On The 60th Anniversary- When The King Was “The King”-Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock” (1957)-A Film Review

On The 60^th Anniversary- When The King Was “The King”-Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock” (1957)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Associate Film Critic Alden Riley

Jailhouse Rock, starring Elvis Presley, Judy Tyler, 1957

As I have mentioned before sometimes as an associate film critic, meaning a junior member of the staff, you receive the tail-end assignments, not the good stuff which is left to Sandy Salmon (and in the old days Sam Lowell). Sometimes you get an assignment that is something of a so-called “learning experience” like the time I mentioned to Sandy that I did not know who Janis Joplin was when he asked me what I thought of her as part of his Summer of Love, 1967 seemingly endless nostalgia trip and he assigned me to review the D.A. Pennebaker documentary on the first Monterey Pops Festival in that same year where Janis blew the house down. That was not the case with the film under review Elvis’ (do I need to print his last name for the three people in the world who do not know who I am talking about solely by using his first name) Jailhouse Rock from 1957 which played off of his huge record hit of the previous year. I practically begged Sandy for the assignment especially after Sam Lowell decided that he wanted to concentrate on finishing his also seemingly never-ending series on early 1950s B-film noirs put out by the English Hammer Production Company. Sandy demurred suggesting that like with the Janis Joplin episode I could learn something about the days when men and women (think Wanda Jackson) played rock and roll like their lives depended on it- and it and they did.               

Now everybody knows, or should know since I am an associate critic and thus much younger that those reprobate rockers Sandy and Sam who were as Sam put it one time “present at the creation,” that I am at least a decade if not more removed from having been, as Sam Lowell would also put it, washed clean by the rock and roll wave that swept American youth in the mid-1950s. But that fact does not mean that unlike the Janis Joplin episode that I am unfamiliar with the work of “the King” when he was in the king in the 1950s dawning light. The link? I grew up in a rather tepid household in New Jersey anchored by staid and respectable parents, my father a civil engineer and my mother, Mildred eternally called Milly, nothing but a great and resourceful housewife as befit a professional man’s wife in those days if not now. Except that Milly was wild for Elvis back in her teenage maiden days. The days when Elvis made all the women sweat. So against staid respectable housewifely type-cast all day long on some days especially when Pa was away she would play whatever Elvis tunes hit her fancy just then. And dance to some of them to my embarrassment when I was younger since it seemed kind of provocative to me although I didn’t know what that word meant then. The long and short of it though is that love of Elvis must have been in my DNA since I have always been a fan of his early music if not the horrible films that he got talked into after Jailhouse Rock or the muted musical life of a stuffed animal Vegas head-liner. Yeah, the classic age of Good Rockin’ Tonight, It’s Alright Mama, One Night With You (better the version that has One Night of Sin to the same melody-what he might have been if he followed down that path a bit), Heartbreak Hotel,  and of course the progenitor of the film under review Jailhouse Rock.  The songs that when you look at YouTube versions makes you understand why he made women like my mother sweat and scream their frustrations away in their teenage fantasies.       

I am sure that I had seen the film Jailhouse Rock sometime in my youth since I am sure my mother had it on some revival retro television station or we saw it at the retro-movies downtown but I was foggy about the details enough tin this watching that I soon realized that I didn’t recall much of the plotline. After viewing I had come away really wishing that Elvis had not done another movie because none compares with the snarly, sullen, youth he portrays speaking for a whole lost post-World War II generation who had been too young for that war but had immersed in the frightening Cold War night that froze the American landscape and which even I caught the tail-end of myself.

From scene one in some drunken back alley barroom when sullen, sulky construction worker Vince Everett (Elvis’ role) gets into a fight with some irate customer and winds killing him drawing two hard years in the state pen Elvis lights the screen up. Sure there were a million sullen youth out in places like La Jolla sucking up the surfboard seas, hot rodding down midnight Thunder Roads in Mill Valley, motorcycle helling with angels like Marlon Brando’s Johnny Too Bad tearing up the holy landscape with nothing going but Elvis spoke to them. Spoke to guys like Sam Lowell and Pete Markin in Podunk North Adamsville and a ton of places like that. And he would have stayed sullen and snarly forever, would have measured his sappy life by prison stretches except that jailbreak-in bought him in contact with a guy like Hunk, his bunkmate, a lifer-type jailbird who happened to have been a small something in the music industry before the inevitable woman got him thinking crazy about whiskey and blowjobs and got him a long stretch from a stinking two bit robbery.          

