Out In The B-Film Noir Night Where The Slippery Slide Sideways- Richard Basehart And Barry Sullivan’s “Tension” (1949)- A Film Review

Out In The B-Film Noir Night Where The Slippery Slide Sideways- Richard Basehart And Barry Sullivan’s “Tension” (1949)- A Film Review

DVD Review throat

By Sarah Lemoyne

Tension,   

I am feeling sky high today, feeling like I belong to the fraternity today, to the film critic circle (although my mentor the legendary journalist and reviewer Seth Garth has always made me painfully aware that in this cutthroat business you are only as good as your last review while your competitors sharpen their knives getting ready to take that big back stab if you stumble). As a cautionary tale Seth eternally mentions his old friend Sam Lowell, who I have locked horns with under his guidance, as the avatar of what he is talking about. Sam, when the deal went down, cast the deciding vote against retaining his old friend, their old friend, Allan Jackson as site manager on the simple idea that the place needed new blood. And this a guy whom Allan loves, and Sam loves him so Sam says. Point taken.

The reason I believe I belong, can give as good as I get is that in my last review, Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell’s noir-ish His Kind Of Woman, I was able to take a leaf from the film critic’s playbook for use when you have no “hook” to lure the reader in and came up smelling like roses. I went on my own to the old tried and true “boy meets girl” ploy which has saved a million movies and not a few reviewers. Seth was happy to read the review and texted congratulations since he was out of town trying to coax Allan Jackson to come back and do another set of Encore Introductions for a series he edited several years ago and so I was on my own. Even curmudgeon Sam Lowell let up for a minute, put away his saber and acknowledged that for a young gal, his term of endearment, what I did was pretty smart and savvy. Most of all Greg Green the site manager liked what I did and granted my request to do more film noir reviews and here I am reviewing another minor B-noir classic Tension. (I did not expect after only two reviews to get a crack at the major classics like Out Of The Past or L.A. Confidential but I am on my way up the challenging and ruthless food chain-watch your backs.)

During my on-going battles with Sam Lowell, helped as I have gladly expressed on more than one occasion by Seth, I have come to realize that my true calling is to be the 21^st century film noir diva (and other stuff too but that is enough for right now). Part of that realization was that Sam’s definitive The Life and Times of Film Noir:1940-1960 which the older writers bow down to does not stand up under 21^st century conditions. (Seth made me laugh one time when I asked him if he had actually read all 900 plus pages of the Lowell tome and he said with a smirk, his trademark smirk, was I kidding the thing as impossible to finish, a real snorer. Then he let the cat out of the bag and told me he had probably written half of it and he had mulled over the other half with Sam so he felt no compulsion to ever read the thing-to even consul it like half the other film critics did who wanted to crib some stuff with no heavy lifting). There are major flaws in the analysis, again for a modern audience too familiar with real life drama. Moreover, Sam never revised or updated after 1960 so there was, is plenty of room for me to make my nuggets with what is missing for the last half century.          

But now to B-noir-dom circa Sam’s volume time. In a funny way this is a police procedural which I think is the weakest link to the noir genre. The weakest part of Sam’s work as well since I will admit that he knows his noir private detectives but I don’t think he really had any sympathy for coppers, and neither did Seth, and so they both underplay any smart public coppers skills. The overriding premise of noir including obviously police procedurals is that crime does not pay and that the villains will get their just desserts, will face the eternal slammer or the big step-off, Seth and Sam’s term for state-sanctioned executions, even if the good guys don’t always fare that well. Naturally coppers, public coppers, would have you believe that they have solved every big case, every murder, one case with stealth, determination and perseverance. Baloney (courtesy of Seth). Most cases go to the deep cold case storage bin and only resurface as exploitative television series (and then are rarely solved there as well except when the perp in moral quandary and remorse shows up at the police station bleeding from all pores with guilt ready to face her or his maker-bullshit, me).  

