A Slice Of Teenage Life-Circa 1960s-With Myrna Loy And Cary Grant’s “The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer” In Mind

A Slice Of Teenage Life-Circa 1960s-With Myrna Loy And Cary Grant’s “The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer” In Mind    

By Guest Film Critic Prescott Blaine

[Prescott Blaine, now comfortably retired, comfortably for those editors, publishers and fellow writers particularly those who have tangled with him on the film criticism beats for the past forty years or so decided he just had to comment about his own growing up in the 1950s teenage life. I had done a short film review on a 1940s film The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. Cary Grant the bachelor to Shirley Temple’s bobby-soxer with Myrna Loy more well-known as the helpful detective in her own right wife Nora Charles opposite William Powell’s Nick in the seemingly never-ending The Thin Man series of the same decade. I had in passing mentioned my reasoning for even touching this piece of fluff. The key was in the title, or part of it, the “bobby-soxer” part which represented to my mind one of the key terms from teenage times in the 1940s where bobby-soxers were associated with the fast jitter-bugging set since those socks made it easier to traverse those slippery high school gym floor where sock hops have been held since, well, since they started having school dances to keep unruly and wayward kids in check. I figured I would get a low-down on what was what.

I had followed a false lead though since despite the enticing possibility that I would learn something about teenage life in the immediate post-World War II period the real thrust of the film was the inevitable romancing between Grant and Loy’s characters. I should have sensed that if goody-goody Shirley Temple was holding forth I would learn less about that decade’s teen concerns than if I had asked a surviving elderly uncle of mine.

Oh sure I did learn that girls went crazy for guys with “boss” cars, worried, worried somewhat about their reputations meaning worrying about being known as high school sluts and that they were as perfidious when the deal went down as the teenage girls in Prescott’s and my generation and probably now too. When I mentioned that to him one day in his office at the American Film Review where he still shows up occasionally to do pinch-hit work when the editor Ben Goldman needs a quick “think” piece to fill up an issue he laughed at me. Laughed at me foremost because of my, his term, sophomoric idea that you could learn anything about teen life in any age when you had certified stars like Grant and Loy tangling just short of the satin sheets and because it would not be until the 1980s when Hollywood produced some films based on S.E. Hinton’s novels that you would get anything like an informative look at a slice of real teen life.        

Follow me here to get an idea of what Mr. Blaine is like when he gets on his hobby-horse. From that “profound” (my quotation marks) comment he asked, I won’t say begged because Prescott is not like that most of the time, or at least he wasn’t in the old days, to let me use my space here to go back into his teenage days in the 1950s, the mid-1950s when rock and roll came running up the road (although we are near contemporaries my coming of age teenage time was about five years later and reflected a drought period in rock and roll which I filled in by “discovering” the blues). Needless to say since this piece has Prescott’s by-line he sold me on the idea-for one shot anyway. Below is what he wants to share about 1950s teenage culture-Sam Lowell]    

WTF Sam (a term I would not have used in my professional career in print and certainly not to start an article but as Sam has mentioned I am comfortably ensconced in retirement and besides I am playing on his dime) even a wet behinds the ears kid in the 1950s who didn’t figure out what was what until sometime in the mid-1960s knows that when the fresh breeze of rock and roll hit the planet the whole thing opened up the big three that was on every alive and awake teenager, teenage boy (the girls can speak for themselves but they will tell the same basic story) mind-drive-in theaters, drive-in restaurants and grabbing every loose girl not tied down. (Not literally but then we had a strange male-driven code honored I think more in the breech than the observance that if a girl had a guy that meant she was off-limits to other guys. Like I said honored in the breech much mother that the observance.)

WTF sex is what I am talking about because all three things were connected by a million threads, a million threats that made up  1950s teenage life (maybe now too but since drive-in movies and restaurants and maybe access to girls too depended on the golden age of the automobile car, borrowed or sweated for, which today’s youth are not nearly as enamored of, hell, some of them don’t even have driver’s licenses that premise may be questioned). Tie all that in with rock and roll and the rest of what I have to say makes total sense even to a guy like Sam.

A lot of what was what then had to do with corner boy life something that has for the most part gone by the boards between the rise of the malls (and “mall rats” a totally different thing than on the edge, quasi-illegal corner boy life reflecting certain hungers that never could be satisfied in a strictly legal way which the denizens of the mall do not exhibit since they are fixed up pretty well) and the totally bizarre actions of local police departments to hustle kids off the street corners on behalf of  local businessmen and satraps. Let’s face it the whole mix had to be cemented with dough, dough anyway we could get it, or we would still be standing on those forlorn corners (or doing time in some state or county institution).

