash nexus in mind as well. Was going to get out from under the cheapjack back office in some failed office building with losers and fakers and go uptown. Said he would take me there with him. I was in, all in too.      

“The deal on the black bird was that it was supposed to have been loaded with jewels as tribute by some monks or knights back in the dark ages to the Spanish king. The thing never got to him so the damn thing was whoever had control of the item who would profit from the possession. The Fat Man, a clever guy from the one time I saw him tried to cut corners on Sam since he knew, or thought he knew it was. Put the bang-bang on Sam. Did the Fat Man no good because this guy, this ship captain that Bridget had conned into working with her when she was working in some Hong Kong whorehouse from what Sam told me later wound up in our office with the bird. Wound up dead too from the Fat Man’s hired gun. But we had the bird although seeing that guy die right before my eyes was one of the worse things that I have ever seen in my life.         

“We had the advantage now since Sam had put the bird in storage somewhere and mailed the ticket to me for safekeeping. Sam was off to deal with the Fat Man, with Bridget or whoever had dough to win the bird. That was his story anyway.  He negotiated, negotiated up front for Bridget but I think really for himself, with the Fat Man at his apartment. He was to get ten thousand up-front for delivery of the bird to the big man. That is where I came in. I was to pick up the bird from storage since I had the ticket and bring it to the Fat Man’s apartment. I brought it and then left.      

“Sam told me later that all hell brought out when the Fat Man and his associates found out that the bird the Captain had delivered to us was a fake, worthless. He left with his confederates after flashing some guns. Leaving Sam and Bridget to face the coppers. That is where Sam went into his magic act, where he sent Bridget over. See she had killed Miles for her own reasons, probably had killed Thursby too. Sam was not taking the fall for her, no way. She was going to the big-step off, and while he would not forget her he had to take her down, let her take the fall for his profession, for Miles whether he liked him or not. Bad for business letting civilians run amok over the dead bodies of private investigators.

“Here’s the part that never got in the newspapers which was just what the cops gave the newspapers. Bridget and the Fat Man were not the only one’s smitten by the idea of the stuff of dreams. Sam saw this bird as his way out of cheap street. That fake bird was not the bird the Captain had delivered to the office. The one I had innocently delivered to the Fat Man’s apartment. Sam had squirreled it away in another storage box. Later after cashing in on the jewels he gave me more than enough to set me up here. And that is the real story of how the Sam Spade Investigation Agency got its start. The real story of the days when guys did private investigation for keeps. Sam Spade RIP. Now you can take me upstairs and see what is what.”             

Troubled Times-Alfred, Oops Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1934)-A Film Review

Troubled Times-Alfred, Oops Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1934)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sam Lowell

The Man Who Knew Too Much, starring Peter Lorre, directed by Sir Alfred Hitchcock, 1934

The last director Sir Alfred Hitchcock (I guess you can still use the honorific “sir” if a guy is dead and in any case he longingly coveted that title so I will stick with it) had two period in his long film directing career (three if you include his television work). The early British period which produced among other films the one under review, The Man Who Knew Too Much and the American period with such gems as the really chilling Psycho and The Birds. While nobody would claim that the British period films compared with the production values of the later period you can see the little tweaking that Hitchcock would do with his later films in this one.       

There was no escaping the reality of the 1930s after Hitler’s rise to power that any thriller would have to have as a part of the plot the threat of assassination to political figures as part of the mix. This film is a classic example of the genre in the 1930s (as in the 1950s and 1960s the Soviet Union would ask as foil for espionage fare. Here an ordinary English couple with their young daughter are in Switzerland for a clay pigeon shot (well, maybe I had better amend that “ordinary English couple” and make it a stiff upper lip English couple) when friend is mysteriously shot. Before he goes beyond the pale though he confides in the husband that he has to get some information to the British consulate. The husband dutifully gets the information and is ready to move heaven and earth to make sure the proper authorities get the crucial information.

Well the husband wanted to move heaven and earth except that a nefarious foreign agent, played by Peter Lorre, and his minions who are up to no good have kidnapped the couple’s daughter as a hostage. The couple go back to London to await their fate. The play is that Lorre and his crew are in that fair town to set up and commit an assassination on an important foreign dignitary from an unnamed country (although it could have been one of a number that were unstable after World War). The dastardly deed was to be done while that diplomat was attending a classical music concert. The wife whose quick action while she was in attendance at that same concert averted that fate for the hapless diplomat.              

Get this though the assassin left a trail for the husband and seemingly every bobby in London to follow to their hide-out. That proved to be curtains for Lorre and his crafty crew as the police performed a classic shoot-out with the bad guys. Lorre took it in the end. As for the daughter showing her metal despite her age skillfully escaped the clutches of the assassin who was fatally shot by her mother who was the crack clay pigeon shooter. How about that. If you want to see an early product of a thriller master check this one out because of that lot this is probably the best.  