This lead cop, Collier, who the hell came pronounce his last name and everybody called him Collier so that is what I will use, since he made lieutenant thought he had everything under control, could sweat the truth out of any situation by some ring around rosy strategy of putting the big squeeze, putting elastic-like tension on the whole operation until somebody cracks. Told us all how he had it wrapped up and delivered no sweat in the cameo intro all braggadocio and assorted bullshit. To prime us, to justify the camera look he took us through the notorious Quimby case, the subject of this noir (notorious since the wrong person went to the gas chamber, a woman, Claire, Quimby’s unfaithful wife, took the big step-off when Collier tricked her weak head playing on her weak knees for men into confessing after some lame ruse which we will get to below). Trouble was that Collier was long gone, had taken to the ashes, better had gone to sleep with the fishes from what I heard when some Claire hometown high school sweetie with more guts than good sense gutted him and dumped him in the briny Pacific near La Jolla to be washed clean by the Japan currents, before the information came out via Quimby’s girlfriend Mary, played by Cyd Charisse who was no mean dancer but did not go through her steps here, about who and who did not do what. The “did not” was that Claire had not killed her lover but was set up by Collier to play the patsy since she seemed the logical choice justified by his well-advertised introduction.   

No question Claire was no lady, was a tramp, was what even young women of my generation call any man’s woman, a woman of easy virtue by Seth’s, always looking for the main chance, always looking for the best next thing as long as it was male and had money, lots of it. But that craven desire is no reason tramps, the hell with it lets call a thing by its real name whores, have to take the fall for some background dangler. The set-up was a beauty I have to admit. Everything worked out according to plan once Quimby, played by nerdish Richard Basehart, figured out how to commit the perfect murder. How to do murder, one and walk away. According to my sources this blonde as sin Claire, played by notorious femme, maybe better wannabe femme, Audrey Totter in the film, was working the docks in San Diego looking for some red hot sailors with plenty of dough from their exertions and no women for a while (we will not even get into the “girlfriend” stuff at sea as the sailors paired up in those seaborne bunks something Sam would not even dare mention when he was a reviewing All Aboard and totally missed the obvious guy who killed the “fairy,” the word used in the film, his shipside lover being of that prissy pre-Stonewall generation that took forever to speak about the “love that dare not speak its name,” speak of sodomy and the like).

Bingo along comes Walter Mitty, oops, sailor boy Quimby, with dough and big plans. She reeled him in, reeled him in good and made the cardinal mistake every tram makes-see what he has besides the bulging wallet (and bulging pants I thought I would put in to show I can be as salacious as the guys when I want to be even though I have my girlfriend Clara keeping me warm in other ways). Didn’t know that he had no jack, had big plans but no dough as they migrated north, married if you can believe that, to L.A. and Collier’s bailiwick. That was like lemmings to the sea for Claire once she got wise as she tried to make every man in town while humble pie Quimby was working like seven dervishes as manager of an all-night drugstore to make his scratch. To give her my grandparents’ post-World War II dream of a nice suburban home on a little space lot with maybe a garden, quiet and maybe kids and dogs galore, galore the kids part.                

Claire balked, balked and once she knew Quimby’s score grabbed every man in town until she hustled Barney with a Malibu address, nice suits and a big ass Buick which my grandfather said in his Nash Rambler world was the ticket to paradise. Took a hike on Walter, no, Warren sorry got mixed up on my too clever Walter Mitty description and never looked back, blew the stinking apartment hovel they lived in with a suitcase in hand and whatever sex toys would keep things interesting. (This is another thing guys like Sam, even Seth for that matter, balked on talking about when they were denigrating tramps, whores, refused to talk about the tools of the trade.) Naturally Warren took it hard, had many sleepless nights wondering how to get his dame back. Made the big, very big ninety-eight pound weakling mistake of cruising to that Malibu hideaway and confronting Claire and Barney out in their turf. All he got for his efforts was sand in his mouth from a Barney punch and a good laugh from kiss-off Claire.

I admit this is where I got a lot more respect for Warren when he responded to that series of insults with an idea-with a perfect plan to murder Barney for making him look like some cheapjack punk in front of his two-timing, at least two, wife. Decided to go the fake identity route that had worked plenty of times before when he researched the matter. Changed his appearance, name, occupation, address to Paul something, does a last name really matter since it was all smoke and mirrors anyway, and was off. What he intended to do was by stealth some dark moonless high tide night when Claire was at the movies or shacking up with her next best thing once Barney wouldn’t give her every fucking thing she wanted was to head to Malibu and do the dirty deed.

