"Put Out The Fire In Your Head"-With The Line From Patti Griffin’s “You Are Not Alone” In Mind

"Put Out The Fire In Your Head"-With The Line From Patti Griffin’s “You Are Not Alone” In Mind

By Special Guest Writer Greg Gordon

Normally I don’t write for blog and on-line publications preferring still the hard copy route to have my work appreciated by any who would appreciate my efforts. The reason that I am writing this little comment is the editor here, my old friend Pete Markin, has asked me to comment on a line from Patti Griffin’s song You Are Not Alone where she asks her lover to “put on the fire in your head”-calm down, take it easy, be with her. I am not personally much into music so that I did not know the song, or the line from the song, nor did I know who Patti Griffin was. But the line intrigued me. Intrigued me more when Pete told me the reason that he wanted me to comment rather than take a stab at it himself since he loves the song is that he wanted my take on who among our still standing old-time from the neighborhood friends could rightfully be asked to do what the phrase asks. And he included himself in the mix so for all practical purposes he is recusing himself.

Now Pete Markin, Seth Garth, Frankie Riley, Fritz Taylor, Bart Webber, Si Lannon, Jack Callahan, Josh Breslin and about fifty other guys, from what Pete calls the Generation of ’68, whom Pete and I have come to know over the years whatever neighborhood they grew up in, mostly poor white guys like me and him, whatever achievements they have accumulated over a lifetime, whatever heartaches they have suffered as well they, we all have one thing in common. We all have since youth, maybe since, hell, maybe from the womb, had outsized wanting habits, have had the hunger. So each and every one of us one way or another could fall under the sign of “put out the fire in your head.”       

For me it has always been an outsized and maybe overblown sense that I have been under-appreciated as a writer now that Gothic detective novels, the niche I had made for myself started way back in maybe middle school when my English teacher Miss Winot encouraged me to flush out my private detective Galen Fiske, are a dime a dozen, maybe cheaper. So maybe I should chill out about it, throw water on that last dream and not to worry. That said I do not intend to go chapter and verse over every guy whom I have mentioned above but give a few words and here and there. I might as well start with Pete who has always had this thing about this woman, let’s call her Josie to give her a name whom he treated like dirt when he was young and was crazy to go to bed with every dame who gave him a second look. Leaving Josie holding the bag.

He had not seen her in about forty years, didn’t know what had become of her (although he belatedly wished her well) but nevertheless on whiskey-sodden barstool nights in some dank barroom he will inevitably bring up her name, his sins against her, and that wistful what might have been had he had the sense God gave geese. I know I have been on the stool beside him. This despite the intervening three marriages and assorted well-behaved kids who came with them. So that fire in his head has been smoldering for a long time, caused him some sweaty, dreamless nights. At this point I don’t think it will ever go out. Some things are like that.

Fritz Taylor’s fire is maybe really fire, really fire that he brought down on the heads of people in Vietnam with whom he had no quarrel, never had except his friends and neighbors at his local draft board in the days when that was the way non-enlistees got called up to military service called his ticket, gave him the ride. He spent years hiding from the “real” world with a bunch of brothers under the bridge out in Southern California trying to drink/drug/cut himself to some place of peace but that vagabond stuff never did the trick. Nor did his three marriages with a mixed bag of good and bad kids. Will still drink himself to a coma, or maybe sleep is better and yell out of nowhere An Loc (a small town/ village/hamlet which he and his men burned to the ground one awful August 1968 night). That fire too seems like an endless sleep.

