Everybody Loves A Con Man (Or Woman)-With Richard Gere’s “The Hoax” In Mind

Everybody Loves A Con Man (Or Woman)-With Richard Gere’s “The Hoax” In Mind  

DVD Review

By Book Critic Zack James

The Hoax, starring Richard Gere

Everybody loves a con man (or at the headline states con woman as well although there tend to be fewer of them in the deep rich history of this art form). Everybody that is except the guy (or gal) being conned. That egg on the face person most definitely does not love a con although he or she gets what they deserve in my book. I have seen some beautiful work in my time. The time when Eddie Murray took some hungry greedy stockbroker for a cool million when a million was something on non-existent stock, nada. Or that time when Conrad Vedt a seemingly mild mannered non-entity took the local syndicate for five mil and got away with it (although he did spent some serious time looking over his shoulder before the coast was clear). The big one though at least the one I was close to, knew some of the players, was when Jack Kiley took down a couple of high-end Las Vegas gamblers for something like ten million all by himself. The stuff of legends. And that brings us to the film under review the rough film adaptation of writer Clifford Irving’s book about his big time literary scam of the so-called billionaire when a billion was serious money Howard Hughes “autobiography” The Hoax. (Although the thought occurs to me why would you believe what a con artist has written about himself-oh well.)  

Clifford Irving, played by Richard Gere, understood the first rule of the con-go big or don’t go at all. It is not worth the time or energy to do the con for chicken feed although I have known back in the old Acre section of my growing up town North Adamsville guys to do cons for chicken feed. A serious con like the one Irving tried to pull for a million bucks and maybe more if things had worked out on a well-known if reclusive public figure working the literary scam which meant bucking a high-end publishing company also meant possible jail time if the thing went south on him. Which in the end as everybody now knows it did dragging his wife and his closest collaborator down with him in the gutter-into jail time.       

       

Still you have to like the brass of the guy taking a shot at immortality in the con artist pantheon-a place not for the faint-hearted. First he had to get a big enough target for his appetites which seemed to narrow down to Howard Hughes for no better reason than he saw his name on a magazine cover and figured he could use that notorious reclusiveness of Hughes’ to work his magic. Of course the second rule of the con is to talk fast on your feet and be plausible which Irving did with relish starting with his agent and working up the food chain to the big-time publishing company executives. The dicey part or one of the dicey parts was that the potential publishers advised by their platoon of lawyers were going to be looking for some proof and a lot of the film dealt with working around that problem. But see the third rule of the con or maybe it really is the first rule once you get a bead on human nature as it has evolved over the last few millennia is to understand how to play to a  little greed or some vanity advantage over your competitors. Bingo here. 

The other dicey part which in the end did Irving and his compadres in was the blow-back from the super security conscious Hughes empire.  Irving almost had it made but just couldn’t work out that last kink about how to grab the dough-the fatal check-which needed to be cashed with Hughes’ name on it. Tough break. Yeah, everybody loves a con. Conrad Vedt, Jack Riley and Eddie Murray would have been proud.   

Once Again On The - 75th Anniversary (2017) Of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman’s “Casablanca” -

Once Again On The - 75^th Anniversary (2017) Of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman’s “Casablanca” -

By Bart Webber

I have spent much ink this year starting almost at the beginning of the year writing about the classic black and white film Casablanca a staple at every retro-film locale including the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts where I first saw it with a “hot date” back in the late 1960s. A date who did not mind going on a cheap date (hell the admission was about a dollar maybe two) when I told her what we would be seeing. (Somehow she had asked her mother about the film and so was intrigued about this hot on-screen romance during wartime between Rick and Ilsa.) That movie coupled with a quick after film stop at equally cheap Harvard Square Hayes Bickford for coffee (always an iffy proposition depending on when the stuff was brewed also iffy) and some kind of pastry that had been sitting on the stainless steel dessert shelves for who knows how long got me away without having to call “dutch treat.” Got me as well another six months of very nice dates so my memories of that gorgeous film with the six million quotable and unforgettable lines from “play it again, Sam” (Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa request to Humphrey Bogart  Rick’s main entertainment provider Dooley Wilson to play the sentimental As Time Goes By) to “We will always have Paris” (when Rick responds to Ilsa’s bewilderment that he is letting her take that last plane to Lisbon with those wicked letters of transit provided him to her husband Czech liberation leader Victor Laszlo so he  can continue to do his work against the night-takers running the world in those days) are still pristine.              

I am not the only one who is crazy for this movie since I am enclosing a link to an interview done by Terry Gross on her Fresh Air show on NPR with film historian Noah Isenberg on  the making of the classic Hollywood film in his new book, We'll Always Have Casablanca. " Needless to say when I get my greedy little hands on that item I will be reviewing it in this space. This guy has me beaten six ways to Sunday with what he knows about that film. Kudos.  

http://www.npr.org/2017/10/11/557101633/75-years-later-a-look-at-the-life-legend-and-afterlife-of-casablanca

Spanish Is The Loving Tongue-Those Sparkling Eyes Of Hers-From The World War II Rationing Vaults- Armida’s “The Girl From Monterey” (1943)-A Film Review

Spanish Is The Loving Tongue-Those Sparkling Eyes Of Hers-From The World War II Rationing Vaults- Armida’s “The Girl From Monterey” (1943)-A Film Review   