Yeah, old Hunk was always looking for the angle, for the next best thing, saw in the kid something, saw a meal ticket and so he made Vince sign a pact with the devil, take a chance to break out of that “from hunger” world that guys like Sam, Pete, and even Sandy talk about in their poor boy working class days when they too might have taken one wrong turn too many. I know Sam has told me a million times it was a close thing with him (a couple of his brothers didn’t make it-wound up inside the pen more than outside). So sullen, surly too after a deuce in stir Vince takes the air on the outside thinking maybe he can make it as an entertainer not small potatoes like Hunk but big, with that big red convertible of his dreams.     

But a million guys back then had that like a million other guys sound borrowed from Hank Williams or Big Joe Turner or Frank Sinatra, hell, guys were even borrowing styles and form from hokey Mickey Alba who knocked the women for a loop-for a minute and then they went back to sleep. No soap, no soap for Vince except maybe cadging drinks for a tune or coffee and. That is until he met record hustling insider Peggy who sets him up on the road to dough although never giving him a tumble. Never buying into that from hunger need Vince exuded since as bright as she was she was strictly suburban middle class and sullen and snarly in that milieu only played in sociology classes or in the magazines.   

Vince and Peggy wash out until two things happen, happen in the small company world of records in the days before big operations like RCA and Columbia sucked all the air out of Mom and Pop operations. First Vince got told via a tape-recording that he sounded like a lonesome cowboy singing to and for himself. No feeling, no jump until Peggy blasted him. Made him jump feel the song. Second Vince figured that he still had a shot at the bigs by producing and hustling his own records and it worked. Once a Peggy-friend DJ spun his platter the girls went crazy, went Milly and fantasies crazy. The rest was history.

Well almost history since our boy Vince had a thing for Peggy but couldn’t express it, couldn’t figure a way to get to her and Hunk came out of stir looking for his cut. He got it alright and in the end Vince got Peggy too but that was a close thing. Here’s the real play though since every Hollywood production, or most anyway, have some boy meets girl conflict that must be resolves by the end or else just like here. What you want to watch this movie for and if you can’t get it go to YouTube to watch is that Elvis scene when he is doing Jailhouse Rock for a television show. Watch (forget the lip synched song) Elvis go through his paces, watch him make the moves that later guys would imitate although they couldn’t surpass. Watch what made all the young things sweat, hell, all the grown women too. Watch why my mother in her sainted sanitary home kept her girlish fantasies alive listening to the king when he was the king do his stuff. Yeah, watch when men (and women too) played rock and roll for keeps.        

All That Glitters Is Not Gold-Sean Connery’s 007-“Goldfinger” (1964)- A Film Review

All That Glitters Is Not Gold-Sean Connery’s 007-“Goldfinger” (1964)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Guest Film Critic Si Lannon  

Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery, Honor Blackman, Gert Frobe, based on the James Bond character by British spy thriller novelist Ian Fleming, 1964

I have only myself to blame for this one, for this review of Goldfinger after having reviewed the first film in the James Bond 007 series Doctor No based on master spy thriller novelist Ian Fleming’s iconic character. I find myself, as on other recent occasions, going on what my old friend and colleague Sam Lowell called a “run.” That is grabbing everything one can in a series on some subject, here the Sean Connery James Bond films, and playing out your hand. I suppose I could shift the blame and lay my new tendency on that old curmudgeon Sam since he is notorious in film critic circles for going crazy when he goes on a “run.” I will nevertheless take full credit/blame here since what these Bond films evoke in memories of 1960s drive-in theater antics-and sexual longings of course. [For a recent example of his influence although he is no longer in charge of day to day operations but now working under the title of film critic emeritus Sam has been on something of a tear having already done five or six reviewing 1950s B-film noirs from the ten film Hammer Production series. Pete Markin]        