Warren went out there but just then things were kind of murky, said he had passed out and wasn’t sure what happened. He was relating this to his new girlfriend, that Mary mentioned before, whom he took up with as part of his cover. Had met her at the apartment complex where he was known as Paul, Paul something. Like I said this Mary was a looker, was nice. What Paul didn’t know, didn’t find out about until later was that behind that angelic smile Mary was running a high-end pornography “club” for rich clients with kinky tastes and the money to indulge them out of the apartment complex. With the landlady’s, Ma Geiger’s, blessing. Mary had taken over for Ma, whose husband Arthur had started the business in Bay City but had been wasted by his boyfriend on the orders of Eddie Mars the gangster who ran the operations, when she got too old to act as a front for the eye-candy hungry clientele.

Enter the police, enter bozo Collier, or first enter Claire who came back home to Warren and his dull night manager of the something out of Edward Hopper Nighthawk lame drugstore since her Barney had been killed, murdered. Now enter the cops who have already put a target on Claire’s back and give her the third degree. Claire “lived” out there nobody else had been seen around, Claire had a gun permit and so they wrapped that baby up no problem. Until Mary looking for her man, looking for missing Paul, yeah, Paul somebody went to the coppers and they really do put two and two together once they get a photograph of him from Mary (not naked, okay remember this was 1940s Hollywood in uptight 1940s Cold War America) and realize, wow, the two guys are one. Immediately Warren was targeted as the fall guy, the patsy.

Collier had put a big bull’s eye on Warren’s photograph although he never gave up hope that he could snag Claire for the crime since she would not give him a tumble even when he had threatened to have her locked up for prostitution. Old Barney had been killed by a gun and he had no gun, had asked Warren if he owned a gun and he said no. Satisfied with that answer he went back to Claire, Claire and her missing gun. Played her like a violin telling her that without a gun he would not be able to nail Warren. That got her thinking, thinking wrongly but thinking that she could get out from under the murder wrap by framing Warren with a big frame. See Claire had had an argument with Barney that night Warren had showed up earlier and had been in a fog, really overwrought nerves from the idea of killing a man. He had threatened her over her weak knees for men-other men and she had shot him, had thought she had shot him, shot him dead, very dead as Seth would say. Collier figured that she was guilty of something and if he ever expected to make captain he had better have a collar on this case. Claire was built for the frame and it fit, fit snugly when he pulled the tense elastic on her feeble brain.

Yeah, Claire took the big step-off for no other reason that her whole freaking rotten but murder-free life led her down that back alley. Collier did make captain although little good it did him when that hometown Claire sweetheart found out the real story. Warren never got over Claire’s execution despite all of Mary’s charms-and the dough rolling in from the “dirty pictures” clubs once Eddie Mars gave her the franchises for Southern California. Warren wound up a homeless junkie over in the Bunker Hill district of L.A. and died a few years after that. Mary on her own deathbed told her confessor, her priest what had happened. The night Warren, Claire and she were in Barney’s Malibu digs she noticed that Warren was too chicken, was too much the ninety-eight pound weakling to crush Barney and he had fled the scene in panic and lightheadedness. Claire had that altercation with Barney and went bang-bang. Claire had fled as well, panicked, dropping the gun. All Mary did was provide the extra bang before Claire regained her wits and went back for the vagrant gun. So sweet and nice Mary walked. When the dust settled the only one still standing beside Mary was public copper I think his name was Conrad something who just chuckled a knowing cop chuckle.                            

When ABBA Exploded The Known Musical Universe And Put It On A Small Greek Island- Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried s Mama Mia!-The Movie (2008)-A Film Review

When ABBA Exploded The Known Musical Universe And Put It On A Small Greek Island- Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried s Mama Mia!-The Movie (2008)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Intern Josie Davis

Mama Mia! The Movie (I was told to use this title to both avoid confusion with the latter 2018 film which I will also review in its turn with the same theme and most of the same cast and to replicate the way the film was publicized at the time), starring the divine Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan at one time the dashing James Bond in the a few films in that series, Colin Firth who somebody said used to be the King of England,  Stellan Starsgard who used to be a guy named Terry with a junkie wife who owned a glass house in Malibu but got too greedy and got wasted for his troubles, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski two members of the famous doo wop, no disco, trio Donna and the Dynamos who tore up the stage when I saw them in New York City one night with my girlfriends from high school, music by ABBA, 2008         