Not to belabor the point but it bears notice it is amazing how much our waking hours, maybe dreaming hours too centered on girls (and those dreaming hours included the then forbidden talk about masturbation, about what Father Lally up at Sacred Heart Catholic Church called “touching” yourself but we all knew what he meant even if we were not quite sure what masturbation was and would have never dared asked parents about such an evil thing (according to Lally who would later be transferred out because he “touched” boys and girls and was an early figure of interest in the breakthrough Catholic priest abuse scandal that rocked  the archdiocese of Boston, via the spotlight from The Boston Globe). Nor would they have voluntarily or involuntarily been forthcoming about sex issues and so we learned most of it on the streets-mainly wrong or stupid.                 

There were some funny parts, maybe not funny at the time but funny now and stuff I want to tell about for the record since not only are we fading from the scene but the two- generation social media-driven gap between my growing up time and today is far greater than between box-soxers of the 1940s and the cashmere sweaters of the 1950s. A staple of existence then for poor boys especially was the weekly school and/or church dance since we could not afford other pay dances held in various locations for the progeny of the town swells. The dances although touted by the school and church authorities as keeping us youth from going over the edge on the rock and roll craze which they saw as just an episode, a fade really were our lifeline into social existence. (That Father Lally mentioned early used the dances for laying a trap for his prey as it turned out and more than one teacher chaperone at school dances got a little over the top when the girls came along looking all sexy and serene.)   They at least got us to bathe, shave if necessary, use deodorant, slick our hair and wear something other than cuff-less chinos or blue jeans since sports jackets and dress shirts were required.

But that was all social graces stuff. What we craved, what we spent the week day-dreaming and talking about was who we would dance with (or who would dance with us). Above all else who would we dance the last slow dance of the night with after our night’s efforts. Most of the music of the times, mercifully in many cases, was geared to fast dancing which meant each partner was more or less free to do their own gyrations and keep a safe distance from toes and other vulnerable body parts of that partner but the last dance was always a slow one, one that those “going steady” immediately got up and danced to, and others who had some prior arrangement as well.

A Writer’s Tale-Vincente Minnelli’s Film Adaptation Of James Jones’ “Some Came Running” (1958)-A Film Review

A Writer’s Tale-Vincente Minnelli’s Film Adaptation Of James Jones’ “Some Came Running” (1958)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Josh Breslin  

Some Came Running, starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Martha Hyer, directed by Vincente Minelli, adapted from the novel by James Jones, 1958  

No question I was first drawn to Some Came Running, a film based on the novel of the same name by James Jones whose more famous novel Here To Eternity also was adapted to the screen and stands as one of the great classic films of the modern cinema, by the ex-soldier’s story and then by his plight as a blocked writer. The draw of the ex-soldier’s story reflected something that had been in my own experience about coming back to the “real” world after the military. That seems to be the character played by Frank Sinatra Dave Hirsh’s situation. That inability to go to the nine to five routine, to settle down after military service had shaken him out of his routine rang a bell. In my own military service generation, in my own service, I ran across plenty of guys who couldn’t deal with the “real” world coming back from Vietnam and who tried to hide from that fact as “brothers under the bridges” alternate communities out in places like Southern California. I see and hear about young Iraq and Afghanistan War service personnel having the same woes and worse, having incredibly high suicide rates. So yeah, I was drawn to Dave’s sulky, moody, misshapen view of the world.           

The story line is a beauty. Dave, after a drunken spree, finds he was shipped by bus back in that state by some guys in Chicago to his Podunk hometown in Parkman, Indiana, a town he had fled with all deliberate speed when he was a kid orphaned out by his social-climbing older brother Frank because, well, because he was in the way of that social-climb after their parents die. Dave was not alone in his travels though since he had picked up, or had been attached to, a floozy named Ginny, played by Shirley MacLaine, who will make life hell for him in the end. As he became accustomed to his old hometown and while deciding whether to stay or pick up stakes (the preferred fate of his brother and his also social-climbing wife) he was introduced to a local school teacher Gwen, played by Martha Hyer, who will also make hell for him in the end since he was quickly and madly in love with her but she was seriously stand-offish almost old maid stand-offish since she had had a few tastes of his rough-hewn low life doings. Doings which were encouraged by a gambler, Bama, played by Dean Martin who became his sidekick.        