When I reviewed Doctor No, the first Bond film by Connery, there was a great deal of anticipation built up by the advertising campaign promoting the film. Especially of the sexy young women who would be catnip for Bond. That was one draw although not the biggest one. The biggest one was to see that film at the local drive-in theater where, well, where the real live girls were. I have already mentioned our poor boy working-class roots where we were always seeking some small time con/scam to do things for little money from guys who had no serious dough. For the drive-in experience that was in the days before the theater owners got wise and started charging by the carload when they charged single admissions to load up the car with say six guys and only have maybe three showing (with the other guys in the trunk or down on the backseat floor).

That same scam was done once again in order to see this Goldfinger film which was if anything more hyped up that the initial offering since part of the draw was showing a gold-plated young woman who got caught in the deadly Midas touch. But the “real deal” was that we were now older and less shy about “hitting” on the young women who were hanging out at the well-known area in back of the refreshment stand who also came through in the same carload manner that we did. So the innocence of the first film gave way to more foggy windshields, sighs (you know what I mean) and such.                

Thus this recent viewing of Goldfinger was the first time I actually saw the film all the way through. Needless to say I didn’t remember most of what happened, how could I, except that mesmerizing gold-painted young woman and that great lead-in title song by Shirley Bassey. Here’s the play this time around. In the day (before 1971) when the benchmark dollar and pound were pegged to the price of gold the British Treasury Board of Governors was worried about controlling the flow of that precious metal and efforts by rogue elements like the Auric Goldfinger of the title to corner the market. So 007 James Bond was on the case to figure out how this character was getting his gold around the various international restrictions. The chase was on but not before our boy James gets a very rude awakening (literally) finding a young woman he was having a quick roll in the hay with all gold-plated as a warning signal for him to back off. (Forgetting that such as desecration would only bestir our man to greater revengeful deeds especially after that gal’s vengeance seeking sister laid her head down trying to off the bastard.)        

Naturally Bond is ready for anything including that attempt by the dead woman’s sister to kill Goldfinger and gum up the works. What Goldfinger was up to in collusion with the nasty Red Chinese (in the days when the People’s Republic was called Red China in Western terminology) who provided men and technology in aid of Goldfinger’s nefarious plan was to neutralize the gold at Fort Knox and make a killing on the steeply increased value of his gold holdings not by stealing it but by making it unusable by making it radioactive-nice touch, right. James of course learns of this plan while he was a prisoner of the greedy Goldfinger. The idea was to have Goldfinger’s confederate Pussy Galore (a very suggestive name and the subject of lots of sexual jokes among the corner boys in my neighborhood hang-out spots), played by Honor Blackman, and her all-female team of pilots spray deadly gas in the area knocking out everybody. Then blowing the gate at Fort Knox unobstructed and putting a radioactive devise in the vault with all the gold bars making them useless as a currency. Goldfinger’s whole plan went asunder when handsome Johnny James Bond snagged Pussy and made her his ally faking the deadly spray and leaving the American troops to fight off the Chinese invaders (sound familiar). In the end Goldfinger lost his life as expected by trying to go mano a mano with Bond. Bond and Pussy go under the sheets once again as the film ends. You know I am glad based on this story line that I spent my first time dealing with this film fogging up car windshields-okay,       

Once Again-For the Umpteenth Time There Really Is No Honor Among Thieves -Just Ask Robert Mitchum A Guy Who Should Know-Jane Greer And Robert Mitchum’s “The Big Steal” (1949)-A Film Review

Once Again-For the Umpteenth Time There Really Is No Honor Among Thieves -Just Ask Robert Mitchum A Guy Who Should Know-Jane Greer And Robert Mitchum’s “The Big Steal” (1949)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

The Big Steal, starring Jane Greer, Robetr Micthum, William Bendix, 1949

This film review of The Big Steal, an encore performance by Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum who lighted the screen on fire in their dance of death in the film adaptation of Out Of The Past (along with a young Kirk Douglas as the fall guy, or at least the guy who fell-first) was supposed to go to Seth Garth who did the original review of the latter film and was to compare the energies of the two filmed performances. After we, Seth is something like my mentor even though I have my by-line now after taking down old-time film reviewer Sam Lowell a peg or two, and site manager Greg Green watched this film one evening Seth told us that perhaps I was better able to write this one since he would be in mourning for his lost youth when this pair were as likely to kill each other as to go under what he called “the silky sheets” and what I called having sex. Seth said he knew that Jane and Robert had gone soft after their last set-to and while he liked this film, he had some psychological energy committed to their being star-crossed lovers for eternity.     