*******

I am thrilled to be writing my first film review for this publication, for Greg Green. (Greg said the way things are in the publication business today that I had better mention that I was Elsa Greg’s daughter’s roommate in journalism graduate school at NYU-something about transparency otherwise the whole thing will stink of nepotism, so I have written what he has asked me to do). I am working here as a paid intern to learn the journalism trade and right off the bat Greg assigned me the Mama Mia 2 film which I had just seen and loved. Not only that but since Elsa already told me that her father was very thorough I get to do a review of the first one as well to get a fresh look from new eyes about the relative merits of the two. Zack James one of the friendly older writers here who wrote the review of the original helped me with his perspective although he said musicals were not his and he thought there were too many musical and dance interludes something I thought was great since the storyline was pretty simple. The conditions that an intern work under is that, since we are not covered by Guild regulations, we are paid by the word so I am doubly thrilled to have two reviews to do since my rent will be coming up shortly and I can use the money since my parents have told me after graduate school I have to fend for myself. “Learn to fly” as my father put the matter in his usual gruff way.         

Maybe the reader did not need to know that last part, the rent money and parent abandonment part but a funny, wise, kind of looking like a modern version of  Merlin the Magician older writer, Sam Lowell, told me that writers getting paid by the word went out with the Pony Express and it is a shame that they are calling what he called stringers “interns” to get slave labor to do the work otherwise assigned to active Guild members. Here is where he is wise-Sam, he told me to call him Sam, said to play the game for all it is worth, to write like he did when he was starting out say, 10, 000 words when everybody knew that the space available for the piece was maybe 3000 words. They had to pay for the former number no matter how much they edited the piece down once it had been assigned. So I will write like crazy including Sam told what I have already written since Greg likes, allows his writers, I like how that word sounds regarding me, to let the readership know some of the “inside” stuff about the publishing business, the hard-hat water cooler stuff so I will oblige.      

Sarah Lemoyne, who went to NYU journalism school a few years before me, told me to avoid Sam Lowell like the plague. Told me that before long he would have me writing his reviews for him under his by-line and would keep me a stringer, intern I told her, forever like almost happened to legendary break-through by-line writers Leslie Dumont before she got her big break with Women Today once she saw the writing on the wall here. Sarah said I would probably, if Sam was in a rush, grab some studio press release and have her doll it up. Funny, Sam seems like a kindly old man, a wizard and while Sarah seems to be the star amount the younger up and coming writers and is being championed by the legendary Seth Garth whom I first heard about at NYU I haven’t been here, haven’t been as Sam says around the water cooler long enough to get an idea of who the players are and what they have in mind. All I know is that I want to be a film reviewer, maybe books and music later, and that Sam has been nice to me and gave me this additional information -this is a cutthroat business so keep your own counsel. Listen to what everybody who has something to say have their say and then discard most of it and just write that pure, fine white line you studied about in school. And forget the fossil “pyramid” nonsense which went out with the pharaohs although they still teach that stuff as the new dispensation in the journalism schools.

I have heard from more than one source that Sarah is “sweet” on Seth, he told me to call him Seth although I feel funny calling these older guys by their first names since in grad school when some journalist came through it was Ms. This or Mrs. That, even though she has a partner, a woman, whom she is having an affair with. Thus I don’t know how to take what she has said about Sam, about him maybe taking dead aim at me which is ridiculous since he has his long- time companion Laura Perkins who also writes here (and who when I met her watched him like a hawk). I see what this cutthroat stuff is all about regarding people cutting people but I am just going to write my brains out so Greg can say he made the right decision taking Elsa’s recommendation.

Here is the “skinny” a cute word that Sam said he coined way back when he was also young and hungry to let people know a little bit about the plot and whether they should bother to see the film if is a “dog.”  I already telegraphed that I liked the sequel, so I was prepared despite Zack to like this one and I did although now I wished I had seen them in the correct order because I was not aware that Sam, played by Pierce Brosnan, had actually made Donna an honest woman. I will explain that in a minute but I just wanted to give the reader an idea why I thought it was important to have seen the films in order to understand why Sam was so distraught in most of the second film.