But here is the hook that almost saved Dave and almost lit a spark under dear Gwen. Dave was a blocked writer, had some time before written a couple of books that were published and had gathered some acclaim, were well written. Gwen attempted to act as his muse, and did prove instrumental in getting a work of his published. To no avail since Dave was not looking for a muse, well, not a muse who wasn’t thinking about getting under the silky sheets. No go, no go despite Dave’s ardent efforts. Frustrated Dave turned to Ginny and whatever charms she had-and the fact that she loved him unconditionally despite their social and intellectual differences. In the end Dave in a fit of hubris decided to marry Ginny after being rebuffed by Gwen enough times. The problem though was that Ginny had a hang on gangster guy trailing her who was making threatening noises about putting Dave, and/ or Ginny underground. In the end they were not just threatening noises as he wounded Dave and killed poor bedraggled Ginny.

Watch this one-more than once and read James Jones’ book too which includes additional chapters about those soldiers who could not relate to the “real” world after their military experiences. This guy could write, sure could write about that milieu based on his own military service. (There is a famous photograph of Jones, Norman Mailer, and William Styron, the three great soldier-boy American literary lights of the immediate post-World War II war period with Jones in uniform if I recall.)                

Afterward by Greg Green-site manager:

When I first assigned Josh Breslin this film review my intention was for him to discuss a bit his own, Dave-like, writer’s troubles and more importantly, his troubles with the “real” world when he came back from his military service in Vietnam during the 1960s. Josh had initially agreed to put some material about that in to bring the reader into the picture about what was eating at Dave (really author James Jones), what drove him over the edge. When it came time to do so though Josh balked, said he couldn’t do it, couldn’t  bring back those hard times without serious mental disturbance even fifty years later.

What I did not know at the time but which when I confronted Josh about breaking the terms of our agreement it turned out those hard times had a name, a name which I have since become painfully familiar with-Peter Paul Markin, the Scribe as his old hometown growing up guys forever called him. Josh was not one of them but had met the Scribe out in San Francisco in the Summer of Love, 1967 when he had just graduated from high school and before he was to start college at State U up in Maine, his home state in the fall. That led to a big-time friendship which was only broken up by the Scribe’s own military service the next year.

No, that is not right. Their friendship in the final analysis was broken up a few years later by that fiendish war in Vietnam which took its toll on both of them. The Scribe, like Josh, had his problems coming back to the “real: world, got seriously into drugs, dried out a bit, did some great stories on those “brothers under the bridge” for which he won a bunch of awards which helped for a while. Josh made the turn but the Scribe, for wanting habits, for his own hubris, for kicks, for his whole freaking overblown life to hear Josh tell the story didn’t, got caught up in the cocaine craze and made the cardinal mistake of using what he was trying to sell. For his efforts he got a potter’s field grave down in Sonora, Mexico courtesy of some ill-advised and deadly busted drug deal with the emerging drug cartels that went awry. So Josh, maybe someday you will tell us Josh, you are right to balk on your part of this assignment now though.      

Bet, Bet Straight Up-With The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood Corner Boys In Mind

Bet, Bet Straight Up-With The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood Corner Boys In Mind

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

[This little piece of fluff, this little boyhood remembrance had originally been written as my swan song as a film reviewer, as the film editor here. And to an extent that is /was true when I penned the stuff. That before the big internal struggle that roiled this publication for several months and which finally led to the purge and exile of Allan Jackson, long-time site manager and my oldest friend from high school days. “Purge” and “exile” no exaggeration although I don’t have time for the details here except that when the deal went down I voted with the rebel younger writers to give my old friend the boot under the idea that as with my own retirement it was time to “pass the torch.” I still think I was right and that although Allan and I have reconciled things probably better today under the new leadership. The part that is wrong though is that my swansong was premature. As part of the dust up the younger writers (and here I was neutral) insisted that new site manager Greg Green have an Editorial Board that he would run things by unlike the one-man rule of Allan Jackson. I was tagged for the chairmanship of the Board and so since I am still around I have decided on occasion as here that a few pithy words might come from my pen. S.L]

As everybody familiar with this space knows (or with the on-line version of the American Film Gazette )I have retired from the day to day grind of writing film reviews and have handed over that chore, at least temporary, to my in the not too distance future retiring old friend, colleague and competitor Sandy Salmon. I noted when I posted my retirement notice that I, like old time military men, would just fade away. I also noted that I would as the occasion warranted write a little something, a little commentary if the subject interested me. That is my purpose today.        