Now that the reader is getting my drift, getting that maybe that Patty Griffin song, those lyrics might not be susceptible to dousing I will like I said not go through the whole litany of the fire nights among the guys. But one last case should sum things up a bit. Josh Breslin is a guy we met, those of us from the old North Adamsville neighborhood, out in the San Francisco Summer of Love, 1967 night. Josh, a little younger than us but a kindred working class guy from up in Olde Saco, Maine, was a real good-looking guy whose moniker was the Prince of Love in those moniker-filled days. Had half the girls around Golden Gate Park in something like his harem. For a while anyway. Then he got caught into the grasp of a woman we called (and will still call her here) Mustang Sally and can draw your own conclusions about why she took that name. The long and short of it was that before too long she got pregnant. Josh was set to marry her or something like that. One night she split we think with a guy named Pirate Johnny and we/he never heard from her again. So Josh, the love them and leave them Prince of Love, too would on moonless ill-begotten nights wonder out loud what had happened to his child. That after two marriages and a parcel of I am not sure what kind of kids. So maybe Patti and her song are wrong. Maybe you can’t put out the fire in your head.            

“One Johnny Rocco More Or Less Is Not Worth Dying For ” –With Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart’s “Key Largo” In Mind

“One Johnny Rocco More Or Less Is Not Worth Dying For ” –With Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart’s “Key Largo” In Mind     

By Special Guest Commentator Lance Lawrence

Here is the genesis for this commentary. I don’t normally as much as I love the old time 1940s and 1950s black and white movies do film reviews here or in other hard copy and on-line publications I write for. That was usually handled by my old friend, old neighborhood North Adamsville growing up friend, and colleague at this site Sam Lowell. The “was” part is because Sam has recently retired from the day to day fuss of film editor handing it over to our common colleague Sandy Salmon. He has taken the outlandish and over-the-top title of film editor emeritus. That has allowed him to do occasional commentary without the hassle of every impending deadline and having to watch film he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about (his, our, old-time neighborhood expression which I think is self-explanatory.)              

Sam recently had a problem having to do with the film Key Largo I am keeping in mind as I do this piece. Sandy who does not like doing old-time black and white movie reviews as a rule had asked Sam to review this film. He agreed figuring this would be an easy punt since he had always been crazy for Humphrey Bogart films and had always been half in love with foxy Lauren Bacall ever since she and Bogart steamed up the theater in the very loose film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have And Have Not. Also many years ago he had already reviewed the film and could use that as a basis for a current review. (Sam never throws anything out and of course now the  computer doesn’t have to so he probably has his first grade papers stored somewhere.) Once he had watched, no, re-watched the film though he had another idea. His angle was looking at the Humphrey Bogart character, ex-World War II soldier Frank McCloud, from the perspective of a guy who had had a hard time coming back the “real” world after the war like many guys probably did (and do so now in Iraq-Afghanistan time as well).    

That is when he thought of me, although really it is the late Peter Paul Markin always and forever known as Scribe, another North Adamsville corner boy of ours that he was really thinking about when he had that grand idea (his expression). (The late Scribe not to be confused with the administrator of this site another North Adamsville guy speaking of nepotism who took the Scribe’s name as his on-line moniker in honor of our fallen comrade.) See the Scribe after he got back from Vietnam where he had been an infantryman and had seen some pretty horrible stuff which he seldom talked about had had serious problems coming back the “real” war after his war. Had been up and down emotionally for a while out in California where he lived after he got back from Vietnam. Had once he settled down a bit (for a while) taken up the journalist’s life which he had gone to college for before he made fateful decision to drop out his sophomore year to get tangled up in the Summer of Love experience out in San Francisco in 1967 (and since he had no student deferment was subject to draft and induction into the military and therefore “fateful” is the right word).         

While working for the now long gone but then influential alternative newspaper East Bay Other the Scribe was handed a plum assignment from the editor Sally Jacobs. Handed it because he was the only Vietnam veteran, the only one with enough street “cred” to do the assignment. It seems that a whole bunch of guys were in the Scribe’s boat, had had a tough time coming back to the “real” world and had formed a “community” or better communities down in Southern California along the riverbanks, railroad tracks and under the multifarious bridges. He was assigned to tell their stories, those that wanted to talk and some did and some didn’t. Those who did formed the basis for what was called the Brothers Under The Bridge series which ran for a while in the newspaper and won the Scribe some awards and stuff.    

