Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines-In Honor Of Icarus’s Progeny- With Cary Grant And Jean Arthur’s “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939) In Mind

Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines-In Honor Of Icarus’s Progeny- With Cary Grant And Jean Arthur’s “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939) In Mind 

By Lance Lawrence

[Thanks to reader Lanny Lake who sent us the message that we had inadvertently cut the last few paragraphs from the original publication leaving her wondering what happened to Johnny Cielo after he left Barranca. This missing piece is more important now since young writer Will Bradley has unearthed some interesting details about Johnny which will raise some eyebrows-Watch for the commentary coming soon. Greg Green-site manager]   

[I am only the recorder, the light-touch editor on this piece, since these are basically the recollections of Billy Bartlett, a guy I met in a bar in Miami while having a couple after having a tough day tracing down some leads on a story about the below the radar scene in Palm Beach after the Pulitzer dust-up blew over. The person I was supposed to interview did a “dixie” on me which is not all that unusual in the business but gives the why of why I was having a couple (many three, okay) when Billy approached when he noticed I was writing some notes, asked if I was a writer, I answered journalist and then he hit me with the question-“buy me a drink”-also not unusual in the profession when everybody not connected to the damn thing thinks everybody from cub reporters to big byline guys and gals have an endless expense account.

Billy’s “hook,” his experienced hook, was to tell me about a guy, about Johnny Cielo, who I had never heard of before and how he was one of the real aces of the early aviation industry, the barn-stormer end when the guys, and it was mainly guys despite Amelia Earhart and Sally Southern, ready did fly by the seat of their pants. Took awful chances to fight for Icarus’s honor and would rather die in the sky that stay earthbound-simple. That homage to Johnny, whom Billy had met as a young man in the 1950s when he was hitch-hiking to the Florida Keys and wound up in Jack’s in Key West where Johnny hung his hat, was just the icing on the cake for the real hook which was that Johnny, for dough as always with these mercenary fly-boys, had met his end in the deep blue Caribbean seas running  guns or something for Fidel and his guys in the hills of Cuba.   

No question when Billy flamed that story he had my attention, especially after those four drinks and that “dixie” stand-up I had visions of a big sassy story which I felt certain that my editor, Greg Green, would spring for. Just for grins Billy told me that Johnny had bedded one Rita Hayworth the big Hollywood hot flash to guys before she went over to Morocco and the Aga Khan. I was all ears after that since I remember my father told me that his father had had a Rita Hayworth pin-up in his locker when he was in the service during World War II. He had showed me a photograph of her and I could see what he, what my grandfather, was all itchy about every time he mentioned her name. So here it is. L.L.]

*********

A tear comes to my eyes every time I hear the name Johnny Cielo, yes, Johnny, one of Icarus’s latter- day sons who was a pioneer in aviation when that was tricky business-when flying by the seat of your pants really was something more than a quaint saying. (By the way for passport trouble purposes, for cons and scams, for ducking the law, John Law he called them Johnny Cielo had many aliases; Johnny Too Bad, Johnny Blade, Johnny Blaze, Blaze Johnson, Johnny Icarus, Izzy Johns and who knows how many other those are just the ones I remember but I will use his real name, assuming that it is for my purposes here). Yes, Johnny was a piece of work, was somebody who gave as good as he got and who had that flight dream from very early on, from the first day he heard about Wilbur and Orville Wright and their successors. Johnny though was strictly a fly boy adventurer, although he could have had a piece of Alleghany Airlines and lived on easy street for the rest of his life. Could have been flying Piper Clubs for the country club rubes to gawk over. But our Johnny was not built that way, didn’t want to become an extended cycle repair shop guy, didn’t have Howard Hughes’ overweening desire to own it all, whatever “it” was for the moment.       

Some people, even people knowledgeable about the history of aviation in America, have claimed they never heard of Johnny Cielo until you mention the Barranca air service set-up. Then they are all ears-not so much about the aviation part, the desperate flights to get the mail out, to get stuff delivered to impossible places, but about Johnny’s red-hot affair with film siren of the 1930s and 1940s Rita Hayworth. Yeah, there was plenty of truth to his exploits with the females, with high class dames like Rita back then. Rita who was every military guy’s favorite pin-up and if not then second. Johnny led Rita a merry chase, had her abandoning that very promising and lucrative Hollywood career to follow him to the wilds of Barranca down in Central America and then ditched her leaving her no choice but to grab the next best thing (this before the Aga Khan took his run at her and snagged her for a while-even “a while” most guy’s idea of heaven). Left Rita for some vaudeville tramp down on her uppers, somebody who couldn’t even stand in the same room as Rita but Johnny was funny that way-would stay with one woman just so long and that not long. Told them straight out his fly-boy life was it and he did not expect a woman, wouldn’t ask a woman to follow him where he was going. And he was right, just ask Rita who did and got not even a by your leave.   

