The Harder They Fall, Indeed-Humphrey Bogart’s “The Harder They Fall” (1956)-A Film Review

The Harder They Fall, Indeed-Humphrey Bogart’s “The Harder They Fall” (1956)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By “Sports Columnist” Fritz Taylor 

The Harder They Fall, starring Humphrey Bogart, Rod Stieger, based on a story of the same name by Budd Schulberg, Columbia Pictures, 1956    

[The film under review Humphrey Bogart’s The Harder They Fall is one DVD in a five DVD package of his lesser films from his Columbia Pictures days mostly in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Not all of the films do credit to Bogie’s major talent and drawing power despite what one female character in Sirocco, another film in this Columbia collection, and I quote, being the ugliest man in town and the most handsome. That estimation seems about right. 

I drafted Frank Jackman, the political reporter in this space (and at the on-line Progressive America site) to do the review of Bogie’s Sirocco since it marginally had to do with the results of World War I and the division of the spoils by the victors a subject Frank has been writing on for a couple of years now as we commemorate the 100^th anniversary years of that bloody fruitless conflict. I have drafted Fritz Taylor, normally a guy who writes about music, veterans’ affairs, and culture to review the film under review here The Harder They Fail a fascinating look at the seamy side of the professional boxing game, circa the “golden age” in the 1950s when the sport hooked up with television to create a mass audience among the plebeians. A look that aside from details about money and the nature of the presentation is probably not far off the mark today as well.     

As I have mentioned earlier this year when Si Lannon talked me into letting him do a couple of pieces on an amateur golf tournament at his golf course in which his friends were competing the American Left History site very seldom treads on the major media of sports reporting or commentary so I had to “draft” Fritz Taylor to do this piece. His “credentials”? Well Fritz, a pretty tough guy in his youth down in Georgia from what I have heard and he has told us, while he was in Vietnam in the late 1960s before he got what he called “religion” on the question of war and peace had been a regimental boxing champion in his 4^th Division. His reason for getting involved in this business was strictly to get out of guard duty, KP, endless patrols and the like for what proved to be little effort on his part. It also however did not save him from a couple of purple heart wounds during his tour of duty. Pete Markin]               

***********

Although I never pursued the manly art of boxing, you know pugilism, hell, fighting and beating a guy’s brains out with your fists beyond teenage Golden Gloves work down in home country Georgia and a purely opportunistic time in the Army in Vietnam as regimental champ in the 4^th Division to get out of bullshit duty I think I know what makes a guy, makes certain guys jump at the change to get out from under. That “getting out from under,” a process still going on in the professional boxing ranks is something guys, tough guys mostly, have been doing in one way or another since Roman gladiator times if not before. You can trace in this country an almost perfect trail of what recent ethnic/racial group is down at the bottom of the heap by who is fighting other guys for a living to grab the brass ring, to avoid having to go down in the factories and sweatshops to earn their livelihood.      

But enough of the amateur sociology and on to the film here which gives a pretty good view of what the sport was like in the 1950s “golden age” of boxing in America. A time when with the advent of television guys like my father, Hugh Taylor, fresh from World War II service in the Pacific and bogged down in a job he did not like in a textile mill that had moved from Nashua, New Hampshire to Athens, Georgia for the cheaper labor costs they say, was able to sit at home on a Friday night and watch, beer in hand, maybe better beers in hand, and see serious fights from places like New York’s Madison Square Garden. I think he may have gone, with his work buddies, a few times to Atlanta to see the fights in person as well but don’t hold me to that. The main thing is that working class guys mainly, although there was a certain celebrity tinge as well when guys like Ernest Hemingway or Norman Mailer would attend such fisticuffs, formed the audience for these bouts.          

As the old-time film critic in this space, now emeritus, Sam Lowell, was fond of saying when he wanted to give a summary of a film here is the “skinny” on this one. Humphrey Bogart, Bogie, last seen in this space according to what Frank Jackman said in his review of another film in this Columbia Pictures package Sirocco as the leading character in Zack James’s commemoration series of the 75^th anniversary of the opening of the classic film Casablanca , plays Eddie Willis a has-been sports writer thrown on the scrap heap from a newspaper that had gone under in the shrinking newspaper wars world who “from hunger” takes a job as publicist from the long-pursuing shady boxing promoter and fixer man Nick Benko,  played a little over the top but with some credible flair by Rod Steiger. (Bogie seems to have alternated in his career between serious shoot ‘em up and ask questions later bad guys like Duke Mantee in Petrified Forest to tough nut Phillip Marlowe trying to save an old man’s dignity and keep his wild side daughters in check in The Big Sleep to under the rug rat Eddie here working for his dally wages anyway he could.)

Nick was well known in New York and elsewhere for having a stable of run of the mill boxers who kept him and his in clover, kept him and his organization in business by knocking other guys on the noggin and keeping him in high end suits, swank apartments, and easy party women on the side. Like a lot of guys who are stuck in the pile he wanted a champion, wanted to have a shot at the brass ring one of his guys could bring him. Nick’s play, his proposition to Eddie was simply, simply for the talented if balky Eddie, play up, Toro, this giant, this glass-jawed and fragile boxer from down in South America he had discovered to the hilt to draw crowds and draw a chance at the heavyweight championship of the world.  No mean task even for the adroit for Eddie with an ungainly giant on his hands who couldn’t bat a fly without knocking himself out. After balking at first Eddie buys into the deal though so he can keep himself and his fetching wife in clover. That first compromise leads to a million others and as the film progresses he goes down Nick’s slippery slope with only a few swallows. 

Of course Nick has no scruples, wouldn’t know what the word meant, didn’t give a fuck about whether this sunny senor could box or not it is all theater anyway, just entertainment for the sit on your ass masses and no skin off of his nose. Still to get to the top you have to get pass step one. That glass jaw and sissy punch would get him knocked out in minute one of round one except for one little handy trick. Get the opponent to take a dive, go in the tank, play dead fast for quick dough and no questions asked. And Eddie was there pushing the bullshit, rolling that stone up the hill. Making this guy the greatest thing since old Prometheus started his trek. Not without qualms, not without balking, but still going for the clover for him and the wife off this gaucho’s back.          