By Lance Lawrence

The Girl From Monterrey, starring Armida, 1943

WTF. (This is a family-friendly publication for what it is worth although we have learned from recent experience that the demographic the new site manager Greg Green, more on him in  a minute as the source of “WTF,” was trying to reach with his silly experiment of, for example, having grown women and men review cinematic portrayals of Marvel/DC comic characters like Captain America to draw the young in a cohort that doesn’t give a, ah, fig for on-line blogger-induced publications. Try Instagram brother, try Instagram as my eight-year old granddaughter could have told Greg and avoided a near civil war among the writers, young and old, and a revolt by the real readership base-the remnants, the best part of the Generation of ’68 past its flower. So WTF it is although that same eight-year old granddaughter was hip to that expression about two years ago and so we are not protecting virgin ears.) I recently reviewed a boxing film from the 1930s starring a triad of classic stars from that period like Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart who went through their paces in Kid Galahad (not to be confused with the later Elvis 1960s production under the same title) with Edward G. trying finally get a champ but who if he lived would have gotten a brother-in-law plus champ despite his being overly protective of his younger sister who was crazy for the big guy.

I made a big point there of detailing my own street-fighting episodes cut short by the realization that if anything I was more a lover than a fighter but in any case not a fighter, not even a street fighter much less getting in the ring with anybody. I made the even bigger point that despite that youthful folly I never was much of a fan of boxing, of the art of the fist, of pugilism. Yet our own illustrious site manager (the same one who made me go on and on with the “dirty language” disclaimer so you know what I was up against) forced me to do the honors.

That was then but on the basis of that review, the perverse basis if you ask me of that light-headed experience he decided that I was to be at least temporarily the in-house “boxing expert” and review the film of the headline-The Girl From Monterrey. The “how” of that particular choice bears some explanation. Apparently Greg was going through the archives or had remembered from his days as editor at American Film Gazette that during World War II Hollywood, then the sole world capital for film production spewed out as much patriotic war material as was possible without destroying every film produced in that period. Somehow he latched onto this short war-induce film which featured a couple of boxers who would before the end of the film wind up in uniform and so there you have it, why I am reviewing this essentially propaganda piece.

But hold on there is a back story to that as well. This year, 2018, commemorates on November 11^th the 100^th anniversary of Armistice Day, the day when the bloody slaughter, the bloody destruction of the flower of the European youth ended (the supposed “war to end all wars” was the tag to get guys to fight the freaking thing-another WTF). A couple of stringers here, a couple of Vietnam veterans, Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris have been spear-heading the efforts, via their memberships in the anti-war Veterans for Peace group to publicize the commemoration of that event in this space. Greg’s “find” dove-tails with that commemoration since this production was a “talkie” and because few World War I film productions still exist I am the messenger.                       

Well I have stalled enough I might as well get to this short sad tale of a film which at least had the mercy of being short probably due to the rationing of chemicals for the war effort. This one started out south of the border, started in Mexico when that was not a dirty word and immigrants were welcome- to harvest the fields. Started with a spitfire, sparking eyes, Spanish is the loving tongue dancer-singer in an up-scale cantina named Lita, played by never heard of before but well-known then Armida. This feisty and short, unbelievably short so that say Alan Ladd would feel tall next to her had made it clear to management that she was not available to sit with the customers after doing her stage chores- and got bounced, or quit depending on whose story you believe, once the manager made one too many demands on her in that department. What is a girl to do though when she is bounced.  Enter younger brother Baby, a good=looking middleweight, who had quit college to enter the ring, to become a pugilist and who was raring to go in that ill-sought profession. Lita decided against all good judgment to “manage” him after a few gringo boxing promoters sitting in that cantina watching Lita go through her paces saw Baby flatten the Mexican contender who made one too many advances on Lita.

Shift scenes to New York (presumably with all papers in order and not having creeped in via a borderless wall) where Baby got some early cream puff fights working his way up the food chain. But Lita is a singer and dancer, remember that spitfire and sparkling eyes in that profession and so she found work in a nightclub where she and Baby and those nefarious promoters went go for entertainment. Lita did a number and got hired. Baby got all hung up on a gringa torch singer who probably was too big for him-too cutthroat, too wise for this sap despite his pugilistic prowess. Lita in her turn gravitated toward another good-looking middleweight, the champ, a guy named Jerry does it really matter his last name since he was nothing but a “bicycle-rider anyway, a dancer in the ring tiring out his opponent before the knock-down on canvas.      

Baby was making time with this Flossie the floosy and Lita with the chump champ while Baby worked his way up. As you can guess two good-looking middleweights are bound to crash into each other and so it goes when an American promoter gives the high sign to Flossie to get Baby to sign the contact to fight Jerry. Lita is torn but things work out well since Baby knocked Jerry on his ass for the championship and then both men show up in the uniforms of their respective countries. Ho hum. What was not ho hum was Lita’s stage presence where she sang some songs I had never heard were in the American Songbook. Check these out on YouTube the jumping Jive, Brother, Jive,  Last Night’s All Over and the title The Girl From Monterey. Yeah check those sparkling eyes as Armida goes through her paces.  