Maybe it is better to begin at the beginning, or at least how Johnny got down on his own uppers so bad he had to take a shot a running a fool’s errant airline down in sunny Banana Republic Barranca. Johnny got deep into running dope, you know, marijuana, opium stuff like that way before most people even know what the hell illegal drugs were about from sunny Mexico up north. Did it for a few years, made a ton of money and proceeded to blow it on dames, various experimental airplane projects and hand-outs to every drifter he ran across. Then one day an agent for whatever cartel he was working for at the time, such things are murky and best left murky told him he was through, that they had some new boy, their boy who would run the merchandise.

Johnny thereafter needed work, needed it bad to keep up with the fresh but expensive Rita. Nothing doing around America for a guy whose last job was a dope smuggler so he headed south to Central America when his old friend and comrade Letts Fagan said he had a deal for him if he came fast. The deal was a secured route for a mail and express delivery for everything south of Mexico to what the hell Antarctica if he wanted to go that far if they could set up the route through some pretty tough terrain in the days when propeller was king and planes still wobbly in inclement weather. Heading out he told Rita he was going, he didn’t expect her to follow, wouldn’t ask her to but can you believe she said “let’s go” and as a sign of her own seriousness she was ready the next day to travel-a world record maybe for a woman with a big wardrobe and plenty of luggage to pull off. Johnny was impressed-and pleased.      

Things started out pretty well for Johnny and Rita and Johnny and his new airline. Looked like he would meet all the deadlines imposed by the contract and by his own daring. Pulled a few rabbits out of the hat to get through a bunch of horrible weather to deliver whatever there was to deliver-typical Johnny Cielo magic. Then the roof caved in, or rather that tramp from some northward-bound tramp steamer trampled into town looking for some sweet sugar daddy- or a Johnny kind of guy. She wasn’t choosey especially when she found out that Johnny was carrying Rita in tow. Two minutes after she saw him she had him in a backroom at Letts’ restaurant doing whatever she wanted, whatever he wanted. (We are all adults and know what was what but when some guy, some Johnny latter-day devotee wrote up his biography the guy left the hard sexual description part out, just like they were doing in the films in those days but you know as well as I do, and I know, because before the end Johnny told me, it was oral sex, a blow job, said she was good at that, Rita too, but you had to coax Rita and not the tramp.)

Okay even tramps have names, as if it mattered to Johnny or any other guy when a woman leads him to some backroom, so hers was Jean, Jean Smith I think Johnny said she called herself. Like I said Johnny had a fistful of aliases, so she probably did too. She was from nowhere, had done nothing but was something new and shiny for Johnny and that was that. Of course two dames, a glamour gal and a tramp or any combination thereof, working the same guy in the small blistered and balmy town are not going to make anything work in the end. That was when Rita blew town, went back to Hollywood to be knocked off by the Aga Khan for a while until she got bored. (The funny thing and even that biography guy didn’t know about the situation until I sent him a letter and he looked the stuff up after Rita blew that Moslem prince off and went back-where else Hollywood not Brooklyn or wherever she was from she and Johnny went under the sheets again for a while until she blew him off-nice trick. Johnny always spoke highly of his sassy redhead after that though-always had that glean in his eye when he mentioned her name. 

The tramp won round one. A big win but Johnny was all business for a while trying to make the nut with that fucking two-bit contract that must have been written up by a Wall Street lawyer it had so many escape clauses for the owners. Johnny had by his own reckoning, a half dozen ex-World War I planes of no repute, or something like that to get the mail and goods over the hump. Tough going, very tough as he lost a few guys who like him would rather die than not fly so they took risks, big risks, just for the hell of it. And nobody, Johnny made sure of that, mourned out loud about the dead guy, grabbed his smack sack possessions and divvied them up so no moony stuff. After one guy got, a guy who was supposed to buy this Jean a steak when he tried to make a play for her behind Johnny’s back, to sit with the angels, that what they called it she sniffled up and Johnny told her to shut up or follow Rita (Johnny could be cutting). Here’s the real deal Johnny part though-five minutes after the guy flamed out Johnny was a sky pilot taking the undelivered load over the hump and back in some kind of hurricane. (That “hump” not the Burma World War II hump that almost broke the backs of English and American pilots but through Condor Pass the next country over from Barranca.)   