A big stretch of the film is the rise of this holy goof, as Seth Garth would call him reminding him of some junkie has-been out of Kerouac when he asked me what I was writing about, from nobody from nowhere to contender all courtesy of Nick   the friendly fixer man (and as with all such schemes with willing tank town managers, where do you think they got the expression from beyond that railroad watering spot origin, getting their nowhere boys to take the “tank’ for this monster). Finally as they head East to Chi town Senor Toro gets a crack at an over the hill, taken one or more too many punches, ex-champ which will pave the way to the big payoff championship fight in the Garden. (One too many hits which makes you wonder what their concussion brains looked like at the end of their careers now that professional football players have been found to have taken some horrible beatings over the head during their playing careers and suffered horrible damage and shortened lives because of it.) Except this ex-champ, this guy who took one too many punches couldn’t take one more, couldn’t take a Toro tap even while taking the dive. DOA.

In Nick’s scheming though this has-been boxer’s death would only made Toro a bigger draw when he hit the big time in New York against the champ. Nick tried to “negotiate” with the champ but the champ wouldn’t bite, wouldn’t make the dance of the ring go round. He wanted to murder this Toro, put him under, let him kiss the canvas floor for a while. No problem, no problem for Nick just bet against his glass-jaw sissy punch fighter and clean up. The kid took it on the chin, looked like holy hell when the champ went into overdrive, got his jaw busted up good and got less, much less than chump change for his efforts so he could finally get home and take care of his family.        

    

This bastard Nick though was a beau, had sold his contract on Toro to some tank town manager who after the kid proved to have no talent, none, would be fodder for the locals out in Podunk to begin their own career rises on. This is where Eddie finally balked, finally gets “religion” about how bad the fight game was just like I did with fucking war and got the kid the hell out of New York and home with, guess what, his, Eddie’s, share of the dough that Nick skimmed from the kid’s purses. Ugly. Of course that sets up Saint Eddie of the dreams for Nick’s hatchet. Or it seemed so but when as I can tell you a guy gets religion on something nobody can destroy him. Can’t buy, steal or put him under. Eddie in the last scene is ready to do battle to get the murderous sport of guys beating guys senseless for dough for fixers like Nick banned one way or another. Nice work if Eddie survives some back alley assault. 

[Fritz balked at saying anything about the author of the book The Harder They Fall by Hollywood “prince” Budd Schulberg (his father ran Paramount Studios) from which the screenplay of this film was taken but candor and a rather innocuous short statement in his bio in Wikipedia requires that I say something about this snitch. Snitch before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) when after he had been “outed” as an ex-Communist Party member by a fellow screenwriter he sang like a canary to save his own miserable ass by naming names of others he knew back in the day, back in the Popular Front and World War II days when such a thing as party membership was okay but in the dead of night, red scare Cold War 1950s could get you jail time witness the Hollywood Ten, witness Dashiell Hammett and others who didn’t know how to sing. Bogie for that matter telling the committee to go to hell. It must have been old home week when Schulberg, and fellow snitches Lee J. Cobb and Elia Kazan got together on the On The Waterfront film. They could have formed a singing trio. Jesus their names should live in infamy when the word cowards hits the page. Sorry Fritz it had to be said as an act of elementary hygiene. Frank Jackman]   

11/21 Student anti-war movements in the 60s and now

CW

Charlie Welch<cwelch@tecschange.org>

4:12 PM

To  act-ma@act-ma.org  

• Reply
• Forward
• Delete
• Actions

New Hampshire Canvass For Bernie -Sat Dec 7th -Feel The Bern

Happy Birthday Joni Mitchell - From The 1960s Archives-Woodstock's 40th Anniversary- You Can't Go Home Again!

Happy Birthday Joni Mitchell - From The 1960s Archives-Woodstock's 40th Anniversary- You Can't Go Home Again!


A link to YouTube's film clip on "Woodstock 1969". Some of the footage brings back pleasant memories. Others are, frankly, bizarre. Ah, those were the days though when to be alive was very heaven.

COMMENTARY 2009

Below is a repost of a commentary from 2007 about the continuing cultural wars centered on events like Woodstock from the 1960s and their lingering political effects.

The Cultural Wars-Part 247- Woodstock 2007 October 30, 2007

COMMENTARY

As a political writer who stands well outside the traditional political parties in this country I do not generally comment on specific politicians or candidates, unless they make themselves into moving target. Come on now, this IS politics after all. How can I justify not taking a poke at someone who has a sign on his chest saying –Hit Me? Lately Republican presidential hopeful Arizona Senator John McCain has fallen all over himself to meet that requirement.


And what is the fuss about. Studied differences about how to withdraw from Iraq? No. Finding ways to rein in the out of control budgets deficits? No. A user friendly universal health care program? No. What has sent the good Senator McCain into spasms is a little one million dollar funding proposal (since killed in the Senate) that would have partially funded a museum at Woodstock, site of the famous 1969 counter-cultural festival. His view is that the federal government should not be funding projects that commemorate drug, sex and rock and roll. Well so be it. However, the topper is this. In order to sharply draw the cultural war line in the sand he mentioned (just in passing, I’m sure) to the Republican audience that he was speaking to that he did not attend that event as he was ‘tied up’ elsewhere.

Unlike his draft dodging fellows, like Bush Cheney, Wolfowitz, et. al in the Bush Administration McCain saw action in Vietnam. Of course that action was as a naval pilot whose job it was to attempt to bomb North Vietnam back into the Stone Age, a task in which they very nearly succeeded. Through the fortunes of war he was shot down and spent several years in a POW camp. That comes with the territory. In the summer of 1969 this writer also had other commitments. He was under orders to report to Fort Lewis, Washington in order to head to Vietnam as a foot soldier. That too comes with the territory. The point is why rain on someone else’s parade just because you want to be a hero. Moreover, it is somewhat less than candid to almost forty years later belly ache about it.