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Lloyd Bridges’ “The Big Deadly Game” (1954)

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Lloyd Bridges’ “The Big Deadly Game” (1954)

DVD Review

By Film Editor Emeritus Sam Lowell

The Big Deadly Game, starring Lloyd Bridges (Jeff’s father okay when he needed dough I guess and hit the bricks in London and Spain), Simone Silva, Hammer Productions, 1954

Recently in a review of the British film Terror Street (distributed in Britain as 36 Hours) and subsequently another British entry The Black Glove (distributed in Britain as Face The Music probably a better title since it involved a well-known trumpet player turning from searching for that high white note everybody in his profession is looking for to amateur private detective once a lady friend is murdered and he looked for all the world like the natural fall guy) I noted that long time readers of this space know, or should be presumed to know, of my long-standing love affair with film noir. Since any attentive reader will note this is my third such review of B-film noirs in the last period I still have the bug.

I went on to mention some of the details to my introduction to the classic age of film noir in this country in the age of black and white film in the 1940s and 1950s when I would sneak over to the now long gone and replaced by condos Strand Theater in growing up town North Adamsville and spent a long double feature Saturday afternoon watching complete with a stretched out bag of popcorn (or I think it is safe to say it now since the statute of limitation on the “crime” must surely have passed snuck in candy bars bought at Harold’s Variety Store on the way to the theater) some then current production from Hollywood or some throwback from the 1940s which Mister Cadger, the affable owner who readily saw that I was an aficionado who would pepper him with questions about when such and such a noir was to be featured would let me sneak in for kid’s ticket prices long after I reached the adult price stage at twelve I think it was, would show in retrospective to cut down on expenses in tough times by avoiding having to pay for first –run movies all the time. (And once told me to my embarrassment that he made more money on the re-runs than first runs and even more money on the captive audience buying popcorn and candy bars-I wonder if he knew my scam.

I mentioned in passing as well that on infrequent occasions I would attend a nighttime showing (paying full price after age twelve since parents were presumed to have the money to spring  for full prices) with my parents if my strict Irish Catholic mother (strict on the mortal sin punishment for what turned out to have been minor or venial sins after letting my older brothers, four count them, four get away with murder and assorted acts of mayhem) thought the film passed the Legion of Decency standard that we had to stand up and take a yearly vow to uphold and I could under the plotline without fainting (or getting “aroused” by the fetching femmes).

What I did not mention although long time readers should be aware of this as well was that when I found some run of films that had a similar background I would “run the table” on the efforts. Say a run of Raymond Chandler film adaptations of his Phillip Marlowe crime novels or Dashiell Hammett’s seemingly endless The Thin Man series. That “run the table” idea is the case with a recently obtained cache of British-centered 1950s film noirs put out by the Hammer Production Company as they tried to cash in on the popularity of the genre for the British market (and the relatively cheap price of production in England). That Terror Street mentioned at the beginning had been the first review in this series (each DVD by the way contains two films the second film Danger On The Wings in that DVD not worthy of review) and now the film under review under review the overblown if ominously titled The Big Deadly Game (distributed in England, Britain, Great Britain, United Kingdom or whatever that isle calls itself these Brexit days as the innocuous Third Party Risk is the third such effort. On the basis of these four viewings (remember one didn’t make the film noir aficionado cut so that tells you something right away) I will have to admit they are clearly B-productions none of them would make anything but a second or third tier rating.         

After all as mentioned before in that first review look what they were up against. For example who could forget up on that big screen for all the candid world to see a sadder but wiser seen it all, heard it all Humphrey Bogart at the end of The Maltese Falcon telling all who would listen that he, he Sam Spade, no stranger to the seamy side and cutting corners, had had to send femme fatale Mary Astor his snow white flame over, sent her to the big step-off once she spilled too much blood, left a trail of corpses, for the stuff of dreams over some damn bird. Or cleft-chinned barrel-chested Robert Mitchum keeping himself out of trouble in some dink town as a respectable citizen including snagging a girl next door sweetie but knowing he was doomed, out of luck, and had cashed his check for his seedy past taking a few odd bullets from his former femme fatale trigger-happy girlfriend Jane Greer once she knew he had double-crossed her to the coppers in Out Of The Past. Ditto watching the horror on smart guy gangster Eddie Mars face after being outsmarted because he had sent a small time grafter to his doom when prime private detective Phillip Marlowe, spending the whole film trying to do the right thing for an old man with a couple of wild daughters, ordered him out the door to face the rooty-toot-toot of his own gunsels who expected Marlowe to be coming out in The Big Sleep. How about song and dance man Dick Powell turning Raymond Chandler private eye helping big galoot Moose Malone trying to find his Velma and getting nothing but grief and a few stray conks on the head chasing Claire Trevor down when she didn’t want to be found having moved uptown with the swells in Murder, My Sweet. Those were some of the beautiful and still beautiful classics whose lines you can almost hear anytime you mention the words film noir.

In the old days before I retired I always liked to sketch out a film’s plotline to give the reader the “skinny” on what the action was so that he or she could see where I was leading them. I will continue that old tradition here (as I did with Terror Street and The Black Glove and will do in future Hammer Production vehicles to be reviewed over the coming period) to make my point about the lesser production values of the Hammer products. Lloyd Bridges is a music guy (not a trumpeter which might have given him some juices but some kind of second-string composer) who is in Spain on holiday as they say in England, Britain, the United Kingdom, or whatever when he runs into an old war buddy who seems to be in trouble. And he is since he winds up dead, very dead, for some unknown transgression. Seems that this war buddy had run afoul of an international smuggling ring centered in Spain and run by some mal hombres from the look of them and had to pay the price for his treason. Naturally clean-cut good guy Lloyd figures out what was what and the bad guys fell down, fell down hard once he put the hammer to them. Vaya con dios mal hombres.     