Of course knowing Johnny like I did it came as no surprise that things didn’t work out in Barranca, he couldn’t get Letts’ operation going by that freaking Wall Street deadline and he had to skip town owning everybody and their brother and sister dough-including a ton to Letts who swore if Johnny Too Bad, that was the alias he was using down there apparently and not a bad idea with the riff-raff that went through that place, cutthroats, grifters, midnight stabbers, and the like the one time I went through there in a homage to the places Johnny set down on after I found out he had passed away. Naturally the tramp, that Jean whatever her sexual attractions and practices, once Johnny had no dough went on to the next best thing-whatever male was walking with dough in his pockets. As for Johnny he went free-lancing for a few years staying away from any spots where he owed dough. Picked up a few floozies and left them and headed for Key West where I met him in Jack’s, the hangout for guys like Hemingway and Giles, women like Selma Johns and Loretta Oldfield if you remember all those names.

That is about it except to grab the end, grab how Johnny fell down. Somehow about 1957, early in the year a guy approached  Johnny, a guy who called himself Colonel Fiero, something like that, who claimed to have been on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War (as if Johnny gave a fuck what a guy’s credentials were as long as the proposition made sense, it involved flying, the more dangerous the better and the dough was big and in cash) who wanted Johnny to fly from some point in Mexico to the Sierra Madres in Cuba. To fly to Fidel and his band of rural fighters who needed arms and supplies. I never did get the place in Mexico, Johnny wouldn’t say even to me and I don’t know how many flights in and out Johnny made. Probably a guy like Johnny didn’t even know he was supplying revolutionaries, guys opposed to the guy who was running Cuba for the Americans. In any case one fateful night Johnny cashed his check, took at dive down in the deep blue sea Caribbean from what some sailor who saw what happened told it. Yeah, every time I think about that bastard (he had stiffed me too for dough more than once in those days) I shed a tear.          

When Private Detective Novels Went From The Parlors To Hard-Boiled-The Transition-The Film Adaptation (Once Removed) Of Dashiell Hammett-Inspired “After The Thin Man”(1936)- A Film Review, Of Sorts

When Private Detective Novels Went From The Parlors To Hard-Boiled-The Transition-The Film Adaptation (Once Removed) Of Dashiell Hammett-Inspired “After The Thin Man”(1936)- A Film Review, Of Sorts

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

After The Thin Man, starring Myra Loy, William Powell, James Stewart, a sequel from Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, 1936

I admit up front I am a hard-boiled private detective guy (the public coppers, police procedurals if you like don’t even rate a mention today although I have reviewed a million of them in my forty plus years as a film critic, editor, reviewer) in the eternal battle to find some reason to pay hard-earned money to either sit down and read a crime novel or view a film noir. I have spent my career defining my take on film noir detectives and the like. Have written what almost all film critics have called the “bible” a tome about the film noir of the 1930s and 1940s, the golden age. I have also gone to bat for the creators of this hard-boiled genre, the guys who took private detection out of the parlor, usually the high-end parlor, out of the hands of amateur, actually almost accidental private detectives slumming while clipping their stock coupons or something. Above all I have paid homage to Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe series where private detection is for real including fists and slugs and Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade ditto on fists and slugs.   

Here is the funny part, the seemingly contradictory part. Hammett also made a great private detective (public copper turned private by the way which should not be held against him) in Nick Charles, played by William Powell, and his wife companion Nora, played by Myra Loy,  in his The Thin Man. Problem for a guy like me is that Nick and Nora, due to Nora’s money, are slumming on the high side, on the parlor side taking on cases where the rich have something at stake. Which brings us to my idea of the transition-the little sliver from parlor to hard-boiled taking a slight detour. Gentile surroundings but with enough fists and slugs to go around. This pacing which started with the film adaptation of The Thin Man continues in the first sequel After The Thin Man done in the aftermath of the success of the original film adaptation.                

Most of the actions takes place in high-end digs, maybe Russian or Nob Hill in San Francisco, and gin mills after Nick and Nora come back from vacation (maybe after having solved that original with the missing inventor, the thin man, caper although that was in New York City). Why? The errant husband, Robert, of a young Mayfair swell matron, West Coast division, Selma, has gone missing and the family, through its wicked witch of the West matriarch and arbiter of social norms is looking to discreetly look into the matter. Enter hated Nick (who had been brought up on the wrong side of the tracks AND was a public copper) who is egged on by Nora to take the case and maybe make some family peace-fat chance with the swells once they tag you with the low rent district whammy.