So what does the Scribe’s work back then have to do with Sam Lowell asking me to give my take on a guy like ex-soldier Frank McCloud. The Scribe, the logical choice, is no longer with us having succumbed to those Vietnam demons, demons which led to his addiction to cocaine as relief and another fateful and fatal decision to do drug dealing which eventually got him two slugs in the head down in Mexico when a deal went bad. Most of us who knew him count him as an uncounted casualty of the war and maybe his name should be etched in that black granite down in Washington with the 58, 000 others. But we haven’t spoken about it much of late although maybe before we pass on we should make an effort even if we have to get a black granite slab and do it up ourselves in North Adamsville Square. Since the Scribe can’t do the job Sam asked me because I too unlike him, who felt it needed a soldier to soldier touch, was a Vietnam veteran as well. Although I didn’t have as many problems as the Scribe I had my fair share in the immediate aftermath of my military discharge. I have written about those experiences extensively elsewhere so I need not repeat them here after all this is Frank McCloud’s story not mine. More importantly I have taken up the Scribe’s cudgels and written plenty about my fellow Vietnam veterans who are still haunted by that fucking war. Still haven’t come back to the “real” world even though the hobo camps are long vanished and they have been left to their own inadequate devises.

I want to describe Frank McCloud, ex-Major in the European Theater of World War II under the sign of ‘one Johnny Rocco more or less in the world isn’t worth dying for ” a classic line uttered a few times throughout the film. That refers to the villain of the piece bastard gangster Johnny Rocco, played by gangster film fixture Edward G. Robinson, deported by the federal authorities as a no account blight alien residing in Cuba but late of Chicago and the gang wars that dominated that town back in the day and how good men let guys like Johnny breathe and breed.  

      

 As the background to why soldier Frank McCloud  had taken the Greyhound bus down to the Keys, down to Key Largo at the beginning one of America land’s end. Why he was to wind up at that very spot locking horns with one Johnny Rocco probably the last thing he had expected to deal with in sunny tropical Florida. Why he had been drifting along in the post-war period after that war had taken the starch out of him, made him cynical. Why he had, sound familiar, a tough time coming back to the “real” world after slogging through the Italian campaign. See he had gone back to the old job he held before the war but just couldn’t make it make sense. Became a drifter, day worker, low rung work, a man of no fixed abode. Not quite down in the under the bridge jungle like out in post-Vietnam California but still restless and moving aimlessly.

So one day Frank decided to take that fateful bus ride down to the Keys to make sense of the life, and death, of one of the guys under his command whose grieving father, played by Lionel Barrymore, and a young done on the run wife, played by Lauren Bacall running the Largo Hotel. Supposedly this was just a courtesy call at least that was what he told one of Johnny’s boys, guys like Johnny always travelled with a “don’t give a fuck” entourage when he was told by that guy there was no room for him in the inn. Then the damn hurricane winds started picking up and that tidy metaphor-filled event would blow the lid off Frank’s duel with the real world.      

Enter Johnny, no, enter a snoopy cop who was looking for a couple of wild-eyed Seminoles who fled the coop on him and sought safe harbor at the hotel. That copper after taking a beating took a couple to the heart by dear Johnny just to prove he had not lost the old touch.  Along the way Frank had chances to show some of the bravery he had shown in war but he was no longer the knight-errant going after bad guys for other guys who would not give him a fair shake. That when he said it all, made it clear the, his post-war world would be every man and woman for his or herself. That shocked that dead G.I.s people, that broken down old man and that fetching wife who had heard better things about Frank from that son-husband’s letters but that was that.

Now is the time to tell why undesirable alien Johnny Rocco was in some stinking off-season deadbeat hotel facing down hurricane winds and playing with fire-power. He was trying to pass paper, trying to unload counterfeit money for dimes on the dollar to a rival gangster and his confederates. This hole-in-the-wall hotel was the meeting place for the exchange which actually happened despite the hurricane coming to blow all the people all away. Problem (beside the sheriff showing up and finding his copper deputy washed up by hurricane) was the big yacht he arrived on had been taken to a safe harbor by the skipper. No boat. No boat to flee back that ninety or so miles to friendly Havana.    