Recently Sandy Salmon reviewed a 1947 film, a murder mystery of sorts that had a long prior pedigree, Seven Keys To Baldpate, which had been based on a play by the same name back in the early 20^th century which in turn was based on a crime novel by the great crime writer Earl Derr Biggers (whose popular Charlie Chan series is perhaps much better known). Sandy did a good job of reviewing this film which hinged on the idea of a guy, a crime writer, making a bet with his publisher for five thousand cash that he could write a crackerjack mystery novel in twenty-four hours. As he attempted to do such out in the boondocks at an allegedly closed down inn with the only key to the place all hell broke loose, a couple of off-hand murders and such, by people who had collectively mysteriously come up with the six other keys of the title. One of those six people was a ringer, was the good-looking blonde with well-turned legs secretary to the guy who the crime writer made the bet with. No, not a sex lure like would be included in such a plotline now, at least not publicly, not in 1947 but to distract him anyway she could to make him miss his deadline. What the hell that ain’t fair, no way, especially when after the smoke cleared and the crime writer solved the whole mystery of why the other five people were there she flopped herself on his lap when he went to write that story to win the bet and dared him to ignore her. Needless to say the other guy won the bet        

Sandy mentioned at the start of his review that some guys will bet on anything, any proposition to pass the time. That got me to thinking after I had read the review about what the deal was in the old days in my growing up hometown of North Adamsville about forty miles west of Boston when me and my high school corner boys who hung around Sal’s Pizza Parlor would to while away the lonesome, girl-less, no dough, no serious dough to not be girl-less bet on all kinds of propositions for a couple of bucks, maximum five probably. Certainly not five thousand which as Sandy mentioned is nothing but walking around money now but then was a number which we could not get around, couldn’t believe existed, not in our neighborhood where rubbing nickels together was a tough enough battle.

Now a lot of the bets with guys like Sammy Young, Billy Riley, Jack Callahan the great school football player before Chrissie McNamara did her own flop down on his lap and dared him to move her which he had had absolutely no inclination to do, Sid Green, Pat Murphy and Ian Smith were on the outcome of various sports events. You know back in those days whether the hapless Red Sox would finish last in the American League (or how long a losing streak the team would go on once they started their inevitable losing), how many points would the golden age Celtics score (or allow). We also did our fair share of betting on football games, no so much the games themselves as each play, pass or run, stuff like that, which sounds exotic but except for one time when I got on a bad streak and lose twenty-two bucks which took me about six weeks of caddying for the Mayfair swells to pay was usually the difference of two or three dollars.         

Other bets were a bit racier. Like whether Sally, who was going out with Pat, would let him “touch” her, and you know what I mean and don’t ask how we verified such bets but just know that we did do so. Or whether such and such a girl, a hot girl usually, would take the bait and give one of us a date. Hell, sometimes when the girls came into Sal’s to have some pizza, Cokes and to play the great jukebox that he had over in the corner we would bet on what song a girl would play. There was a certain art to that proposition for instance if a girl had just broken up with her boyfriend there would likely be some slow sad song chosen. You get what I mean. Sometimes it would be whether the notoriously late local bus would arrive on time or not. So anything was up for betting purposes.          

         

That ringer secretary in the film though got me thinking about the strangest bet I ever made back then, maybe ever. One Friday night, another one of those girl-less ones, Jack Callahan, this is before fetching Chrissie McNamara snagged him, bet me on how high Sal would toss the pizza dough when he was kneading and stretching it to make his great pizza pies. Jack’s idea for calling the bet, mine too for taking it, was that one of us but not both could have enough kale for a date with Laura Lawrence on Saturday night. We were both interested in her and she liked us both well enough although Jack as the football hero probably had the edge aside from the money factor. So the bet was on. Oh, I forgot to tell you that if one of the corner boys made a proposition the other guy (or guys depending on the nature of the bet) had to take the bet, or lose and pay up anyway. So naturally I said “bet.”      

The time of the bet was probably about seven o’clock so we had to wait a bit for Sal to start making more pizzas for the crowd that would be coming in around eight or so for their slice and soda before heading to some date or to the local lovers’ lane. Sal did eventually get going, maybe a half an hour later. The idea for who would win any individual bet on the toss was whether Sal flipped the dough above or below the Coke sign directly behind him. I got to call the first bet. Low. I won and the race was on taking my shots at high or low. I did pretty well for a while, was up maybe seven or eight dollars which would be enough to take Laura out, maybe a movie and something to eat. I figured I was in. Then my luck began to change, change dramatically and before long I was down about ten bucks before Sal stopped tossing the goddam stuff.

Jack smiled a knowing smile, knowing that he was going to escort Laura around and maybe get to “touch” her and you know what I mean by that and I don’t have to spell it out. Here’s where everything about that film review by Sandy comes into play. Sal was the ringer. Remember Jack was a football hero and Sal loved football, loved Jack’s prowess on the field and Jack had told him the situation earlier in the day before I showed up there. They had planned to let me win early to draw me in and had set up a silent signal about which position I had taken. How about that. Don’t you think now that I am thinking about it and getting burned up all over again that the next time I go over to Jack and Chrissie’s house in Hingham that I should ask for that ten bucks back-with interest. Yeah, Sandy had it right some guys will bet on anything.