Turns out the errant hubby, still adored unconditionally by that naïve young Mayfair swell, has been hitting the gin mills and playing footsie with a torch singer, Polly, at a swank Chinese-themed nightclub run by a gangster, Nolo, and fronted by a Chinese businessman. This grifter, this errant husband, let’s say his name again to separate him from the other grifters making plans of their own, Robert, is nothing but a gold-digger, male division, whose only play is to try to get enough dough to split with Polly, the torch singer without  a heart of gold. Here’s where things get weird although you never know what a grifter will think up to get dough. Seems that a Mayfair swell eligible bachelor, David, played by young James Stewart, who made a portion of his career playing second fiddle to sexier errant males like Cary Grant, loved that young jilted Selma, had wanted to marry her before Robert fogged the night. Robert’s play was to touch David up for a big number (those days’ big number laughable today) pay-off and he would clear out (and do whatever he planned to do with that tramp Polly). Of course down in the mud, down in the gin mills and low life lanes where Polly and her boss Nolo resided the play was to grab the dough Robert got from David and play their own version of house. Nice crowd, right.     

All this action got stopped in its tracks though when dear Robert took a few slugs and fell down, fell down forever if you want to know. Guess who the prime suspect was though who was right there gun in hand. Selma, who had motive, means and opportunity after what this cad Robert had done to her. Despite all the circumstantial evidence against her it just can’t be holy goof Selma, not Nora’s relative. Nick is off and running to find the real murderer, actually multiple murderer because the real killer was seen by other parties. Nick, in the classic Nick way, piled up the evidence, figured out the half dozen possible real suspects and brought them all together under one roof with the public coppers present ready to escort the villain to the clink once he, or she, screamed “uncle” under Nick’s relentless interrogation. Guess what, you know the saying beware a woman scorned. Guys can work under that assumption as well. Turns out psycho holy goof David was the mad monk murderer who got unhinged after Selma gave him the air.  Go figure.  

[This Nick-Nora combo may be a transitional private detective, plus wife, plus dog but give me a guy like Sam Spade who was ready to turn over a femme just to save his own neck and didn’t think twice about it or Phil Marlowe going round and round with a couple of kinky sisters who liked to walk the wild side and lived to tell about it. S.L.]

“You, You Who Were On The Road- The Band’s “The Last Waltz” (1978)-A Film Review

“You, You Who Were On The Road- The Band’s “The Last Waltz” (1978)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Film Editor Sandy Salmon

The Last Waltz, starring The Band, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Ronny Hawkins, Bob Dylan, and many other acts, directed by Martin Scorsese, 1978 

Without boring regular readers of the articles in this space (and of the on-line version of The American Film Gazette since it gave up its hard copy existence several years ago) I would like to mention a little interoffice “squabble” that has placed me in the position of doing this review. A review which I had already done almost forty years ago for the old hard copy version of The American Film Gazette when this music documentary The Last Waltz first came out in 1978. Maybe I had better say I want to put paid to the squabble. Recently my new hire Associate Film Editor Alden Riley complained here in cyberspace about having to do a review of a documentary The Monterey Pops Festival about the inaugural event as “punishment” for not knowing who Janis Joplin was. Maybe better stated as we used to say in the old neighborhood, the working class Riverbank section of Riverdale down in New Jersey he could have given a “rat’s ass” about doing projects connected with my on-going commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which is having its 50^th anniversary this year.

The idea had been hatched after Sam Lowell the now retired film editor in this space high school friend Alex James had gone out to San Francisco on a lark and had gone to the de Young Art Museum there to view an exhibition honoring that seminal year in the raging 1960s calendar. To not ruffle Alden’s feathers and keep him happy until he in the near future upon my own retirement takes on the film editor’s job himself anything even vaguely related to the Summer of Love, 1967 will be in my bailiwick.    

While the average citizen these days may not know (or give that rat’s ass I used to love to say back in the days) about the various musical acts in this film they are all intertwined with the 1960s even though the concert, The Last Waltz took place in 1976 at the run-down Winterland Theater in San Francisco long after the Summer of Love, and long after the new world a-borning ethos of the 1960s had begun to ebb. The Band had been if not an intricial part of the San Francisco scene certainly had been marked by and in turn left its mark on the 1960s. First through its association with Bob Dylan as his band when he began to stretch the parameters of folk into folk rock by the introduction of the electric guitar into that formerly staid milieu and then for several years on their own when they produced a number of classic rock-etched songs from that period.             