That is the gist of the main crime story but what this one really was about if you looked at time spent on the subject was his romance with this Spanish senorita, played by Simone Silva,  who was running a dance school, a folkloric dance school teaching the ninas how to do the old time dances and doing a pretty good job of it. So between bouts of fighting crime Lloyd was keeping company with his coy mistress.   

Better that Terror Street but not as good as The Black Glove although it can’t get pass that Blue Gardenia second tier in the film noir pantheon. Sorry Hammer.                 

Out In The Riverdale Drive-In Night-With 007 Jame Bond’s “Doctor No” (1962) In Mind-A Film Review

Out In The Riverdale Drive-In Night-With 007 Jame Bond’s “Doctor No” (1962) In Mind-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Special Guest Film Critic Bart Webber

Doctor No, starring Sean Connery, Ursala Andress, 1962

Hey, me, Bart Webber, I was the guy with the car my father’s passed down 1956 Chevy (two-toned with the classic fins that people today are ready to die if they have enough dough to grab one at some high-priced automobile auction). Usually that would mean nothing except that recently Sam Lowell, the now retired film critic in this space, called me up one night after watching, or rather re-watching after a fifty-five year hiatus, the film adaptation of Ian Fleming’s 007 James Bond thriller, Doctor No (1962) the first of what would appear to be an endless number of sequels and asked me to do a review (after he sent over the DVD for me to watch). See Sam, the Scribe, Jack, Frankie, Alex and I watched that film the first time in my car, in that 1956 Chevy two-toned, cherry red and white, at the now long gone and converted to an open air park along the river Riverdale Drive-In. (For those who don’t know what a drive-in is or are too lazy to look it up on Wikipedia that was an open air place where you went in a car to see movies on a big screen and heard through a speaker places athwart the driver’s side care window, usually a double feature and cartoon with intermissions in between to stock up on food and drink from the refreshment stand at night, the first feature starting at dusk so sometimes hard to see). A cheap way for a family or more importantly in the time frame I am speaking of cheap date with lots of promise at least starting out of foggy car windows before the night was over (and an inability to tell mother what the plot of the movie had been about.       

But the night I am talking about was not such a cheap date night although as usual with the gang who hung around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor some dreams of girls and foggy car windows entered into it. But mainly we were there that night to see this Doctor No film because the Scribe (the late Peter Paul Markin who was the guy who had more zany ideas than anybody else)  had, as usual read the Ian Fleming book and had heard that this guy Sean Connery who was playing the lead character 007 James Bond was very cool. Who am I kidding we went because we also heard through that same Scribe that this cool chick Ursala Andress was going  to be running around half-naked in some scenes. Hey we were sixteen, maybe seventeen years old, without dough, and most of the time dateless because of the no dough so what did you expect. If we ran into some real live girls at the refreshment stand so much the better.    

So that was where the car deal came in (and sometimes I think I got to be in the Tonio crowd because I was the only one with a car and I am sure that was the Scribe’s motivation but he is no longer around to confirm the truth of that statement. Here is how the thing played out that night and many other drive-in nights. This little con courtesy of the Scribe who was a combination saint, brain and con artist all wrapped into one explosive package. He figured out, or maybe I had better say he had heard about this scam to get into the drive-in cheap. Since those of us who lived in the Acre section of North Adamsville where Tonio’s was located were always hard pressed for dough we would listen to any scheme that would get us what we wanted. In those days before I think the drive-in theater owners got wise and started charging by the carload there used to be individual admissions. To get around this problem the Scribe suggested that a few of us, maybe three of the six who went that night hide on the floor of the back seat and in the trunk of car. That way we would only have to pay for three admissions and would have money enough for some stuff at the refreshment stand (and give us reason to go there to check out the girls. This idea always worked and I have often wondered why until one day I figured out that the ticket-taker could have given a fuck about who was in the car all he or she cared about was moving the line of cars forward.    

See though the Acre girls would do the same thing although maybe they wouldn’t throw somebody in the trunk. Beautiful right and that is where the boy-girl mingle would get started and wind up at the refreshment stand. Needless to say single daters didn’t do this, at least I never did on cheap date night. Needless to say as well that we Acre kids, boys and girls alike, had our own meeting section far away from the parents with their young kids (conversely what young parents would subject their sweet charges to the bombast of high school mad monks and sisters).   

Frankly I don’t remember what happened on the boy-girl front that night because I was enthralled by the film. I had always liked action adventure films so this was like catnip to me. Funny after a fifty-five hiatus this one unlike a couple of other later Sean Connery-starring Bond vehicles that I have watched, re-watched, does not seem dated. Certainly the theme of good guys battling evil genius bad guys who want to take over the world is as fresh as today’s headlines.

Here’s the play as Sam Lowell always likes to say when he is giving his take on the plotline. A British intelligence agent in Jamaica is missing and presumed dead and government paid killer agent James Bond, Sean Connery’s role is sent to find out why and why as well why there is some interference with the booming American rocket program then in its early stages. Once landed Bond is on the case and finds out that some serious skullduggery is happening in an off-shore island by the nefarious evil genius bad guy Doctor No and his minions. So Bond has to see what is what on that island. As it turned out this No was some kind of nuclear physics freak who had associated himself with a criminal syndicate first in Tong China and later the nefarious SPECTRE international crime organization. While discovery all this information about what was being produced on the island up pops this Honey, really a honey, nothing but a fox as we used to say played by Ursala Andress who looked just fine in skimpy bathing suits. While this pair were are playing footsies they were captured by Doctor No’s security apparatus. Bond and Honey took a beating for a while but in time-honored good guy tradition the bad guys must take a fall-and they do. No is no more. At the end Bond and Honey make their getaway on a small craft and that was that.