Sam Lowell, actually Sarah Lemoyne said the same thing but I will give Sam the credit since he has been so helpful, said that musicals don’t let plot get in the way of the Tin Pan Alley songs and the dancing when dancing is part of the project as here in a couple of spectacular episodes. And Sam in right on the face of it. The boy and girl have already met so that is no real factor-the real part is that young Sophie, played by Amanda Seyfried is desperate to get married and get the hell off the island prison of a hotel that her single-parent Mom, Donna, played by very versatile Meryl Strep, have dwelt in since she was born. She loves her beau but doesn’t want to wind up like her mother who drifted to the island after a whirlwind spree with three lovers when she was younger. That three lovers will anchor the “controversy” central to the film-which one in pre-DNA times is the father she never knew taking a cue from Jack Kerouac among others in the unknown fathers pantheon (this courtesy of Sam who is something of an expert on the “beats” from the 1950s who I have heard of in passing but really don’t know anything about).       

Motivated by the desire to know who her father is, and to gain some peace of mind, she invites the three likeliest candidates, Sam, Harry and Bill to the island to see what is what and also to have her “father” give her away in the time-honored tradition. Fine, except dear mother, dear Donna who as I mentioned in the cast line-up I saw with her group Donna and the Dynamos in New York City when I was in high school, who has raised her alone is pissed off that the three guys are around. That will produce angst, alienation and a few heart-felt songs and dances between the two before the wedding bells ring but will be resolves nicely by having Mom give daughter away-which seems right. Hold the cameras though just as Sophie and her man, her Sky are about to tie the knot and unleash who knows what song and dance cascade at the reception Sophie calls the whole thing off after deciding that like any thoroughly modern Millie they should live together and see the world. In any case that new decision brings forth a cascade of song and dance so all is well that ends well. Except Sophie never does find out who her father is and the three guys are just as happy to cut her in thirds-metaphorically. And guess what as I have already mentioned Sam and Donna get married in Sophie and Sky’s place. A feel-good movie which will beget, Sam’s word, another feel-good movie in ten years’ time. Wait and see.               

The Continuing Saga Of Who Is The Real Bond, James Bond- A Ringer’s Story-Roger Moore’s “For Your Eyes Only” (1981)-A Film Review

The Continuing Saga Of Who Is The Real Bond, James Bond- A Ringer’s Story-Roger Moore’s “For Your Eyes Only” (1981)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

For Your Eyes Only, starring Roger Moore, 1981

Apparently the story within the story of who the real Bond, James Bond is will go on as least as long as the freaking producers are willing to put up cold hard cash to see who still gives a damn about the question. I thought I had been done, had finished with this question once Will Bradley conceded that Sean Connery was head and shoulders the best of the lot (conceded by silence, by giving up the ghost of trying to keep going with his ill-conceived premise, an almost laughable one that one pretty boy Pierce Brosnan was the One). Nobody else was even considered worthy enough to have a champion and make the argument multi-faceted. (By the way that Connery-Brosnan controversy, what my old friend Sam Lowell, the legendary film critic who still wanders the cinematic world with a large shadow behind him, has called on more than one occasion a tempest in teapot had no serious other contenders at the time-now either) Two events though have cast a long shadow over the question. The news of recent origin that one Idris Elba British to the core but as black as night was being considered for the role of Bond in some future episode which will put a whole new spin of the question and a possible recasting of the standings of the “others” who fill out the ranks of who have played Bond when I did an off-hand review of  George Lazenby’s solo 1969 performance in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service which put him at the bottom of the list. That got me, if not battered and bruised Will Bradley, rethinking the placement order which meant having to watch, re-watch a Roger Moore Bond film, For Your Eyes Only, among others to see who would take the coveted third spot now that George Lazenby is comfortably seated in last place. This is necessarily provincial since if the Elba rumor turns out to be true we could have the whole apple cart upset.

Since I have no competition as of yet over who will fill out the “third through” ranks I will argue that Roger Moore, a little woodenly, a little less spritely than either Connery or Brosnan, and a little less technologically competent that Brosnan and less suave and off-handed than Connery nevertheless should fill the third slot. Not because the story line is qualitatively better than any of the others-they divide simply between the more interesting since more realistic Cold War Soviet as main enemy films as here and the post-Soviet demise amorphous international criminal cartels films and not much more since all are threats to Her Majesty’s reign and governments and so much fodder for ace Empire hitman Bond the only person standing between the continued regime and chaos.   