The reason for the Winterland concert (other than having it there as the first place they had given a concert) was to celebrate their collective retirement from the road, from the grind of the road after sixteen years of ups and downs. (Individual members would go their own ways musically and to other interests.) That is the real importance and what sets this Martin Scorsese production apart from other musical documentaries. Many time all you get is the performances but here Scorsese teases out the toll that constant touring takes on a band. Robbie Robinson the acknowledged leader of the group, was very emphatic about the travails of the road (and the good stuff too like the swarming girls and the dope). For those who long for a musical career this very informative film will chart the hard struggle from unknown small time band to a major force in the music industry. As the old neighborhood priest used to say to us Sunday sinners-many are called, but few are chosen.

Naturally a top band over a long stretch works with many other groups and individuals and they are on display here. Especially good are Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Neil Diamond and a wild man performance by Ronnie Hawkins the band’s first boss. But the top performances are clearly by The Band who go through their litany of classics and display an incredible ability to play many instruments not necessarily associated with rock and roll and to sing harmonies as they say-“spot on.” Watch to see once again what it was like when women and men played rock and roll for keeps.      

Once Again-The Summer Of Love, 1967-Postcards From A Lost Planet-Buddha Swings-Jack Kerouac Wings

Once Again-The Summer Of Love, 1967-Postcards From A Lost Planet-Buddha Swings-Jack Kerouac Wings  

For Jack's month Ocotber in the sweating rains  

By Jeffrey Thorne

Beat down, beat around, beat sound, beat to the ground. Fuck it Jack just jumped into it from his beautified beatified skull, maybe thinking of youthful skull behind some bushes or out on some back road highway jumping the bones of some friend’s only, but really and truly jumped from some river of life, mill town life like a million guys before him and now in foreign lands a million guys after him, the river flowing to steam up some engine to grind the fabric that will clothe the world. Ha, like we who come naked into this holy coil can take solace from that low catholic trip it took him, and not just him but lots of others who broke the square habit at least for a time, for the youth duration. Damn beatitude in the end when all the shouting was over and Jack in some drunken grave why couldn’t he have listened to that guy out in Frisco town, the guy, a kid really, who all nervous on bennie nevertheless blew that high white note that was in his DNA, provide by grandma like everything else out to the fucking China seas. But that was at the end. At the beginning hell no said Jack.

The world wasn’t big enough to hold all his desperations, keep them in check, keep those wanting habits every poor boy has inside him talk about DNA. Even rama jamma Buddha didn’t have no cure for that except maybe some jimson and jetsam and mystical balm for a shattered world. Like I say that was at the end though. At the beginning our boy took off as fast as he could from that mill town river and never looked back (except to take the dust off his shoes and bow down before our Lady of the river when luck ran out, the booze ran out, hell, the sweet tea sticks ran out). Took it on the lam, went west east south north (I think on that last direction maybe back to the homeland, back to the stinking big river up north that some earlier Jack crossed to get to that fucking mill river, Jesus, looking for the holy grail, looking for about six ways to get out of that beat down, beat around, beat sound, beat to the ground bitch stuff. Took up with some fat fast mad monk who spouted stuff about negro streets, crazies and Moloch devouring the land, the land of milk and honey, rama rama, went to the mat (secret in more ways than one with that loose bastard who couldn’t keep his mouth shut or cock in his pants -and that was that-for a time (no, not then that street wise New Jack City gangster poet taking liberties with the language and ladies’ pocketbooks or that highbrow junkie hanging around New Orleans looking for quick fixes although they qualified if it came to that).

For a time no question since the pull of fast fat monks could wear off fast under the sun of boze, booze, bennies and grand simon. Took his hat off and let the world slip in-thought maybe the way was the way. Startled guys like desolation angels and dharma bums into thinking they could do what had never been done like some lead pipe cinch. Ran up the mountain (no Prometheus Adonis more likely who was to know) to place incense in the fatted calf body singing, singing, singing some cross between the stations of the cross and plastic nirvana (just to be cute, cute as a nine thieves). Saw Siva run the river gauntlet and leave satiated beyond compare, saw Rama too walking down Post Street in his nightshirt. Then fame got in his way, this is poor boy wanting habits Jack we are talking about remember in case you have lost the drift. Make him surly and brazen wondering why the hell if fame was fame didn’t it jump out at him when he started on his Calvary Road road, started out in dirty sneakers and crusted blue jeans, and when he jumped out of his skull and fled that mountebank river town. Fools and jesters following his every move, hiding in bushes and make that fat monk look like some holy fool, like a goof (again remember please not that street-wise New Jack City gangster poet taking liberties with language and ladies’ pocketbooks). Ah, sullen lost planet life.         