A note on Woodstock as an icon of the 1960’s. The slogan- Drugs, sex, and rock and roll. We liked that idea then, even those of us who were rank and file soldiers. Not everyone made it through that experience . Others recoiled in horror later, including some of those today on the right wing of the culture wars. And others who did not 'inhale' or hang around with people who did formed another reaction to those events. Those experiments and others like communal living, alternative lifestyles and ‘dropping out’, however, were part of the price we felt we had to pay if we were going to be free. And creative. Even the most political among us felt those cultural winds and counted those who espoused this vision as part of the chosen. Those who believed that we could have a far-reaching positive cultural change without a fundamental political change in society proved to be wrong long ago. But, these were still our people.

Note this well. Whatever excesses were committed by the generation of ’68, and there were many, were mainly made out of ignorance and foolishness. Our opponents, exemplified by one Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal, and today by John McCain spent every day of their lives as a matter of conscious, deliberate policy raining hell down on the peoples of the world, the minorities in this country, and anyone else who got in their way. Forty years of ‘cultural wars’ in revenge by them and their protégés is a heavy price to pay for our youthful errors. Enough.

Woodstock lyrics-Joni Mitchell

I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
Im going on down to yasgurs farm
Im going to join in a rock n roll band
Im going to camp out on the land
Im going to try an get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And weve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe its the time of man
I dont know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And weve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By the time we got to woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devils bargain
And weve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- *In Pete Seeger's House- "Rainbow Quest"-Cousin Emmy

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Pete Seeger's now famous 1960s (black and white, that's the give-away)"Rainbow Quest" for the performer in this entry's headline.

Markin comment:

This series, featuring Pete Seeger and virtually most of the key performers in the 1960s folk scene is a worthy entry into the folk archival traditions for future revivalists to seek out. There were thirty plus episodes (some contained more than one performer of note, as well as Pete solo performances). I have placed the YouTube film clips here one spot over four days, November 10-13, 2009 for the reader's convenience.

If You Want The Stuff Senator Bernie Sanders Has Been Talking About For A Million Years Including Out In The Wilderness When It Was Not Fashionable About Medicare For All, Eliminating Student Debt, The Fight For $15 (Hell Now More Than That) To Happen Accept No Substitutes-Fight For Bernie 2020 Not Come Lately Elizabeth Warren

If You Want The Stuff Senator Bernie Sanders Has Been Talking About For A Million Years Including Out In The Wilderness When It Was Not Fashionable About Medicare For All, Eliminating Student Debt, The Fight For $15 (Hell Now More Than That) To Happen Accept No Substitutes-Fight For Bernie 2020 Not Come Lately Elizabeth Warren  

After The Fall-Humphrey Bogart’s “Sirocco” (1951)-A Film Review

After The Fall-Humphrey Bogart’s “Sirocco” (1951)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Special Guest Commentator Frank Jackman

Sirocco, starring Humphrey Bogart, Lee J. Cobb, Columbia Pictures, 1951

[This review to the extent that it is a film review is based on a five DVD package of films that the legendary craggy-faced actor Humphrey Bogart did for Columbia Pictures mainly in the late 1940s and early 1950s-Frank Jackman]

I do not normally do film reviews in this space but recently Pete Markin, the administrator on this site, asked me if I would be interested in reviewing Humphrey Bogart’s Sirocco since it involved two things that he knew I was interested in-Bogart and the in many ways decisive results of World War I for today’s world troubles, the ‘war to end all wars” which I/we are in the midst of commemorating the final bloody 100^th anniversary year of here and elsewhere. I accepted mainly on the latter premise but as it turned out also because although I have seen a ton of Bogart films this 1951 effort for Columbia Pictures had escaped my attention and while I am bound to do the review for other reasons I don’t think this one measures up as a prime Bogie flick.      

As to the other reasons as just mentioned we are in the midst of the 100^th anniversary of the bloody seemingly endless butchery of World War I. As I have pointed out elsewhere some of the results of that war were the various stages of the Russian Revolution which brought down the Czarist regime, the defeat of German and its lesser ally Austria bringing down two more empires and most importantly for us here also the fall of the German-allied Ottoman Empire. I have described the first three falls in great detail as to the their contribution to the world we face today elsewhere but the fall of the Ottoman Empire and its aftermath are still very much with us as even slight perusal of the daily news will confirm in places like Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and Syria all lands formerly part of that decayed empire.          

   

Of course we all know, or should know, that ever since wars have been started that “to the victor belongs the spoils” and that was exactly the situation after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The British and French decided to carve up the old territories of the Middle East to suit their conveniences, or the conveniences of their emissaries. Maybe conveniences is too strong a word and whim would be more appropriate. During this time we have the Balfour Declaration proclaiming British commitment to creating a Jewish state in that area, the division, the quite arbitrary decision, to carve up the area not by traditional boundaries or allegiances but colonial convenience under the well-trodden colonialist “divide and conquer” stratagem. Those conveniences (whims) which would come back to haunt them especially after World War II when the colonial masses were struggling for liberation from their respective colonial powers after World War I included giving the French a mandate in what was then and now Syria. Today just to mention the name of that benighted country tells much about how little has changed in the post-colonial period.               

What does all this have to do with Bogie and this film. Well the story line here is set in Damascus in 1926 when the French Army was in deep trying to put down a national liberation struggle by the indigenous people led by an Emir who was ready, win or lose, to get the French all the grief they could handle. Bogie, last seen in this space I believe as one of the lead actors in the classic film Casablanca which is commemorating the 75^th anniversary of its opening this year as well, is nothing but an opportunist businessman of sorts selling guns and ammo to the colonials, to the liberation fighters for a pretty profit. (I am willing to bet as will be detailed a bit below that Bogie, or rather Bogie’s character here Harry Smith, wished as Rick of Rick’s Café Americian he had never left old Casablanca where running a gin joint and being the conduit for some letters of transport which helped one Victor Lazlo, the famous Czech liberation fighter against the Nazi night-takers, get out of that stinking hole and on to fight another day. Even though that meant giving up lovely Ilsa, his “we will always have Paris” flame. There is a lot in this film which has the feel of the earlier film but lacks energy, plotline and even scenes to match that epic.)