      

Well almost no boat. See among his skills our man Frank had been an expert sailor, had been so since he was a kid. He made the mistake of telling one of Johnny’s boys that fact when he was helping to secure the hotel’s boat against the hurricane blow. So naturally Johnny latched onto the Frank-boat idea as the way to get him, his boys, and that ill-gotten dough back to Cuba. Johnny had taken the measure of the man, had seen that Frank had that beaten down look a lot of returning soldiers had after finding all the patriotic stuff,  all the making the world safe against the night-takers from guys like Hitler and Mussolini down to punk gangster Johnny Rocco was a lot of hooey. Johnny’s entreaty picking up on what Frank had said previously that after all what was it to small guy Frank McCloud whether a putting a guy like Johnny out of commission was worth breaking a sweat for played its part. After a couple of threats to put Frank on the rack and to the disappointment of that disillusioned old man and that comely daughter-in-law he consented.        

You never know what will push a man’s buttons, and what won’t. Given a handy pistol filched from Johnny by the gangster’s moll, Gaye, seemed to have put life back into Frank, got him thinking maybe another small fight against the night-takers was in order. In the end there would now be no brothers under the bridge fate for our boy. It was a thing of beauty to watch as Frank totally outmaneuvered Johnny and his four confederates, one overboard with a nice turning maneuver, another bang-bang, a third bang-bang, ditto the fourth. Then the inevitable mano a mano with evil Johnny. Johnny Too Bad. Johnny gone to push up the daisies. Yeah, you never know what will push a man’s buttons. Bring him back to the “real” world. I wished the Scribe could have figured that one out.         

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Dane Clark’s “Paid To Kill” (1954)

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Dane Clark’s “Paid To Kill” (1954)

DVD Review

By Film Editor Emeritus Sam Lowell

Paid To Kill, starring Dane Clark, 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 the plot 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 to take the big step-off for it) 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 fourth such review of B-film noirs in the last period I still have the bug.

I went on to mention in that review some of the details of 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). I would watch 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 in church led by the priest exhorting to sin no more 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 using faded American stars and people the things with English actors also probably cheaply paid). 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 Paid To Kill (distributed in England, Britain, Great Britain, United Kingdom or whatever that isle calls itself these Brexit days as the innocuous Five Days is the fourth such effort. On the basis of these five 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 life, 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. Or finally, tall lanky and deceptive private eye Dane Jones chasing an elusive black box ready to explode the world being transported across Europe by evil incarnate if gorgeous Marla Sands in European Express. 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. Dane Clark is a cut every corner businessman who thought he had dough backing him up on a merger but which fell through, for the moment anyway. He believed he was ruined and was facing the big axe from his board of directors over in Merry Olde England. Trying to spare his head-over-heels in love with her wife the agony of his downfall he contracts with his long-time but envious pal to kill him-a hire for murder on himself and the wife collects the insurance. Nice right.      

Well it would be nice if that buddy hadn’t somehow disappeared and that dough backing hadn’t finally come through and now he could make things right. Somebody is taking great efforts to kill him nevertheless. Finally he and his trusting head-over-heels in love with him secretary figure it can’t be his buddy. Guess who is pulling as many triggers as possible. Yeah, that so-called loving wife and her board of directors boyfriend who figured to kill him and live free and easy. In a final scene that ever-loving wife is killed in the cross-fire. Guess what the hard-ass businessman is still a sap for that wife as he brings her sullen body into the house. Jesus.   

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

*Poet's Corner- Langston Hughes' John Brown Tribute- "October 16"

Click on the title to link to an article about the relationship between Langston Hughes' forbears and Captain John Brown, late of Kansas on the anniversary of the Harpers Ferry raid.