How was he to know, how was Jack to blessed know that his illegitimate children, not child, children would abandon their flea-etched sins and follow the pied piper. Follow the brethren saint mad man with the wooly beard and the incense announcing his arrival at the table singing, singing, singing and it wasn’t hosannas but some odd unspoken tune which ripped across the land for a while. Drew magnetic forces around themselves and expected the kingdom to last until end times. Hah, Jack could have given them the word on that little mistake. I am the light Jack thought and then he faded from the scene into utter darkness those unwashed, unloved, unspoken for illegitimate children to lay waste to the desert for forty years. Jesus         

Robbing The Rich To Give To The Poor-The Real Story Behind The Robin Hood Legend-With Errol Flynn’s “The Adventures Of Robin Hood” (1938) In Mind

Robbing The Rich To Give To The Poor-The Real Story Behind The Robin Hood Legend-With Errol Flynn’s “The Adventures Of Robin Hood” (1938) In Mind      

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

The Adventures Of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Haviland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, 1938

Some legends are all baloney, so much hot air. The legend of Robin Hood (who worked under many aliases a few of which have come down in history depending on what scam he was working out and which seem verifiable-Bob Sherwood, Robert Wood, John Hood, Jack Woodson) is the max daddy of one strain of the legend genre. The “rob from the rich, give to the poor” stuff which has had many progenies since his time coming through John of Gaunt to Jim Wiggins to Sam Portage down to Pretty Boy Floyd made famous by Woody Guthrie (and debunked by no less a “New West” authority than Larry McMurtry) to Pretty James Preston in the early 1960s. As usual, and the case of Pretty James Preston, comes to mind since he robbed banks and other places in broad daylight, near the hometown where I grew up, this is all hogwash. Oh, Pretty James might have left a fifty- cent tip at some diner (probably his dead ass way to impress some sullen waitress) or given his used clothing to Goodwill or the Salvation Army (both places where he was well known when he was down on his luck) but the lies that he paid rents for people who lived in the projects, a place where he grew up, brought hundreds gallons of milk for the kids at the elementary school he had gone to, or bought an automobile for the priests up at Sacred Heart are just that. Lies. A fairy tale made up by Scott Lewis a writer for the North Adamsville Ledger who knew Pretty James and essentially acted as a press agent for him.              

Let’s get back to the max daddy, this Robin Hood, or whatever his name was which considering this is all the stuff of legend probably is not his real name although a Sir Robert Woodson did own a lot of land and was some honcho after helping Richard II aka the Lion-Hearted take back his throne way back in the 12^th century around the time the legend got started. The Woodson tax rolls and home court records are still extant, and they show he taxed his peasant land-holders, his “employees” more heavily than other landowners in the area. Had more of these peasants on the rack for simple crimes than any other, more than a guy named Sir Guy Gilroy who was supposedly the local bad baron before Robert took over. Since we can date the legends from this time and this location it is not far-fetched to say no way that this guy was giving to the poor anything but cold porridge and steel. In short, a rather fitting forbear for Pretty James Preston.    

As everybody knows, or should know, legends become legends through repetition, usually oral but in the modern ages through print and eventually through film which is where we are today. This film review of Errol Flynn’s 1938 portrayal of this Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood is a classic modern case of puffing up this “good guy” legend for modern generations just as Woody Guthrie gussied up the murderous Pretty Boy Floyd back in the 1930s as well. Here is how the thing spirals out of control for yet another time.  

King Richard II of England, nominally a Christian, was seriously into leading crusades against the infidels, the Moslems, in the Middle East as much for the bounty as for the faith (sound familiar). On his way back from this trip he was taken prisoner by some geek king in Vienna, an enemy. That detention led his younger brother Prince John, played by Claude Rains last seen in this space walking arm and arm with Humphrey Bogart into the mist looking for a beautiful friendship after letting Victor Lazlo with wife Ilsa leave on the last plane to Lisbon to lead the anti-fascist struggle in Europe, to plot to take his shot at the empty throne. Naturally he needed allies, allies like Sir Guy Gilroy, played by Basil Rathbone last seen in this space smoking high-grade dope with his dear friend Doc Watson in the endless 1940s Sherlock Holmes film series, who were not going along for free. The needed money coming from the hides of every peasant free-holder, tradesmen or servant.    