So you can see why I was involved in the film to the exclusion of checking out the girls at the refreshment stand that night. When we left we only had four guys since Jack and Frankie had hit pay-dirt with a couple of girls who said they were bored by the movie and had only come because their girlfriends needed to fill up their car for that cheapjack caper at the admission booth. Nice, right.      

How World War II Was Won-With Cary Grant’s “Kiss Them For Me” (1957) In Mind

How World War II Was Won-With Cary Grant’s “Kiss Them For Me” (1957) In Mind

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

  

Kiss Them For Me, starring Cary Grant, Jayne Mansfield, Suzy Parker. 1957

In wartime all emotions, plans, ideas are kind of pushed together and what would ordinarily be a slow-moving train turns into a supersonic airplane ride. That was certainly the case in the matter of love and marriage as the film under review of Cary Grant’s Kiss Them For Me  film adaptation of the 1945 play brings to the fore. And World War II the time frame of this cinematic effort, the time of the Generation of ‘68’s, my parents, the parents of today’s baby boomer generation was no exception. That wartime was filled with all kinds of hasty marriages some which lasted forever as in my own parents’ case and some didn’t (and some lasted forever shouldn’t have either).  (That “kiss them for me’ by the way as a symbol of the time no mere happenstance for there is a very famous photograph taken in Time Square, New York City of a sailor in a deep embrace all out kiss with some dame whom he may or may not have known, probably not, once V-E Day was declared to end the war in the European Theater).         

Of course even in a romantic comedy as here there is a need to be solemn about the dedication of those who rolled back the night-takers in the European and Pacific wars not all of them who made it and laid down their heads in some watery or mud splattered grave. Here Cary Grant and companions are gadabout Navy fliers out in the Pacific War, the part fought against the Japanese, who by daring-do get ride from Honolulu circa 1944 to San Francisco for some well-deserved shore leave. All of this done in a normal smooth as silk Cary Grant style who is a guy with a fast glib comic tongue ad who butter would not melt in his mouth. One they get into Frisco town it is party time as long as they can hold out. Of course along the way they have to deal with the fact that they are under orders to report to a medical facility over in Oakland which would and will crab their style. And along the way Cary and pals are figuring out ways to avoid that situation like the plague.    

Here’s where the love and romance if you can get it comes in. Cary is smitten by this Gwentyth, played by fetching ex-model Suzy Parker, a good-looking take her anywhere proudly red-head who probably was the dream of any service guy who wanted to settle down to a nice nest after the war. Well she is already “spoken for” by a well-heeled (and heel) war contractor who is nothing but trouble for Cary and the boys. But all Cary has to do is put on that smooth as silk charm and bingo he and she, they are an “item” all in a couple of days. Yeah, the times were like that. But in the normal patriotic twist that hot affair will have to be put on hold for the duration since the boys rejecting a soft stateside assignment head back to the danger to finish what they had started.  Not the best Cary Grant vehicle but adequate.      

[Somewhat incongruously this film also stars blonde, very blonde, 1950s busty bombshell Jayne Mansfield who was, along with Marilyn Monroe except Jayne was a step or two down in the talent category, the epitome of World War II generation guys, my father’s generation guys, idea of a highly sexual desirable woman. Unlike the iconic Marilyn who could really though Jayne played to type the “dumb bimbo” which in this film seemed out of place. Maybe she knew somebody high up in the studio but her performance detracted from the main play-that Cary charm-and in the end serious side of war despite the on-screen antics.]            

Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon

Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon

By Seth Garth

I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7^th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.

Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles  I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)

In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.         

The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.

I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.

For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.  

So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.         

Live Fast, Steal Cars, Die Young And You Figure The Rest Of It-Nick Cage’s "Gone In Sixty Seconds" (2000)-A Film Review

Live Fast, Steal Cars, Die Young And You Figure The Rest Of It-Nick Cage’s "Gone In Sixty Seconds" (2000)-A Film Review  

DVD Review

By Josh Breslin

Gone in Sixty Seconds, starring Nick Cage, 2000

It will do no disservice to his memory that the late Peter Paul Markin, forever known in his old neighborhood as Scribe after one Frankie Riley knighted him with that title after he wrote about ten thousand words describing his, Frankie’s, exploits as leader of the corner boys in the Acre section of humble pie working-class North Adamsville that he, Scribe was the greatest “hot wire” guy I ever met. And that includes Johnny Blade, not his real name, but the name everybody knew him by up in Olde Saco in Maine where I grew up and where I hung out with him as he made his legend. I refuse to give his real name because I still owe him fifty bucks for fifty years for spilling coffee all over his 1957 two-toned, red and white, Chevy to die for passenger seat. He might still be looking for me, he was that kind of guy but the last I heard he was doing a nickel at Saw Ridge for grand theft auto when he got caught stealing a Mercedes for a guy who left him in the lurch. Something that definitely would not have happened in his prime, in the days when he could steal five cars in a row and not work up a sweat.