Naturally the French Army commander General LaSalle, played by Everett Sloane, wants this traffic stopped and the uprising suppressed by any means necessary. His strong inclination is to level Damascus to the ground and execute everyone that his troops can round up if necessary to suppress the rebels. Periodically though he gives into the ideas of his chief of intelligence Colonel Feroud, played by Lee J. Cobb, last seen in this space playing the corrupt union leader in On The Waterfront and snitching on every fellow actor he could before the 1950s red scare House Un-American Activities Committee, who thinks that he can buy time and maybe peace by negotiating with that Emir and his underlings.      

The story line goes back and forth based on that idea. Where things get dicey for Bogie, like I said the Harry Smith in this film, is when the good Colonel through snitches is able to grab Bogie before he can leave town. Ready to face the firing squad he makes a deal with Harry to get him out of town if he can lead him to the Emir rather than face a messy death. Done. Done except in trying to save the Colonel’s life by coming up with the idea to the General of paying ransom he forfeits his own since the rebels no longer trust him. So all Harry gets for his troubles is a big step-off, a summary execution.  

[A little romance on the side is always the order of the day in these type films. Here there is an underlying tension between the good Colonel and Harry over the Colonel’s bored and flirty mistress, Violette, whom the Colonel loves to distraction. Nothing comes of her using Harry to get out of town and Feroud’s life since he bought the big step-off by trying to do right once in his ruthless life.]

Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of "King Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac-In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-Out In The Be-Bop Night-In The Time Of The Time Of Classic Rock ‘n’ Roll-A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Beatles covering Doctor Feelgood and the Interns classic, Mr. Moonlight.



In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-Out In The Be-Bop Night-In The Time Of The Time Of Classic Rock ‘n’ Roll-A CD Review

CD Review


Rock Classics: The Originals, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era, Time-Life, 1991

As I have noted in reviewing The ‘60s: Last Dance and the 1957 parts of this Time-Life Roll ‘n’ Roll Era series I have spent tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” in this space reviewing the teenage culture of the 1950s and early 1960s, especially the inevitable school dance and the also equally inevitable trauma of the last dance. That event, the last dance that is, was the last chance for even shy boys like me to prove that we were not wallflowers, or worst. The last chance to rise (or fall) in the torrid and relentless pecking order of the social scene at school. And moreover to prove to that certain she that you were made of some sort of heroic stuff, the stuff of dreams, of her dreams, thank you very much. Moreover, to make use of that social capital you invested in by learning to dance, or the “shadow” of learning to dance.

Hey, I have already filled this space with enough prattle about the old time school dances, middle school and high school, so I need not repeat that stuff here. Moreover, whatever physical description I could conger up would be just so much eye wash anyway. Those dances could have been held in an airplane hangar and we all could have been wearing paper bags for all we really cared. What mattered, and maybe will always matter, is the hes looking at those certain shes, and vis-a-versa. The endless, small, meaningful looks (if stag, of course, eyes straight forward if dated up, or else bloody hell) except for those wallflowers who are permanently looking down at the ground. And that was the real struggle that went on in those events, for the stags. The struggle against wallflower-dom. The struggle for at least some room in the social standing, even if near the bottom, rather than outcast-dom. That struggle was as fierce as any class struggle old Karl Marx might have projected. The straight, upfront calculation (and not infrequently miscalculation), the maneuvering, the averting of eyes, the not averting of eyes, the reading of silence signals, the uncomphrehended "no", the gratuitous "yes." Need I go on? I don’t think so, except, if you had the energy, or even if you didn’t, then you dragged yourself to that last dance. And hoped, hoped to high heaven that it was a slow one.

Ah, memory. So what is the demographic that this CD compilation is being pitched to, aside from the obvious usual suspects, the AARP crowd. Well that’s simple. Any one who has been wounded in love’s young battles; any one who has longed for that he or she to come through the door, even if late; anyone that has been on a date that did not work out, been stranded on a date that has not worked out; anyone who has had to submit to being pieced off with car hop drive-in food; anyone who has gotten a “Dear John” letter or its equivalent; anyone who has been jilted by that certain he or she; anyone who has been turned down for that last school dance from that certain he or she that you counted on to make your lame evening; anyone who has waited endlessly for the telephone (now iphone, etc., okay for the younger set who may read this) to ring to hear that certain voice; and, especially those hes and she who has shed those midnight tears for youth’s lost love. In short, everybody except those few “most popular “types who the rest of us will not shed one tear over, or the nerds who didn’t count (or care) anyway.

Stick outs on this one that include both 50s and 60s material include: Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby by the underrated Carl Perkins who had all the making to be a big time rockabilly cross-over except Elvis got in the way; You’re No Good by Betty Everett who bopped the bop; I’m Leaving It All Up To You, by the one-hit wonders Don and Dewey, Time Is On My Side by the legendary blues rocker, Irma Thomas (a song, by the way, covered by the Stones; I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You, a country-type cross-over Don Gibson. Needless to say John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom rates as well but I take that as a blues classic rather than a rock classic. And for that last dance, that one that you hoped for, prayed against all odds for, and sweated blood for, Doctor Feelgood and the Interns on Mr. Moonlight. Natch, a slow one. You’re on your own now for the after dance arrangements.