Of course the money kept rolling in but as to be expected the masses took unkindly to this gouging. Including a free-booter, a border ruffian, a robber, who has come down to us as Robin Hood, played by Errol Flynn who has never before graced this publication. He and his gang played havoc with the roads around Sherwood Forest and gained a pretty penny from whoever passed by-there are no records however to show what he did, or did not do with the dough, other than later when he got his land grants and other rights from the king and gouged his peasants as savagely as Prince John and Sir Guy ever did. Made them take it too since he was a “liberator”

This Robin Hood though made a serious decision that would in the end pay off-go with Prince John and face the hangman or some such unpleasantries or wait on the possible return of King Richard II. He opted for the latter and essentially waged guerilla warfare against Johnny, his barons and their hangers-on.  Made Johnny scream bloody murder and put the swash-buckling blade to Sir Guy. Both events paved the way to getting Richard his throne back, paved the way for Robin Hood to become the richest and greediest landowner in England maybe Wales too. Of course, there is no church record of such a marriage but in the movie Robin weds and beds some ward of the king, Lady Marian, played by Olivia de Haviland also gracing these pages for the first time. That my friends is the stuff of legends and here is the hard part to take-the legend is so engrained that no matter what anybody does to refute the stuff it is in vain. Still Robin Hood’s reputation is all hooey.        

The Kornilov Coup and the Bolsheviks’ Fight for Power (Quote of the Week)

The Kornilov Coup and the Bolsheviks’ Fight for Power (Quote of the Week)

Workers Vanguard No. 1117	8 September 2017

TROTSKY

LENIN

The Kornilov Coup and the Bolsheviks’ Fight for Power

(Quote of the Week)

In August 1917, Russian general Lavr Kornilov launched a military coup to overthrow the bourgeois Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky and sweep away the soviets (workers, soldiers and peasants councils). Both the soviets and the Provisional Government emerged following the February Revolution that toppled the tsarist monarchy amid the interimperialist First World War. In a letter to the Bolshevik Central Committee, V.I. Lenin underlined that in mobilizing to stop Kornilov’s forces, the Bolsheviks must not give any political support to the Provisional Government, which included leading members of the Mensheviks and petty-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionaries. Lenin’s struggle was essential to winning the mass of the proletariat to the fight for soviet power and the victory of the October Revolution.

Even now we must not support Kerensky’s government. This is unprincipled. We may be asked: aren’t we going to fight against Kornilov? Of course we must! But this is not the same thing; there is a dividing line here, which is being stepped over by some Bolsheviks who fall into compromise and allow themselves to be carried away by the course of events.

We shall fight, we are fighting against Kornilov, just as Kerensky’s troops do, but we do not support Kerensky. On the contrary, we expose his weakness. There is the difference. It is rather a subtle difference, but it is highly essential and must not be forgotten....

It would be wrong to think that we have moved farther away from the task of the proletariat winning power. No. We have come very close to it, not directly, but from the side. At the moment we must campaign not so much directly against Kerensky, as indirectly against him, namely, by demanding a more and more active, truly revolutionary war against Kornilov.... We must relentlessly fight against phrases about the defence of the country, about a united front of revolutionary democrats, about supporting the Provisional Government, etc., etc., since they are just empty phrases. We must say: now is the time for action; you S.R. and Menshevik gentlemen have long since worn those phrases threadbare. Now is the time for action; the war against Kornilov must be conducted in a revolutionary way, by drawing the masses in, by arousing them, by inflaming them (Kerensky is afraid of the masses, afraid of the people). In the war against the Germans, action is required right now; immediate and unconditional peace must be offered on precise terms. If this is done, either a speedy peace can be attained or the war can be turned into a revolutionary war; if not, all the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries remain lackeys of imperialism.

—V.I. Lenin, “To the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.” (30 August 1917)

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO-THE FOUNDATION OF MODERN COMMUNISM-A Book Review

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO-THE FOUNDATION OF MODERN COMMUNISM-A Book Review

BOOK REVIEW

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, KARL MARX AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS, PENQUIN CLASSICS: NEW EDITIONS, NEW YORK, 2002

If you are a revolutionary, a radical or merely a liberal activist you must come to terms with the theory outlined in the Communist Manifesto. Today’s political activists are obviously not the first to face this challenge. Radicals, revolutionaries and liberals have had to come to terms with the Manifesto at least since 1848, when it was first published. That same necessity; perhaps surprisingly to some given the changes in the political landscape since then, is true today. Why surprisingly? On the face of it, given the political times, it would appear somewhat absurd to make such a claim about the necessity of coming to terms with the overriding need for the revolutionary overturn of the capitalist order outlined in the Manifesto. It, however, is.