October 16-Langston Hughes

Perhaps
You will remember
John Brown.

John Brown
Who took his gun,
Took twenty-one companions
White and black,
Went to shoot your way to freedom
Where two rivers meet
And the hills of the
North
And the hills of the
South
Look slow at one another-
And died
For your sake.

Now that you are
Many years free,
And the echo of the Civil War
Has passed away,
And Brown himself
Has long been tried at law,
Hanged by the neck,
And buried in the ground-
Since Harpers Ferry
Is alive with ghost today,
Immortal raiders
Come again to town-

Perhaps
You will recall
John Brown.

Once Again On The Legend-Busting Trail-This Time One Don Juan-With Errol Flynn’s The Adventures Of Don Juan (1948) In Mind-A Film Review-Of Sorts

Once Again On The Legend-Busting Trail-This Time One Don Juan-With Errol Flynn’s The Adventures Of Don Juan (1948) In Mind-A Film Review-Of Sorts  

DVD Review

BY Will Bradley

The Adventures of Don Juan, starring Errol Flynn, Vivica Lindsfor, 1948

[Seth Garth reminded me recently that in this journalism business, this writing for publication, you have to find some niche, some “hook” as he said not only for the piece itself but for you to gain recognition for some particular aspect of the realm of ideas. It seems that as of late I am becoming the “go-to” guy to debunk or clarify various legends that have come down to us and which get accepted fairly easily by those who thrill to legends, myths and religious expressions. Greg Green has given me the “green light” to pursue this work as he believes that this looks like my niche- and my “ticket” to a by-line. So be it. W.B.]      

*********

Apparently I am the debunker-in chief of various legends and other signs of humankind’s inability to get past legends, myths and other religious expressions for explanation of the ton of stuff even now we don’t know, whether consciously or not, the unknown. At least I hold that position at this publication it seems after having to take fellow writer Lance Lawrence to task for telling the tale about Johnny Cielo, the so-called legendary aviator whom he touted based on the memories of some rum-dum he met in a bar in Miami who led him by the nose maybe for just a few drinks when he was hard-up for a story. You can see my retort in the archives here for September 30, 2018. (Lance was on the bum after busting up on a big drug cartel story when the informants never showed up probably re-thinking their options in the light of their probably fates if they were exposed. In any case Lance was hungry for copy having been on the sidelines for a while with a threat of losing his by-line if he didn’t come up with something. I have been there myself although I don’t have a by-line yet but may get one in this goddam cutthroat business at Lance’s expense.)

I have a certain history on this subject of fake legends having exposed a modern- day so-called Robin Hood from around where I grew up by the name of Pretty James Preston (real name except the “Pretty” since he was very good-looking even in his police mug and had more than one gal swooning over him, and protecting him with hide-outs and alibis) whose claim to fame was that he robbed banks and other places where hard cash was located like department stores in those days in the time-honored tradition except alone and in  broad daylight. Of course it is easy to break the legend of modern day figures since there is a fair amount of paper trail involved. In James’ case he had been touted by his voluntary press agent Scott Allan who worked as a reporter for the North Adamsville Ledger who had known Pretty as a young man, as a schoolboy, and who was also tired of the dead-beat police beat for the newspaper and so got carried away with his reportage. Let Pretty James off the hook and let him become some later day Robin Hood based on what had been his leaving a fifty-cent tip for some sullen waitress who he had an eye on, maybe didn’t jackroll some old guy when cash was tight and who didn’t pistol whip some poor bank clerk. His exploits like paying rent for those who lived in “the projects” where he grew up, sending milk and food to elementary school kids and sending dough along to Sacred Heart parish was all hooey, all made-up bullshit. By the way this has nothing to do with his so-called legend but the real Pretty Boy blew away four bank customers for no good reason except they were in the way on his last caper before going down in a hail of bullets. Even Scott Allan couldn’t pretty up Pretty Boy on that one.   