This film follows the tried and true Soviets as villain formula. Somebody, some third party, has blown away an important spy ship containing an important defense gizmo which will save the Empire and all civilization as we know it will be sunk if the damn Soviet’s get their greedy hands on the item. Problem: said system is located somewhere in the briny deep and everybody is scrambling to get to the locale first and win the prize. Enter Roger Moore as James Bond who of course has to go through hoops before getting to the locale. Along the way there are the standard ruses and deceptions, a few moves under the silky sheets and some hand to hand battles with whatever passes for the latest technology-planes, submarines, skis, yes skis as old James skis like he was an Olympian among his many other manly skills. As a sign of the times, 1981, Bond rather than get the system back to MI6, cornered and backed into a corner with the system by Russian agents throws it off a cliff so nobody gets it-détente at work. All very civilized at the end and Roger Moore seems to me to epitomize that calm, determined Bond needed by the times when the Soviet Union was in trouble and who knows what would happen. More later when we get a chance to view more Moore footage but for now he is king of the number three spot.                       

Working The Street Corners-With The Blues Singer Blind Willie McTell In Mind

Working The Street Corners-With The Blues Singer Blind Willie McTell In Mind

By Zack James

Seth Garth, the fairly well-known music critic for the American Folk Gazette, had always been intrigued by what he called the “blinds,” not the old railroad jungle hobo, tramp, bum use of the term “riding the blinds” but his own personal shorthand way to describe the large number of old blue men, mainly country blues guys who made a living on the streets mostly on the towns down South who were blind. Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Earl Avery, Blind Amos Morris, you get the point, get the picture. Get the picture too of guys hanging on the street corners, hat in hand or maybe in front of them on the sidewalk a guitar at the ready. Guys, and gals still do that today on urban streets and in subways although Seth never remembered any of them being blind, at least not really blind although he had run up against a couple of con artists working a grift faking that blind deal. 

He often wondered, and wonder is all he could do since all those august names had passed beyond well before he came of age, before he became old enough to appreciate the blues tradition that he got hopped on as a kid after accidently hearing Blue Blaine’s Blues Hour out of Chicago one fugitive Sunday night when the airwaves were in just the right seventh house position in his growing up town of Riverdale just west of Boston. Or something like that since even though a science wiz in high school, a guy who went on to be a weather man (not Weatherman like in the 1960s SDS split-off leftist action of whom he had known a few of them as well after a series of articles he did on the theme of music and politic using Bob Dylan’s phrase “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”) tried to patiently explain that it was not some voodoo magic but had to do with airwaves and wind currents. Whatever had caused that intersession that hooked him for good even though he did not hear anything by any of the previously mentioned blues artists that night. That would come much later after he became an aficionado and became, maybe as a result of those fugitive airwaves, a folk music critic back in the day for several then thriving and authoritative alternative folk and blues publications.

According to ‘Bama Brown, the great harmonica player for Johnny Boy William’s blues band who was the last living link to those “blinds” the reason that they were able to survive on the streets is because even in the Jim Crow South a blind black man posed no direct threat to Mister. That they could walk the streets with their hats or little tin cups, maybe with some black sister to aid them (true in the cases of Blind Willie and Blind Blake), maybe sing harmony in an off-hand minute, maybe play a little tambourine to draw a crowd, to give the word since preaching on the white streets, the streets where the money was on say a drunken sot Saturday, by a black man was frowned upon. Whites had their own set of holy-rollers to patronize and did not need any blacks to draw away from their purses. That would get a black guy, blind or not a swift kick back to Negro-town, to the cheap streets.    

That was ‘Bama’s story anyway and it sounded plausible, and probably was as close to a reason that the blinds survived as any but later after some research, after listening to some precious oral histories provided to the Library of Congress by the Lomaxes, father and son, Seth started to question whether ‘Bama had the deal down pat as it seemed at the time (and as he had written about in an article about ‘Bama as the last living link to a  lot of the old country blues singers, especially the Delta boys from where he had hailed before heading north to Chicago and fame with Johnny Boy). 

Seth had been particularly struck by one oral interview given by Honey Boy Jamison, a great slide guitarist in the mold of Mississippi Fred McDowell, who before he passed away in the late 1940s told Alan Lomax, the son, that the real reason that the “blinds’” were left alone was that in their heyday, the late 1920s and early 1930s before the Great Depression hit hard and nobody had spare change for records or for giving alms to anybody, even blind men was that the record companies from New York and Chicago mainly would sent scouts out to the small towns of the South looking for talent. Looking for a sound for their ‘‘race” labels and in the process those agents would get word out that there was dough to be had if anybody, anybody okay, could find some talent. Obviously the roughnecks and hillbillies were as anxious to get dough as anybody else and the only way they could grab some was listening to the black guys on the streets, on Mister’s streets. And the only guys allowed on Mister’s precious streets were the “blinds.”               