But enough of Johnny B. because this is about Scribe, actually it is not about him either but a strictly from nowhere film review of Nick Cage’s epic boost film Gone in Sixty Seconds where he plays the legendary Memphis Raines a guy that even I had heard of working some devilish magic out in West Coast high end luxury car heaven. I had admired his work and work ethic from afar once he retired unscathed and unrepentant. The Scribe part is important though because the film doesn’t make sense, or rather why I grabbed this assignment doesn’t make sense since while I have nothing but respect for the real Memphis Raines, the role Nick Cage made his own, I was never that car mad that I would want to write about freaking cars, or guys who loved them more than girls maybe. Although I did do a short piece on Lonesome Slim who was the greatest “chicken run” guy in the back roads of Maine who grabbed all the chicks when he went toe to toe with some reckless farm boy who lost his girl even before he put his pedal to the floor.

Here is the Scribe conundrum though, maybe two. To look at Scribe, to know him as I did when we met out in San Francisco in the Summer of Love, 1967 no way would you think this guy could open his front door without drama much less boost any car he wanted to, if he wanted to, in the days when hot-wiring cars was a lot easier than today with all the computer wrap around before you can even jimmy the door.  I didn’t know this until many years later but when I met Scribe on Russian Hill in Frisco town he was sitting in a Camaro which I though was odd for a guy who looked like your mother’s worst son nightmare “hippie.” Especially true after I asked him if he had a joint and he gave me a huge blunt telling me not to Bogart the thing which naïve as I was I didn’t know meant basically not to throw the damn thing away when I was done. That car thing was pure Scribe, who was running under the moniker Be-Bop Benny out there just then. He had hot-wired the Camaro against all probabilities in broad daylight right at the summit of the Golden Gate Bridge (I laughed when Sam, the guy who told me about this Scribe exploit, the guy was probably then still looking for it in that parking lot, maybe thinking the cops had grabbed it). The other part of the Scribe mystery was that he couldn’t drive worth a damn, got more dings in more cars than you would believe possible. Thankfully when we were on Captain Crunch’s transformed yellow school bus he had his own bus driver, a guy who was a cousin of another legendary auto guy Neal Cassady.  

But like Seth Garth, who told me once he was afraid of automobiles, afraid to be in them, likes to say enough of cutting up old touches even if it about mad monk Scribe who we all seriously still miss after he fell down young, too young. Just figure in your head that this is in honor of hot-wire Scribe, who could have been in the crew Memphis put together to grab 50, count them, fifty cars in one holy goof of a night. Probably would have had the whole thing figured in about an hour-see that was the contradiction-you wouldn’t want the guy to drive anything except maybe a tricycle, but you would give your whole share for him to plan the capers. Right up there with Memphis who like most boosters who don’t do serious time had to retire when the adrenaline rushes didn’t do it any more and the hands got a little shaky, maybe he started missing a step or two.

Car-stealing let’s call it boosting like they do in the profession, like bank-robbing, hell, like jack-rolling and like stealing kids’ milk money abhors a vacuum. Somebody will step up to be the next legend, the guy young guys talk about. That is what happened when Memphis put away his tools, went straight. Problem though was his half-ass younger brother, Kip, was the guy who wanted to be the next legend. But boosting stuff is not in the genes, DNA or whatever you call it. It is all about cool nerves and taking care of business-first. Kip fell down just like Scribe in his time did. Fucked up a boost for a hard-ass gangster named Raymond or Ralph something, a guy out of England who was looking to run the rackets stateside and was going to be pressed as thin as a pancake if Memphis didn’t come out of retirement to grab that 50- car run-and not 48, 49 either 50 or Kip was dust. Memphis might not have loved his younger brother, but blood is blood and that Raymond or Ralph whatever knew it.

Retired or active though to do a job as big as this you need a crew and need some serious inside connections to find out where the luxury cars are being held in a big city like LA. They are there in such a rich car-necessary and loved town but you have to dig them out. Memphis reassembled his old crew together and along with the remnants of Kip’s cowboys they had a team. They also had an idea that the whole thing had to be done in one night and fast because once the stolen vehicles started being reported the booster cops would be on the scent, would be dogging the whole operation. Not good.          

Game on. The night time is the right time and Memphis and his savvy crew including an ex-lover gal who got off on boosting cars and not just sitting in boss cars with some bozo showed some real skills in grabbing that first easy twenty-five just waiting to be picked off. The next twenty-five though required plenty of work-and nerves since the booster cops were hot on the trail. Finally they grabbed 49, not fifty and that Raymond or Ralph whatever said no go-short meant one dead Kip. Of course that would never happen when brother Memphis was on the case. The bad bad guy took a fall-literally and because bad guy Memphis saved a booster cop’s life he and the crew walked. Scribe showed me many of the techniques of the trade, of the art of the boost I am sure if he had been around to see the film in 2000 he would have had a max daddy critique. Pound for pound though Scribe was the greatest hot-wire guy I ever saw-no doubt.    