Like I said modern-day legends are easier to bust than the old hoary ones like Robin Hood and the subject of this piece one Don Juan, or maybe not “one” since my investigations to be detailed below point to multiple sightings-and sighings. Take Lance’s fatal pitch on behalf of Johnny Cielo. He egged on the legend created by a drunken sot met one hard-scrabble night in a gin mill in Miami after falling down on another more important piece when his people didn’t show. His source Billy just unwound on him, probably gaining steam as the evening wore on and they both got drunker. Lance made the cardinal error, strangely not uncommon in this damn cutthroat business and which I had to my own regret did one time as well, of not checking sources, of not seeing what was myth and what was true if anything.       

In a capsule Johnny Cielo’s legend centered on two key points-his “affair” with 1930s and 1940s Hollywood glamour queen and World War II G.I. wet dream pin-up girl Rita Haywood who allegedly in a period when she was not seen around Hollywood for a while before marrying the Aga Khan had followed Johnny down to Central America, to Barranca after he had run out of options in the States (had had a no-no reputation for drug smuggling). Never happened, and Lance should have seen that from minute one, and bells should have rung, rung loudly. What really happened beside Johnny probably like every other red-blooded guy at the time having Rita’s photo in his locker, that is about how close he came to her, was he brought some tramp, some bar girl or whorehouse denizen met who knows where who was beautiful and looked like Rita and Johnny promoted her as the real deal. The other later long after he ditched “Rita” legend was that he had run guns to Fidel and his guys in the Sierra Madres in the late 1950s and had fallen into the deep blue sea in the Caribbean on some mission. Reality: Johnny had ditched his plane and passengers while he was doing his real job of ferrying tourists between Key West and Naples down in Florida. See where things get out of hand.          

As I said previously breaking down old-time legends, here the Robin Hood legend from the12th century is a much tougher matter.  Really a thankless task since even with all kinds of at least circumstantial evidence the vast majority of humankind will still take the legend as good coin. Still if one can one has to set the record as straight as possible. The big storyline on this Robin Hood, or whatever his name was since he worked under many aliases in his business, he “robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.” Pure fantasy both before and after King Richard’s return and grant of land and other goodies which according to church and manor records made him one of the richest and greediest men in England. The records tell it all on the after side and Robin would not be the first to go from decent guy to bum of the month as he aged and grew fatter in many ways but he early side is more problematic. The only official record is Friar Tuck’s monastery record which shows one Robert Woodson, Hood’s real name, giving the equivalent of two buck to the place. Not exactly a big hand out considering he is estimated to have robbed every wealthy traveler who dared to come within twenty miles of his Sherwood Forest base of operations.

Okay on to today’s balloon bursting. The busting of the Don Juan legend. First off try as I might I could find no listing for one Don Juan de la Marca, the name of the person the legend goes under. The Spanish in that period kept excellent records, remember these were the guys who ran the Inquisition and recorded every goddam sound cried out in terror and pain so that made me think that maybe he was working under another name or that there were several Don Juans, not improbable. The story goes, at least the cinematic story, that he was a caddish love them and leave them guy galivanting around Europe, leaving his seed, until his home country queen knocked him for a loop (for a while) and he became something of a Spanish patriot against the likes of the mysterious and sinister Duke of Lorca who had the King’s ear and kept the Queen at bay. Enter Don Juan into the lists in defense of Queen and realm. Don Juan allegedly was a great swordsman (of the steel kind not of the kind the prurient reader might think) and was said to have been permitted to run the academy at court producing young swordsmen defenders of the realm. Through that connection he was able to rouse the better elements and make short work of the Duke and his paid mercenaries. Putting country above self, Don Juan who was supposedly a lover of the Queen, platonic of course, left the court shortly thereafter rather than tempting the Queen in some senseless love affair. Off to other romantic conquests. 