You Don’t Need An Easter Bonnet To Know Which Way The Wind Blew-And It Ain’t Toward Fifth Avenue-Judy Garland And Fred Astaire’s “Easter Parade” (1948)-A Film Review

You Don’t Need An Easter Bonnet To Know Which Way The Wind Blew-And It Ain’t Toward Fifth Avenue-Judy Garland And Fred Astaire’s “Easter Parade” (1948)-A Film Review  

DVD Review

By Lance Lawrence

Easter Parade, starring Judy Garland the envy of every drag queen in the world including writer Seth Garth’s old neighborhood corner boy Timmy Riley who perfected his Judy Garland act into the biggest draw in North Beach once he got out of the closet of the Acre in North Adamsville, Fred Astaire, and assorted dancers and hoofers to make a man weep, with Peter Lawford before his stint as Nick Charles in the television version of the Thin Man and male escort to one of the Kennedy fortune women, the Jack Kennedy generation women so there is no confusion, 1948     

Easter, Easter parades via the television with the Mayfair swells, a term totally unknown to me at the time, strutting up and down Fifth Avenue in the heart of Manhattan, meant nothing to me, nothing at all. The simple fact was from an early age I, my family, and especially my four older brothers shunned that so-called holiday since rather than a time to strut our stuff I, we tried to bury the occasion. (I won’t go into the meaning of the holiday to us then, the Christian holiday, where Jesus arose from the dead and went heaven-bound since this screed is about more earthly, plebian and mundane things, rough-hewed sociology if you like not theology.) Bury it for the simple reason that the day represented one of the two times in the year that we received new clothes via my hard-pressed father’s always inadequate paychecks (that “inadequate” something I also didn’t know at the time but probably would not have mattered in the social sense which is what this is all about). The other time of course the start of the school year.         

What is the big deal lots of people, working people, back in the 1970s were hard -pressed to provide their kids and themselves adequate and varied clothing. Half the writers at this publication, for instance, faced the same situation or something roughly approximate which is probably why these many years they are still writing stuff about those times in this space. The big deal is what those clothes were like, what made other kids laugh at me, us when we went to Easter Mass or the next day when we went to school an occasion when everybody, everybody who celebrated Easter which meant just about everybody in the Heights section of Troy in upstate New York. 

See, my, our mother, besides being a bad cook which led me more times than I can count over to my grandmother’s house where she always had something on the old-time cast iron stove that in itself made the food that much tastier, had no taste in clothes. No sense of what growing young boys would want to wear. To emulate whoever were the male fashion-plates or just cool.

Part of her lacks was the lack of money to clothe five strapping boys but part of it was where she shopped. These were the days before Wal-Mart expanded a lot from the South and so what she went to shop was the local equivalent of that type of store called the Bargain Center. The place, a one store operation, was the graveyard for last year’s or maybe the year before’s styles which in the fast changing fashion world of youth meant not cool, not cool at all. Moreover, if it wasn’t outdated fashion it was overstocked or unsaleable goods. I will give my forever classic example. One year, a year when pin-striped shirts were out of fashion and the color purple never in fashion she bought each of us matching shirts like that. I could hear the titter in the pews as the five of us cam marching down the church aisle. The next day was worse, much worse. Thinking back on it I would have had no trouble with one of the lines that I believe the late rapper Biggie Small put out-“birthdays were the worse days, Christmas kind of missed us.” Easter, sad sack Easter too, brother. But enough. 

Now onto a review of high society Fifth Avenue Easter Parade which has nothing to do with what I just mentioned above but which new site manager Greg Green has encouraged us to mention as we go about our reviewing chores to let the reader know more about us and here why Easter stuff makes me blue even now. Of course, it may be a good luck sign, despite the blues, that this musical hit of 1948 is only marginally about Easter, or Easter Parades. Rather the film as to be expected when names like Judy Garland and Fred Astaire are atop the marque is about song and dance. Here is the play by play or rather the Irving Berlin playlist which is really what every musical is about. Well that and the inevitable happy ending to the eternal boy meets girl trope that has not only saved many a Hollywood film, not necessary on this one, but has been the bane of the Western literary canon and hard to topple as mightily as we have tried to wean the damn idea from the list of story-line idea.          

Fred, let’s use their real names since nobody cares about the various stage names because the music and dance are their real calling cards, had been partnered up with Nadine in a dance team around 1912. Did pretty well, career-wise and between themselves, maybe even lovers. But Nadine wanted to go solo, go to the “bigs” alone making me, and maybe others, wonder about that love stuff between them. After pouting for a while, really after being in his cups Fred figures he can make a star out of any hoofer and to experiment he picks up Judy out of nowhere. Teaches her plenty, makes her okay, just okay because what he did was teach her to be a Nadine wannabe. No good.  

Once he lets Judy go through her paces though they also are ready for the “bigs” figure to be in one of Nadine’s shows. Not a good idea because if Nadine does not want Fred she also does not want what she sees as rival Judy’s growing love for Fred. Wants him pining for his thwarted love. Figures. Not to worry though before this thing is over, before Judy and Fred promenade down, or is it up, Fifth Avenue in their beautiful clothes (not a pin-stripe or purple shirt in sight) to not give lie to the title of the film Fred realizes that he is not pounding his heart for bitch Nadine but love for Miss Judy Garland. Some great but probably now not well-known songs except by serious American songbook aficionados from Irving Berlin. Except as well you can bet your Easter bonnet or top hat people still know Easter Parade. Still doesn’t take that childhood sting away, probably never will.     