Once Again, Mission Possible-Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation -A Film Review (2015)

Once Again, Mission Possible-Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation -A Film Review  (2015)

DVD Review

By Movie Critic Sam Lowell

Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation, starring Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Alex Baldwin, 2015

Recently in reviewing an earlier film in the this Mission: Impossible, version of the popular 1960s television series The Fugitive from 1989 (are you following me) there were several films that had been made from old time television series and that some were able to cross, to “pass” and others were not. (The action has gone the other way as well with a film like say American Graffiti spawning a number of television series and they in turn spawning others). The film (now part of a seemingly never-ending film series) under review, Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation, is a similar example of the flipping process although the technological gizmos used in that long ago television series which seemed so exotic and improbable are today’s standard fare for, uh, eight-year olds delights. Although the missions were perhaps more interesting (and more politically attuned to then current Cold War realities) than now with a greater emphasis on the team as an ensemble rather that one “hot-dog” Ethan Hunt using the team as fodder for his exploits

That said every once in a while I like to grab as I did with that prior film an action-packed adventure thriller and no question this one is a vehicle for the action every minute title. I have not seen the other films in this series and so this review makes no pretense to have an overview of the series or the place of this film in the eyes of other critics but this one had a reasonably interesting story-line along with that mile a minute action.

   

The play here centers around trying finally to put a nefarious organization, the Syndicate, made up of, well, rogue elements from every known intelligence operation in the world and which is running amok out of action The operation is led by a “turned” British intelligence officer. Everybody is trying to bring that bad guy down including the British sending in an agent, a foxy agent to boot who knows what is what, Ilsa, played by Rebecca Ferguson, to infiltrate the operation. Along the way she has to do a lot of tough things to prove her “loyalty” to the Syndicate.

Problem is that IMF, or rather Ethan Hunt (I don’t have to give Tom Cruise as the actor playing the role at this point do I?), and his team are working the same street and at times working at cross purposes with the bloody British, with Ilsa too. Compounding all of this is the hard fact that Ethan and crew are rogues too since the IMF cowboys have been taken down a notch and defunded. Taken down by guess who-the C.I.A. in a little interagency squabble by its director, played by Alec Baldwin before he became Donald Trump. Not to worry though if anybody but that eight year old mentioned earlier was worried the crew will stand up and get the bad guys-get them bad, real bad like always. Don’t worry about the thinness of the story line in places and the various ruses and false leads and enjoy the bang, bang action for a couple of hours if you need an action thriller fix every once in a while just like me.  They say another film in the series is coming so if you like this constant action watch out for it. I think I will retire after these two.   

Yeah, no question that Davian went over the line grabbing Julie, went a little crazy even for somebody in his line of work and would pay with his life for putting Julie through the meat-grinder. And he does but guess what that Musgrave who gave Ethan the assignment had been “turned” and also had to be taken out. Guess by who? Yeah, Julie. This Ethan-Julie marriage latch-up was made in heaven.                     

Malignant Obsession-Bette Davis and Leslie Howard’s Film Adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage” (1934)-A Film Review

Malignant Obsession-Bette Davis and Leslie Howard’s Film Adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage” (1934)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sam Lowell

Of Human Bondage, starring Bette Davis, Leslie Howard, based on W. Somerset Maugham’s novel of the same name, 1934

No question love can take some funny turns from eternal bliss to the malignant obsession of medical student Phillip Carey, played by Leslie Howard, for waitperson (then known as waitresses) Mildred Rogers, played in an incredible performance by Bette Davis in the film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. The human, the very human capacity to find love in some very wrong places gets a full-throated workout in this 1934 film. Moreover even though the smitten and tortured character here is a man the feelings know no gender boundaries.     

The first problem for our troubled medical student is the class issue in very class-bound England then, and now. The play between the up and coming doctor and the tart-like waitperson could only spell trouble even if Mildred had been half as perfidious as she was-always looking for the main chance-for the next Mister Big. The second problem was that the very smitten Phillip was physically- challenged (then called crippled which Mildred at one point made a point of being disgusting to here). The combination would have been daunting even if Mildred had been less of an opportunist. See while she was leading Phillip on she was also seeing her meal ticket-her Mister Big. Phillip played the sap for her on that one thinking he would marry her when all she was doing was making moves to marry Mister Big. Well Mildred should have checked his credentials or at least his marriage because Mister Big dumped her-turned out he was already married. All he did was leave her to the wind with child. Still Phillip took her back.                  

Okay once is okay but then the next best thing came along, a fellow medical student of Phillip’s and she was off again. Still once it was question of helping or her on the streets with an unwanted child he succumbed again. But he was getting wiser. At least he wasn’t as smitten as in those fresh bloom days. All she kept doing though was holding him in contempt while feeding off his feelings for her. At some point, a point where a young gentile women is interested in him, he begins to withdraw, begins to break from his feverish desire for Mildred as she begins her descent down into well, the gutter, the ”life,”  the hard streets. In the end T.B got her (then called consumption and if I recall earlier called the vapors), left her on deep cheap street and an unloved grave. Phillip, well Phillip finally got himself free, got free once Mildred passed the shades. Took life in his own hands and grabbed that gentile woman who was made for him. Still Mildred let him a not so merry chase. An excellent performance by Miss Davis especially one scene when she went berserk and cut up all of Phillip’s precious nude paintings (he had started out as a failed art student) and another when after she had been finally rebuffed by Phillip she spewed forth her utter contempt from day one. Watch this one-and read the book too.            

the third one, I noted that in reviewing Harrison Ford’s cinematic