“Shoot Pools ‘Fast Eddie,’ Shoot Pools”-With Paul Newman’s “The Hustler” In Mind

“Shoot Pools ‘Fast Eddie,’ Shoot Pools”-With Paul Newman’s “The Hustler” In Mind

              

                             

By Lance Lawrence

“Fast Eddie” Felson was the greatest pool player to ever put chalk to stick and you had better believe that hard fact because I know from whence I speak. In most quarters, among the serious followers of the game, I, Jackie “Big Man” Gleason think that title belongs to me. Think an old tub who learned the game in Hell’s Kitchen at Jackie Kane’s dimly lit pool hall from guys who would break your knuckles if they even had seen a breath of air that you might be hustling them. I never had my knuckles broken but they also never knew when I hustled their carfare home if I had the chance. I was that raw and thought I was that good. Until “Fast Eddie” came strolling in the door one day all hungry and eager to take on “Big Man,” make a name for himself and put me on cheap street. I knew that I would take that strutting bastard down at first but I also knew deep down that whatever the “official” rankings which in those days was how much jack you took from the competition I also knew that someday I would be uttering those words that I just said to start my story about “Fast Eddie”

Maybe you never heard of “Fast Eddie,” never knew the story behind the story of how for a couple of years anyhow, maybe three, he ruled the roost, he was the king of the hill. All I know is from the first moment Eddie entered Sharkey’s Pool Hall, the place where my manager, Bart, and I hustled all comers at the sport of kings, down on 12^th Avenue in the teeming city of New York I was afraid to play him. Afraid he would damage my reputation as the king of the hill. I had never played game one against him but still I sensed something in his swagger, in his bravado that made my hands shake. Shaky hands the kiss of death in our profession.

I don’t know if I can explain that pit in my stomach feeling I am not much given to introspection a word I never heard of before the guy who I first told this story, a journalist, he called himself, and as long as he was not blowing smoke my way I believe him and if this little story ever gets published that my view of fucking hard luck sports reporters who get assigned to interview “retired” sports figure like me will improve greatly. If not, fuck it I just wanted to get the tale told and that is that. This introspection stuff, this thinking about why I had that pit in the stomach and why I worried about cheap street like a lot of other guys, Willie Hoppe, the legendary “Minnesota Fats, “Jersey Fats,” guys like that who had to hang up their hats when they magic left their when a guy like me, like “Big Man” or then “Fast Eddie” came up and took at the dingy pool hall air away. Let me try to give you an idea, okay. I was a guy, a wiseass guy no question, laughing at the idea that some two bit strong arms would miff my play, would do my knuckles in when I was in my Jake. But see I had learned the game, learned all angles and hustles by putting what they nowadays call doing the 10,000 hours of work to perfect whatever skill you were trying to perfect. I knew at any given time on any given night what I could and could not do with the rack when they spread their wings. That and maybe a cynical hustler’s sense of another man’s weaknesses (woman as far as I knew did play, play high stakes pool then at least I never ran across and who wanted to play although I ran into plenty of women was wanted to help me spend my money, and they did).

“Fast Eddie” though the minute he came in the door, the minute he put chalk to stick just had a feel for what to do. Maybe he spent about five minutes doing the work I spent those lonely 10, 000 hours and the rest was pure spirit, karma, Zen whatever the fuck you want to call it. Made me almost pee my pants when he strutted up the table all lean and hungry, a guy named Shakespeare I remember from school or maybe my father who loved the cat, told everybody to watch out for those kinds and avoid them like the plague. Yeah, strutted right up to the table knowing that I was sitting right there with my manager Bart and proceeded to run the rack without stopping to look, closing those damn blue eyes before every fucking shot. So I knew I was done except I also knew, or maybe Bart had a better handle on it just then that I would take him down the first time he wanted to challenge me. He had to be bloodied first before he took over the kingship. There was no other way. Bart and I laughed, maybe a cynical laugh, how we would skin that cat before he even knew what hit him. See young lean and hungry guys, blue eyes or not forget about the barrelful of tricks an old pro had accumulated to keep the landlord from the door.                       

In case you don’t know, and maybe some readers might not having decided to read my homage to “Fast Eddie” based on the “hook” that this was about Paul Newman the movie actor shooting big-time pool, hustling pool in the old days before Vegas, Atlantic City, Carson City started putting up money to have high dollar championships was about more that learning technique, having a vision of where the fucking balls would enter the pockets like your mother’s womb. A lot more. It was about having heart, about something that they would call Zen today but which we called “from hunger” in my day. Eddie’s too. That’s what Eddie had, that is what I sensed, what brought me to cold sweats when that swaggering son of a bitch came looking for me like I was somebody’s crippled up grandfather. It took a while, Eddie took his beatings before he understood what drove his art but he got it, got it so good that I left the game for a couple of years and went out West to hustler wealthy Hollywood moguls who loved the idea of “beating” “Big Man” Gleason at ten thousand a showing just for the sake of playing will a big time pool hustler.             

But forget about me and my troubles once Fast Eddie came through that long ago door after all this is about how the best man who ever handled a stick got to earn that title in my book. Like a lot of guys after the war, after World War II, after seeing the world in one way Eddie was ready to ditch his old life, was ready to take some chances and say “fuck you” to the nine to five world that would be death to a free spirit like him (that “free spirit” would put a few daggers in his heart before he was done but that is for later). Eddie, against my doughty frame, my big man languid frame, was a rangy kid, kind of tall, wiry, good built and Hollywood bedroom eyes like, well, like Paul Newman when he was a matinee idol making all the women, girls too, wet. Strictly “from hunger” just like in my time, the Great Depression, I had been the same before I left Minnesota for the great big lights of the city and “action.” Like I said raw and untamed but I could tell that very first time he put the stick to the green clothe he had the magic, had that something that cannot be learned but only come to the saints and those headed for the sky.           