The Girl With The Bette Davis Eyes-With Lowell’s Bette Davis And Jack Kerouac In Mind

The Girl With The Bette Davis Eyes-With Lowell’s Bette Davis And Jack Kerouac In Mind

By Special Guest Writer Greg Green   

  

[Greg Green, a writer well known to me in this space for his articles on his and others experiences in the devil’s war, the Vietnam War, that carved a nation in two, maybe more and from which at least culturally it has never recovered mentioned to me one day when he was getting ready to review an old time black and white movie Of Human Bondage for the American Film Gazette for which he writes occasionally that the female star Bette Davis had been born in Lowell, Massachusetts. Something that he did not know although he grew up a few towns over in leafy suburban Westford. Greg has been a longtime admirer of another Lowell native Jack Kerouac who torched a placid post-World War II world with his On The Road some sixty years ago (and which we have as Seth Garth mentioned “seemingly endlessly” and he may be right commemorated in this space recently on the sixtieth anniversary of its publication). That got Greg thinking that there must be some connection that he could draw between two such iconic celebrities from an old dying mill-town (dying even back then as the mills headed cheap textile labor south and then cheaper foreign shorts worldwide-in their respective birth times 1908 and 1922) that had seen better days beside the inevitable “there must be something in the water” theory. So he asked me to let him do a little piece trying to make some cosmic connection between the two icons and the town. Pete Markin]             

A river runs through it. The great rushing from the New Hampshire mountains, at least that is what I have been told is source ground zero of the broken down millwheel towns to the seas and unto the great cold wash Atlantic and there to homeland (homeland before Lowell migration and Quebec flee failing farms up north looking for factory river work) Europe left behind from desolation days Merrimack. Merrimack some potent Indian signifier (excuse me Indian when Indian was the name spoken and not the correct Native American or even better indigenous peoples who can  stake serious and legitimate claim to sacred ground now ill-trodden over by umpteen generations and no reparations in sight) long before the devils came in their blasted wooden hull ships from across that briny North Atlantic no high note in sight unlike the great big blow out in Frisco town when a skinny black kid blew that one to perdition. Great rushing river dividing the town between the remember “fake natives” and the on-coming foreigners come to pick up the slack in the bottomless spinning wheel pits (the noise drowning out sing-song voices and whiskey hoarse alike and maybe that is where the sober siren sought his Jack strange mystifying voice and he his throbbing pace that in the end wound up like whiskey breath).        

River, two forked river come flowing from the great ices of New Hampshire hills laying down sediments (and sentiments) along a path unto the great turn and rock formation by Pawtucketville Bridge-dividing that town even further (or is it farther) pushing out Highland visions of august majesty. Then a poor besotted girl emerges, emerges out of the dust hitting the high trail west landing forlorn and mystified in some fallen angel diner and a gas station town near the Petrified Forest (trees so ancient, think about it, that they have turned to stone some kind of metaphor there-something about staying in one place too long) in the Arizonas, out off of Route 66 heavy-travelled in the next generation by hungry guys tired of diner and gas stations at home drift to the cities but need to catch some dust and grit although what they thought of benighted stone trees who  knows in between those expansive cities). There some Papa generation before her came out looking for El Dorado or gold something different and landed in two bit desert stretches and kind of got stuck, got good and stuck there. (Not everybody made it as the skeletons along the way of cattle, horse, and human set among the bramble and down some aching arroyo tell every daredevil passer-by and every sensational dime store penny a word novelist in the days when that “contract” ruled writers on “spec” too.)

And there abandoned by a big city dream mother and an ill-defined no account wimp father she came of age dreaming the dreams, funny city girl dreams of faraway places away from the dust and those fucking stoned trees when the wind howls through the crevices (making one think of other social howls and wolves and Molochs and white-dressed nurses in mental wards and of cool jazz man hipsters and Times Square con artists working the rubes), her father the king of the species all dressed up and cowardly when it came right down to it. Dreaming book dreams, small printed page books sent from far away by those who could not take the dust, the heat, those howls and once again those fucking night-blinding stone trees which tourists would pay a pretty penny for a clip, a sliver. Jesus. Dreamed fourteenth century or was fifteenth dreams of mad man con man rabble Villon out of some Balzac French novel but real enough speaking about how he could not stay with civil people but sought solace among the petty thieves, the cut throats, the man murderers (little did she know who would come through door to marvel at her bug-eyes and blinkers making sorry Villon nothing but a second-rate Time Square hustler, hey, pacifist even) , the flotsam and jetsam among the people who lived outside the moat, who did not dream but planned.         

          

“Hey there stranger” she spoke quickly to that stranger with the strange pale voice and the paler skin despite walking the sun-drenched walk of the tramp no better than Villon’s men outside the moat and who looked like he had not had three squares in many a moon so that is what she thought when he first came in, came in and recognized in that small book, that funny thought poem by mad monk gone astray Villon and thus was kindred against the Papa silliness and some gas station jockey who tried to make love to her before her time. So they talked, he called it conversation, and told her that the night-takers descending on the flat land earth, out even in the freaking (his term not hers) stone tree desert filled with arroyo-seized skeletons that the day for conversation was quickly coming to froth, was dangerous beyond whatever small thoughts she had ever had out in that vast night sky thunder-blazed desert. She thought him the new Messiah come that she has heard about over the blaring radio that made the diner hours go by more quickly so she could retreat into Villon’s manly dreams without distraction. He, the stranger he, laughed and said no vagabond who was out filching (cadging in what he meant she thought) free eats in dust-bitten rocks could claim Messiah-hood, could survive the new age coming and coming quickly right through her door. Her bug-eyes blinkered at that, at her silly illusions when she thought about it later after he was gone, gone to who knows what savior-driven place.          

No sooner had the stranger taken his filched food (she still insisted it was cadged and would whenever anybody asked her if she had actually seen the savior, had maybe slept with him for good measure) when the night-takers stormed in (stormed in more than one way bringing half the desert hell with them as boon companion) and made her savior stranger sit on his ass on the floor. Made hell come to pass before the night was through. (He, the stranger, would comment that the night-takers took their sweet-ass time whenever they descended and that those descended on took their sweet-ass time figuring out how to get rid of the bastards). Sweet manna. Then that forlorn stranger had an idea, a good one if somebody beside her thought about it later that he would go mano a mano with the night-takers, would play the gallant when all was said and done (giving lie to the idea that he didn’t have any ideas about the night-takers except their time had come). Naturally he lost, better won/lost and left her with her book, her small Villon book, a guy from the fourteenth century or was it the fifteenth and her dreams kind of intact. A few years later some guys in a 1949 Hudson (or was it Studebaker) tired of the Route 66 road came by looking for grub, looking for free eats and some whiskey but by then she was long gone to some city that Papa and father could not fathom            

[On in the frozen Western night the no longer girlish girl hung up on old time French bandit-poets, con men, desolation angels, and holy fools, and lost in thought time of the intellectuals far from the blessed stone trees, as far away as she could get to Southern California and so “frozen” ironic she picks up a book, a paperback left on the counter by a forgetful customer who after paying for his Woolworth-quality lunch must have given up all hope. She flips it into her pocketbook to either wait on his owner’s return or for something to read that night, that lonesome stone tree wilderness night that never left her thoughts. That guy, or whoever it was, never returned and so that night she read, read until the early morning hours and then read some more.          