Seth found that piece of news interesting but he was more than a little pissed off that old ‘Bama whom Seth had good cash to for his interview had “forgotten” to tell him about that possible explanation. Especially since ‘Bama at that very time was with Johnny Boy when RCA came looking for a new black sound and had been scouted by Mac Duran, a well-known white record agent in Memphis at the time. Damn.  

SACCO AND VANZETTI- THE CASE THAT WILL NOT DIE NOR SHOULD IT

SACCO AND VANZETTI- THE CASE THAT WILL NOT DIE NOR SHOULD IT

DVD REVIEW

SACCO AND VANZETTI, PETER MILLER, 2006

This is a re-post of an earlier blog entry.

I have used some of the points mentioned here in previous reviews of books about the Sacco and Vanzetti case.

Those familiar with the radical movement know that at least once in every generation a political criminal case comes up that defines that era. One thinks of the Haymarket Martyrs in the 19th century, the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930's, the Rosenbergs in the post-World War II Cold War period and today Mumia Abu-Jamal. In America after World War I when the Attorney General Palmer-driven ‘red scare’ brought the federal government’s vendetta against foreigners, immigrants and militant labor fighters to a white heat that generation's case was probably the most famous of them all, Sacco and Vanzetti. The exposure of the raw tensions within American society that came to the surface as a result of that case is the subject of the film under review.

Using documentary footage, reenactment and ‘talking head’ commentary by interested historians, including the well-known author of popular America histories Howard Zinn, the director Peter Miller and his associates bring this case alive for a new generation to examine. In the year 2007 one of the important lessons for leftists to be taken from the case is the question of the most effective way to defend such working class cases. I will address that question further below but here I wish to point out that the one major shortcoming of this film is a lack of discussion on that issue. I might add that this is no mere academic issue as the current case of the death-row prisoner, militant journalist Mumia-Abu-Jamal, graphically illustrates. Notwithstanding that objection this documentary is a very satisfactory visual presentation of the case for those not familiar with it.

A case like that of Sacco and Vanzetti, accused, convicted and then executed in 1927 for a robbery and double murder committed in a holdup of a payroll delivery to a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1920, does not easily conform to any specific notion that the average citizen today has of either the state or federal legal system. Nevertheless, one does not need to buy into the director’s overall thesis that the two foreign-born Italian anarchists in 1920 were railroaded to know that the case against them 'stunk' to high heaven. And that is the rub. Even a cursory look at the evidence presented (taking the state of jurisprudence at that time into consideration) and the facts surrounding the case would force the most mildly liberal political type to know the “frame” was on.

Everyone agrees, or should agree, that in such political criminal cases as Sacco and Vanzetti every legal avenue including appeals, petitions and seeking grants of clemency should be used in order to secure the goal, the freedom of those imprisoned. This film does an adequate job of detailing the various appeals and other legal wrangling that only intensified as the execution neared. Nevertheless it does not adequately address a question that is implicit in its description of the fight to save the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti. How does one organize and who does one appeal to in a radical working class political defense case?

The film spends some time on the liberal local Boston defense organizations and the 'grandees' and other celebrities who became involved in the case, and who were committed almost exclusively to a legal defense strategy. It does not, however, pay much attention to the other more radical elements of the campaign that fought for the pair’s freedom. It gives short shrift to the work of the Communists and their International Red Aid (the American affiliate was named the International Labor Defense and headed by Communist leader James P. Cannon, a man well-known in anarchist circles and a friend of Carlos Tresca, a central figure in the defense case) that organized meetings, conferences and yes, political labor strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti, especially in Europe. The tension between those two conceptions of political defense work still confronts us to day as we fight the seemingly never-ending legal battles thrown up since 9/11 for today’s Sacco and Vanzetti’s- immigrants, foreigners and radicals (some things do not change with time). If you want plenty of information on the Sacco and Vanzetti case and an interesting thesis about its place in radical history, the legal history of Massachusetts and the social history of the United States this is not a bad place to stop. Hopefully it will draw the viewer to read one or more of the many books on the case. Honor the Memory of Sacco and Vanzetti.