So Eddie came in with a few thousand ready to take on the “Big Man.” While I feared this young pup I sensed that I could teach him a lesson, maybe a lesson that would hold him in good stead, maybe not, but which would at least give me enough breathing room to figure out what I would do when Eddie claimed his crown. His first mistake, a rookie error that I myself had committed was not having a partner, a manager to rein him in, to hold him back in tough times. He had some old rum dum, Charley, Billy, something like that, who cares except this rum dum was a timid bastard who couldn’t hold up his end. His end being strictly to estimate his opponent and rein the kid in when he was off his game like we all get sometimes. Me, like I said after I wised up, teamed up with Bart, Bart who knew exactly who and who was not a “loser” and who didn’t lose my money by making bad matches or bad side bets (those side bets were the cushion money that got us through hard times and many times were more than whatever we won at straight up games).      

All I am saying is that this kid’s manager did Fast Eddie wrong, let him go wild that first night when he was all gassed up to beat the Big Man. You already know that I whipped his ass or you haven’t been paying close enough attention. But that was all a ruse like I said, all kid bravado and swagger added in so it was like taking candy from a baby that first night. But I knew I was beat, beat bad in a straight up contest. What saved me that night was two things, no three. First, Fast Eddie like lots of kids figured that he could beat an old man with his hands tied behind his back and so he started his “victory lap” drinking, drinking hard high-end scotch even before the match had started. Second, he was cocky enough to declare that the only way to determine the winner was who cried “uncle” first (Bart smiled and whispered “loser” in my ear at hearing that). Third and last he had picked up this broad, some boozer and maybe a hooker named, Sandy, Susie, no, Sarah whom he was trying to impress somehow. She looked like a lost kitten but I didn’t give a damn about that just that Fast Eddie’s mind would be half on getting her down under the sheets, maybe had dreams of getting a blow job for his efforts she looked the type who was into some kinky stuff just for kicks. At least that was the way it looked at the time. As I will tell you later it was very different and I was totally wrong about the dame.          

It took almost twenty-eight hours in that dark dank smelly booze-strewn Sharkey pool hall which looked like something out of the movies’ idea of what a low rent pool hall should look like complete with low-lifes but eventually between the booze, the bravado, and the broad I took Eddie down, left him about two hundred bucks “walking around” money. Left him to cry “uncle.” Cry it for the last time. Between grabbing Fast Eddie’s money and the side bets Bart made I, we were able to lay off for a couple of months (usually after a big score that was standard practice since the one-time suckers who want to brag to the hometown folks that they played hard and fast with the Big Man and almost won scatter to the winds for a while before they inevitably come back for their well-deserved beatings). Bart said, no crowed, that he had had Fast Eddie’s number, a “loser.” Was another gone guy, forget him.  But I had seen some moves, some moves especially before the booze got the better of the kid that I could only dream of trying without looking like a rube.         

This part of the story coming up I pieced together from what Bart told me, what Sharkey had heard, and what little Fast Eddie let on when he came back at me in earnest, in that Zen state or whatever the fuck you want to call it when a guy is “walking with the king.” Eddie went into “hiding,” went licking his wounds, which in the pool world meant that he was trying to put a stake together hustling at pool halls in bowling alleys, places like that where the rubes are dying to lose a fin or double sawbuck and not cry about it. A player at the kid’s level though would have a hard time of making much scratch with the carnival-wheelers so unbeknownst to me Eddie got in touch with Bart who staked him to some dough for a big cut of the proceedings. They made money, a fair amount, but Bart, at least this is what he told me later after I pistol-whipped him before I left for Hollywood and the big beautiful suckers there figured that would just come back to me in the end because Bart still had the kid down as a loser, a big bad loser.         

This part is murkier still. Along the way on this trip that Bart and Fast Eddie took to fleece the rubes this Sarah started to get religion, started wanted to settle down with Eddie, make Eddie settle down. After I had beaten him when he was laying low he moved in with her, they got along okay until Eddie connected with Bart whom Sarah definitely did not like, I guess she was off the bottle for a while but started in again once she saw that Eddie wouldn’t give up his dream, his dream of beating the Big Man. This part is even murkier but one night Eddie was hustling some Bourbon king and Bart and Sarah were left behind to drink the night away. Somehow Bart, who except when negotiating bets and matches was a pretty smooth talker, conned Sarah who was miffed at Eddie like I said into bed. Got her to either take him around the world or let him take her anally (or he forced the issue figuring she was just a bent whore anyway he had odd sexual desires from what I was able to figure out after a few years with him). The boozy haze, the rough sex, being unfaithful to Eddie, maybe her whole fucking life marching before her left her with who knows what angry feelings. In any case that night before Eddie got home she had slit her wrists.     

This last part is not murky, not murky at all. After beating the hell out of Bart he took the bus back to New York and one night he came through Sharkey’s door and I knew I was roasted (Bart had telegramed about what had happened and told me that he would put up fifty thousand dollars against Fast Eddie’s luck). I had no choice but to play the play out. After Fast Eddie took that fifty thousand and another twenty-five that I had put up I cried “uncle.” Cried uncle and left for Hollywood and the bright lights. Left Fast Eddie to play out his string, left Eddie to “shoot pools, ‘Fast Eddie’, shoot pools.”