Reality hits one in the face hard on this one since it involved some coerced confessions from young women who were not very world wary or wise. As mentioned earlier there is no record of a Don Juan de la Marca which after exhaustive research now makes sense because the whole legend was a hoax, a figment of the imagination of a bunch of young women who would probably swear to this day they had been ravished by-somebody. Seemingly it all started at the Convent of Saint Mary’s (English translation) in rural Cordoba. The young women there, boarders, were not headed for the nunnery but were being farmed off by their parents for reasons ranging from keeping them out of temptation’s way to getting rid of unwanted witnesses to their debaucheries.

A very curious lot of mainly teenage girls with time on their hands and many dreamy moments. According to the accounts from the investigation team, the Inquisition boys, one girl, Dona Maria, spied a lightly-bearded slender young man crossing a field and called out to him. He answered and went away, only to show up again a day later walking that same field. Same call out, same walk away. Truth: the young man on closer inspection was a lout, a youth with warts and all so as he approached the convent Dona Maria screamed out she had been ravished by the lad. She needed some back-up for her bogus accusations and enlisted some of her convent mates into claiming the young bearded lad had ravished them as well. That was how the rumor got started and the hysterics began as young girls and women in similar isolated desperately hormonal situations, not always in cloistered convents, started clamoring the same set of lies about this long gone and who knows what happened to him youth. The long and short of it was that every Tom, Dick and Harry (English translations) used that bit as his calling card among his friends that they were the Don Juan figures even if they were not from Cordoba, or Spain for that matter. Whoever claimed to be saving the Queen at court from the intrigues of Don Lorca is just another holy goof impostor, a con man. You heard it hear for all the good it will for those many young women today who have their imaginations tweaked by a good-looking guy.

[Postscript: one of my fellow reporters at another publication whose name I will not mention but who is known to take particular pleasure in skewering her fellow reviewers has taken me to task for not checking the Spanish Court Record Almanac where I would find one Don Juan de la Marco’s name prominently described as master of the sword (again of the steel variety) and as having been given various awards for bravery. A look at this ancient dusty book does show such a name but if that hard-pressed fellow reporter had read further to the man’s age of sixty-two she might have saved herself some embarrassment trying to skewer me in this cutthroat business. Moreover, Madame Reviewer might have put her eyeglasses on to find that the person listed was not only sixty-two years of age but the name listed was Don Juan de la Marlo, a very different person, and no threat to that youthful lightly-bearded youth crossing some forlorn field of some young maiden’s sex-starved imagination legend. W.B.] 

The High White Note Blowing Out To The China Seas-The Film Adaptation Of Pearl S. Buck’s “China Sky” (1945)- A Review

The High White Note Blowing Out To The China Seas-The Film Adaptation Of Pearl S. Buck’s “China Sky” (1945)- A Review 

DVD Review

By Josie Davis

China Sky, starring Randolph Scott, Ruth Warrick, Ellen Drew, Anthony Quinn, 1945

Although I am fairly new to the film reviewing business, to journalism in general having just finished up my graduate program at Boston University’s School of Communications I find it hard to believe what the older writers keep telling me as words of advice.  To watch my back, to watch out for fellow reviewers who will skewer my work just to get ahead, just to beat someone in what they have all called a cutthroat, drag down business. The idea behind their cautions seems to center on the notion that nobody really needs to read a film review, everybody has a subjective point of view on the subject matter of a film and the only way to get out from under the rock is to take dead aim at somebody else’s work in order to do what they call “move up the food chain.”

Here is what is ironic about all of what they say. I was assigned this old- time film, China Sky, by the site manager mostly because nobody else wanted to do the review and because if I messed up, the site manager’s words, nobody would notice some raw rookie errors anyway. After viewing the film I was puzzled, could not figure out how to write the review up since the film seemed very dated and weird. Weird since the film, as the title indicated, was about and set in China during World War II, during the time Japan was trying to make all of Asia its feeding grounds. Yet several of the main actors like Anthony Quinn known to me from a cinema class where we watched and critiqued Zorba the Greek who were obviously not Chinese were made up to look that way rather than have real Chinese actors in the roles.