Read about a guy, although in her mind it could have be a girl, who had the same wanderlust that drove her west, drove her to the great blue-pink American western night he called it looking for some father that he had never known, looking forlornly, for that father from some oil-spilled New Jersey shore river to the wind-swept China seas before the Golden Gate Bridge. Looked high and low for the missing brethren who long ago had crossed her path out in the hard stone tree night when everything was possible but the intellectuals then flabby and ill-disposed to fight the night-takers even to a draw abandoned all hope, decided that primitive man would take the day and crush any free spirits. This guy though flush with the expectations of many new adventures once the night-takers were put to the sword took to the road, took a chance that he could find that father some fucking place-maybe Latimer Street in Denver, maybe Neola, Grand Island, Reno, Winnemucca, Tulsa, Fargo (although give up all hope if you wind up in that locale). She wondered that maybe he had stolen her dreams. Maybe he had stared at the same rivers that drove her desires, yes, just maybe that was the case.]    

A young boy only spoke patois until he went to school played hooky one day and sat in the lost souls library hoping to find something that would challenge his fevered brain and slip-slopped over to the poetry section and found this guy Villon, a poet of the fourteenth or was it the fifteenth century, who spoke of dreams and crashing out (spoke too of ruffian petty larcenies outside the moat but the boy let it pass because he knew all about that, knew that poet kings only spoke of such to work up a sweat, to deal better with hipsters, con men, sullen fallen women, junkies and assorted felons riding on the railroad jungle tracks. Knew he had kindred in that long ago poet king and sought out fellows who could understand such dreams, could understand too the patois that he thought in. Would find plenty of hipsters, cons, con men, Molochs, holy goofs, cowboy angels, a teenage Adonis is spar with his brethren soul. Find Moloch, insanity, the clap, jungle fever, whiskey shakes, penniless forsaken highways, lost boys, sullen youth, Zen, chicken shit and on some days, but only some days, he wished he never left that fucking river, that holy of holies Merrimack and those wistful eyes that he remembered out in cold Winnemucca, Neola, Grand Island, Big Sur nights          

[Weird thoughts along the Merrimack lifeline (remember like bodies make-up filled with arteries and canals) a fervent solemnly disciplined fourteen year old boy armed with Woolworth’s ten cent notepads and chewed raw No. 2 pencils, sits arms akimbo, strange gangling not yet athletic fourteen year old position like some latter day saint Buddha seeing all knowing all with hashish pipe tucked into some secret place sitting out with cans of beans and rat shit on desolation row waiting for fires and damnation, in a silent black back row orchestra seat (no red dress girl singing swinging Benny Goodman songs that night to come hither him to perdition and have to ask the eternal boy-girl question-orchestra or balcony-and he would know the answer always know the answer balcony of course she silly why else would I come into the shadows with you) of the of long gone to condos or cute shops Majestic Theater off of Bridge Street staring intensely at the big white screen suddenly turned to magic motion pictures with a dust storm brewing out in some fucking petrified forest and some girl not his holding off some ragged sweater gas jockey, and dreams too.   

Waiting, eternally waiting like that fervent fourteen year old boy for something to happen, for some kicks, for something better than listening to the average swill the customers brought in the door, waiting she thought for culture, or her idea or culture anyway. What grabbed that poor boy boy though was that scene out of some latter day great American West night when he thought he would be able to choke the Eastern dust from off his shoes and live-and write, always write. So kindred, kindred too when some holy goof hobo, tramp, bum angel Buddha comes traipsing down the road looking for hand-outs and God Jesus that would be the life. He, she, they make small kindred talk and speak of that damn poet, that Villon who knew more than he should about the human condition, more than any fourteen year old boy anyway. 

But before long the dream shattered, the night-takers released from their caves come swooping down like hell’s avenging angels, avenging the lost paradise that he had read a guy by the name of Milton, half-blind had gone on and on about in some heaven’s battle and they the losers-and what of it. But when you take on the night-takers you better realize that you will take some casualties, take some holy sacred blood from the holy earth returned and that ain’t fair, ain’t fair at all but who knows maybe Buddha, Rama. Zoroaster, Jehovah, the unnamed one, planned it out that way. Out the door of that no longer silent black back row orchestra seat he was glad that he had not had some red dress come hither girl to bother him. For he wondered, wondered as he sank his eyes into the white froth of the mighty Merrimack below whether she, that Western tableau girl would ever acknowledge him, ever read his mind like he read hers.]  

Ha, as he tried to climb Bear Mountain with a dollar and a quarter in his stained dungarees (not called jeans then, not around him anyway) splattered flannel shirt and broken toe boots looking for that father he never knew (although his own father had passed on before he knew that he was looking for another father somewhere along the wino camp tracks, some arroyo bush or in some county jail working out a scheme). Had Route 66 cold because if he could search that highway he would miss some connection, some angst the shrinks called it among the hot rod car, surf board, motorcycle lost winding in stir and some rough trade honey to some beast, boys he would meet out in the great blue-pink American Western night. As he pulled his thumb out of his back pocket he finally relaxed and dug the scene. Hit long rides and short, mostly lonely truckers looking for company and searching for the sons they had never known, tramp diner stops, railroad stews on nights so cold his broken toe boots seized up on him, grabbed a couple of big rides with big blondes looking for some max daddy to be-bop with and leave in Doc’s drugstore while they waited to be “found” by some Hollywood agent. Took tokay swigs with the best of them, met up with rabid New Jersey poets, New York City Times Square gangster dope peddlers and sainted poets (funny always the poets driving him forward he would have to write that down, Ivy League junkies on the nod, and finally the Adonis of the western night whom he would be-bop with unto the San Francisco Bay dropped that high white note out in the China seas. Yeah, he had it all except maybe those bug eyes from childhood lost in some flophouse. Still on some days, and only on some days, he wished he never had left that fucking river, never that sacred ground river. He wondered if she though that same thought.               