With the collapses of the Soviet Union and the Soviet-influenced Eastern European states about fifteen years ago, which were supposedly based on Marxist concepts, one would think that Marxism was a dead letter. But hear me out. Even the less far-sighted apologists for the international capitalist order are now worrying about the increasing gap between rich and poor, not only between the so-called first and third worlds but also within the imperial metropolitan centers themselves. Nowhere is that more evident that in the United States where that gap has dramatically increased over the last thirty years. Thus, despite the carping of the ‘death of communism’ theorists after the decisive capitulation of international Stalinism in the early 1990’s, an objective criterion exists today to put the question posed by the ongoing class struggle and of the validity of a materialist concept of history back on the front burner.

Whether one agrees with the Marxian premises about the need for revolution and for a dialectical materialist conception of the workings of society or not one still must, if for no other reason that to be smart about the doings of the world, confront the problem of how to break the stalemate over where human history is heading. 'Globalization' has clearly demonstrated only that the 'race to the bottom' inherent in the inner workings of capitalism is continuing at full throttle. Moreover, the contradictions and boom/bust cycles of capitalism have not been resolved. And those results have not been pretty for the peoples of the world.

Experience over the last 160 years has shown that those who are not armed with a materialist concept of history, that is, the ability to see society in all its workings and contradictions, cannot understand the world. All other conceptual frameworks lead to subjectivist idealism and utopian concepts of social change, at best. One may ultimately answer the questions posed by the Manifesto in the negative but the alternatives leave one politically defenseless in the current one-sided international class war.

So what is the shouting over Marxism, pro and con, all about? In the middle of the 19th century, especially in Europe, it was not at all clear where the vast expansion and acceleration of industrial society was heading. All one could observe was that traditional society was being rapidly disrupted and people were being uprooted, mainly from the land, far faster than at any time in previous history. For the most part, political people at that time reacted to the rise of capitalism with small plans to create utopian societies off on the side of society or with plans to smash the industrial machinery in order to maintain an artisan culture (the various forms of Ludditism). Into this chaos a young Karl Marx stepped in, and along with his associate and co-thinker Friedrich Engel, gave a, let us face it, grandiose plan for changing all of society based on the revolutionary overthrow of existing society.

Marx thus did not based himself on creation of some isolated utopian community but rather took the then current level of international capitalist society as a starting point and expanded his thesis from that base. Now that was then, and today still is, a radical notion. Marx, however, did not just come to those conclusions out of the blue. As an intellectual (and frustrated academian) he took the best of German philosophy (basically from Hegel, then the rage of German philosophical academia), French political thought and revolutionary tradition especially the Great French Revolution of the late 1700’and English political economy.

In short, Marx took the various strands of Enlightenment thought and action and grafted those developments onto a theory, not fully formed at the time, of how the proletariat was to arise and take over the reins of society for the benefit of all of society and end class struggle as the motor force of history. Unfortunately, given the rocky road of socialist thought and action over the last 160 years, we are, impatiently, still waiting for that new day.

In recently re-reading the Manifesto this writer was struck by how much of the material in it related, taking into account the technological changes and advances in international capitalist development since 1848, to today’s political crisis of humankind. Some of the predictions and some of the theory are off, no question, particularly on the questions of the relative staying power of capitalism, the relative impoverishment of the masses, the power of the nation-state and nationalism to cut across international working class solidarity and the telescoping of the time frame of capitalist development but the thrust of the material presented clearly speaks to us today. Maybe that is why today the more far-sighted bourgeois commentators are nervous at the reappearance of Marxism in Western society as a small but serious current in the international labor movement. Militant leftists can now argue- Stalinism (the horrendous distortion of Marxism) never again, to the bourgeois commentators' slogan of - socialist revolution, never again.

As a historical document one should read the Manifesto with the need for updating in mind. The reader should nevertheless note the currency of the seemingly archaic third section of the document where Marx polemicized against the leftist political opponents of his time. While the names of the organizations of that time have faded away into the historical mist the political tendencies he argued against seem to very much analogous to various tendencies today. In fact, in my youth I probably argued in favor of every one of those tendencies that Marx opposed before I was finally won over to the Marxian worldview. I suggest that not only does humankind set itself the social tasks that it can reasonably perform but also that when those tasks are not performed there is a tendency to revert to earlier, seemingly defeated ideas, of social change. Thus the resurgent old pre-Marxian conceptions of societal change have to be fought out again by this generation of militant leftists. That said, militant leftists should read and reread this document. It is literarily the foundation document of the modern communist movement. One can still learn much from it. Forward.

Revised September 26, 2006