One day at the water cooler I introduced myself to some older writers who were talking about the modern film Black Panther and when I had an opportunity I asked what I should do about the odd film I had been given to review. Most of them, actually all of them except Si Lannon, walked away after basically telling that it was my problem and that if I wanted to get ahead in the profession I had better figure out a way to deal with the film or they would be more than willing to rip it apart to show me how tough this “racket” really was. Si told me not to listen to them because that was all an act. They just didn’t want to be bothered “mentoring” a rookie on a turkey like China Sky. Si gave me some advice which I think is reflected in this review-if all else fails then use the old “slice of life” fall back. By that he meant if I couldn’t figure a “hook” is what he, they call it to just go on and on about the plotline of the film and move on. Thanks, Si who is proof that whatever else some people in this business are not out to cut everybody else’s throat.         

I remember, because I asked my mother, that my grandmother used to have many of Pearl S. Buck’s books on her shelf. I might have glanced through a couple, I remember one The Good Earth I started to read but gave it up because it was hard to follow when I was a teenager, didn’t speak to me about the China I had heard about. I believe that most of Buck’s books were based on China experiences and represented a Western missionary come to help the heathens to the good life way of looking at that then benighted country. China Sky falls into that same category. I have already mentioned the use of Western actors in some roles as Chinese but also that the Chinese people are portrayed as mere props for the in this case Americans to bring into the modern world.  

Si told me to get the “boy meets girl” part out of the way first. I already knew from the tons of films that I had seen in classes and on my own that an extraordinary number of films, especially from Hollywood back in the 1930s and 1940s depended on that theme. Here that theme got a serious work- out in the relationship between the two doctors, one male, Thompson, played by ruggedly handsome Randolph Scott and one female, Durant, played by quietly beautiful Ruth Warrick. From scene one, where he is absent off in America to raise money for medical equipment everybody and their sister and brother knows she loves him. But that love is thwarted first by their professional relationship and secondly when the good doctor does appear he has a brand- new wife, Laura, played by fetching Ellen Drew. Done for. No, through the course of the film as Laura cannot adjust to the wartime deprivations and misery Doc Thompson starts to see the light, starts to see that he had made a mistake and should have taken his fellow doctor will all hands. But brave Doc Durant will just pine away and be the good soldier.

Of course in the end Laura will fall down and the two fated doctors will come together. There is also a secondary love interest between the Chinese guerilla leader, played by Anthony Quinn in Chinese make-up and one of the nurses, also in Chinese make-up, which will also get happily resolved when the treacherous native doctor she is betrothed to is killed after betraying the hospital and town to a “wily” Japanese POW. 

As already foreshadowed this film is a wartime romance set in World War II China when the Japanese were fighting for control of the whole vast country and the town where all the action takes place is near where the Chinese partisans have their supply dumps. Since the Japanese are trying to push through holding that position is a must for them. That however means that the town took a terrible beating from the Japanese air forces bombing the hell out of everything that moved-including the American-sponsored hospital. The wartime action spins around that senior Japanese POW who the guerrillas want to put on trial for war crimes. He, as an officer, tried every way to get information back to his side about the location of the supply dumps. Including playing on the racial and romantic animosities of the chief native doctor (who was actually Korean and whose unknown father was Japanese). Naturally the good guys led by Doc Thompson and the guerrilla chief beat back the bastardly Japanese. You already know the love story part where Doc Thompson’s desperate to leave wife acted as a foil for treachery with the Korean doctor in order to get her and Doc out of the country so that part is done.

Final note, footnote, for the “slice of life” idea from Si. We live in an age more concerned about what we call political correctness than back in the 1940s so some of the stereotypes are pretty raw. The superiority of Americans over mainly prop Asians. The contempt for the average people expressed by Laura. The wily treacherous Japanese and the sullen Korean. But above all that use of Western actors in Chinese make-up reminiscent of whites in blackface tells me that this film is certainly a period piece. That is that for a first review. Hope I survive.