In Defense Of What Now Figures To Be “Premature” Anti-Fascist Fighters-Cary Grant And Ingrid Bergman in Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious” (1946)-A Film Review

In Defense Of What Now Figures To Be “Premature” Anti-Fascist Fighters-Cary Grant And Ingrid Bergman in Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious” (1946)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Fritz Taylor

Notorious, starring Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Claude Raines, directed by the late Sir Alfred Hitchcock ( I was not sure whether when somebody had the honorific “sir” before his name and it is not hereditary whether it sticks for eternity and nobody else around the publication knew either so lacking somebody connected with the College of Heraldry I will keep it and let the bloody queen and her minions figure it out), 1946

The regular reader may wonder why I, Fritz, Taylor, who usually does commentary on wars and military affairs and not film reviews drew this assignment. That can be answered with two remarks. First, sort of strangely given the casualty numbers I was the only one on the staff, regular or contributing as is my status, who had lost a relative, actually two relatives, my uncle on my mother’s side and a cousin on my father’s side in World War II. Specifically, in the European Theater where the Soviet-led and American-assisted struggle was against the Nazi, fascist scourge. The anti-fascist sentiment runs very deeply in my family, my Southern-roots family who take such things seriously, take the military seriously. The second was that of all the people associated with this publication who are actively, meaning not just writing about it but out on the streets, opposing the current wave of fascist expression in social media and out on those very same streets which goes under several names Nazi, White Nationalist, Alt-Right but they are birds of a feather it has been determined around the water cooler that I am the most vociferous and involved. Sam Lowell, who under normal circumstances would hit a home run on the subject matter of the film under review, Notorious, is not only in a running battle with a young up and coming colleague but has sensed that I can do greater justice to the subject and so persuaded Greg Green to let me take a stab at it.

I was not familiar with this film although as a kid I saw several Sir Alfred Hitchcock films, mostly in color like Vertigo, The Bird, and his re-make of his original The Man Who Knew Too Much so I was a bit shocked by the premise that the American government in 1946, in the person of Dev a federal agent of some sort, played by suave and solid Cary Grant, was gung-ho about tracing down some recalcitrant and nasty exiled Nazis and their agents down in Rio. More so since the reality was that the American government was, except for the hardened Nazis at Nuremburg and such were trying to rehabilitate this ramble in the struggle against the Soviet Union in the ice-cold Cold War. But what really galled me was the idea then, today too in the age of Trump, that the anti-fascist struggle was to be left in the hands of governmental agents. My every instinct rebelled against that false idea, those “alternative facts” knowing what has been happening in the past several years. 

But to the film on its own premises. We already know about Dev, about the federal agent part but that would get the agency he worked for now nowhere since the guys who they were dealing with, those rats down in Rio were hooked into what was going on, were wise to the idea that the feds were on to them. Dev and friends needed a “lure,” needed a stoolie and who better that the party girl daughter of a guy who was sentenced in federal court in Miami for treason against the United States and who subsequently took his own poison pill just like in the movies. Enter one Alicia, played but off-handedly, ah, beautiful to fall down and cry for Ingrid Bergman, she last seen in this space according to Seth Garth who keeps tabs on such things as Victor Lazlo’s wife and rock in Casablanca leaving Rick of Rick’s Café and Louie to form a beautiful friendship. After lots of hemming and hawing and a little off-hand romancing Alicia buys into the project although what role she will play is not yet determined. So off to Rio but don’t blame that torrid town for harboring rats and their ilk.

Enter the plan once Dev and Alicia get settled in. The “mark” one Alex, played by Claude Rains last seen in this space according to Seth Garth who as I have already mentioned keeps tabs on such things as Rick of Rick’s Café out of Casablanca that’s in Morocco next beautiful friend after Victor Lazlo and Ingrid take off on the last plane to Lisbon to lead the anti-fascist resistance in sunken Europe, who with an overbearing mother is central to the financing of what they plan will be the 4th Reich (and no mistakes this time letting a bum like Hitler grind things down to nothing). That is where the “lure” literally comes in. Somehow Alex and Alicia knew each other, and Alex had been smitten -and would still be smitten. 

Of course, that would complicate the Alicia-Dev budding romance but the fight against the rats and the closing down of their rathole had to come first. The thing got so carried away though that smitten Alex actually married Alicia as a test of whether she was sincerely smitten by him. Sorry Alex she only has eyes for Dev whatever eye wash both try to put out to the public. The trouble, big trouble for Alex, is that Alicia is not only beautiful, hey lets’ call it by its right name, drop dead beautiful, but smart and worms some secret info out of him in passing before he realizes that she is a freaking American agent. Alex tries to slowly poison Alicia to get out from under what is in store for him but ready Dev comes to the rescue and Alex has to play along. Play along to his doom once his confederates figure out Alicia knew too much via the Alex pipeline. The last scene is great at some level when one of the Nazi confederates calls Alex to come hither and the dreaded door closes behind him. Gone.               

If assuming the American government gave enough of a rat’s ass about crushing a fascist revival in the bud in 1946, which we now know was hooey, to put an agency on the task it is also wrong to assume that we can let the cretins, and here I mean today’s progeny of those cretins, take care of their own like that last scene mentioned above. That said maybe the best way to really look at this film in order to get my blood pressure down is to see it as yet another variation on old Hollywood chestnut-boy meets girl- that has saved a million films and we will deal with the political conclusions ourselves. Yeah, Sam was right to tag me for this review. Enough said.