I could see what he meant if I didn’t fully understand why since he has written tons of reviews of films where things got switched up in the sequels or another film. But I liked the film, liked the fast-paced energy that seems to be missing in many of today’s action-adventure pseudo-noir productions. Before I go on though Seth insists that I explain quickly what he couldn’t face doing the review. Simply put in that Old Of The Past  which also passed through sunny Mexico as here Jane and Robert became lovers, lovers who should have gotten the hell out of Dodge when old Kirk came looking for them, came wondering a little why he was the fall guy, why he big-time mobster was made to look like a chump when they fled without him getting what he wanted from Robert whom he hired to track Jane down and bring her back to Reno. But the biggest problem was that Seth couldn’t get over Jane’s outstanding performance there as a gun-simple femme fatale who shot first and asked questions later.

The reader does not have worry about Jane here as sedate and street smart Joan shooting every guy in sight since while she starts out not trusting Duke, yeah, Duke Halliday, you may have seen the headline where he got robbed of an Army payroll and looked to be the patsy to take the fall. He will get well by recovering the dough and meting out a little rough plebian justice while doing so. See the Army, the Army in the person of an officer named Bill Bendix who had spent a career cleaning up the Army’s messes, thought that Duke, beautiful broad-shouldered and barren-chested Duke with the jutted jaw that drove my mother crazy when she used to go to the Saturday matinees to see Robert Mitchum what she called strut his stuff, had been part of the scam, had been involved in the payroll robbery.  

That premise sets everything else in motion down sunny Mexico way where Duke to save his hide has gone looking for the bad guys who did him wrong. Mainly a guy named Jim Fiske who from one report was from one of the branches of the 19^th century robber baron Fiske family and so an armed robbery or two didn’t seem that out of the ordinary. This Fiske though was a slippery character and led Duke a merry chase. Had led dear Joan up a tree as well with some scam he ran on her to get some dough for whatever reason con artists use to grab dough. So that sets up the paring of Duke and Joan looking to get a little rough justice in the world on their own. Set them off across Mexico in pursuit of Fiske in the meantime and dodging and being followed by Bill Bendix. See Fiske is looking to get well by unloading his cash on a fence out in some isolated desert who will give him a percentage of the value no questions asked and that would be that.

Here is where the “no honor among thieves comes in.” Duke was slated to be the fall guy, the guy to take the big step-off if necessary, since Bill Bendix was in cahoots with Fiske. Nice right. Nicer still is that the two confederates didn’t trust each other and rightfully so since hard-pressed Bill facing some cheapjack pension and nothing more wanted the whole bundle for himself. As if Brother Fiske. No go, Joe. After he blasted Fiske Duke and he tussled, and he lost. And Duke and milady Joan walk off into the sunset holding hands. That has to be better than Robert taking two or three quick gun-simple slugs from an irate Jane when she realized that Robert has called copper on her in Out Of The Past. Still a good film although looking at a photograph from that film Seth showed me after I took this assignment when he wanted to show why he didn’t want of Ms. Greer looking very sexily provocative makes me see his point a little better.

Once Again, The Girl With The Bette Davis Eyes-Bette Davis’ The Golden Arrow” (1936)-A Film Review

Once Again, The Girl With The Bette Davis Eyes-Bette Davis’ The Golden Arrow” (1936)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon 

The Golden Arrow, starring Bette Davis, George Brent, 1936

Of course when I mention as in the title above Bette Davis’ eyes I am not considering the song made famous by Kim Carnes Bette Davis Eyes but the real Bette Davis and she is the girl with those dewy eyes I am referring to. Here is something funny, actually something of a confession for a film critic who has in his long career reviewed many films like the one under review here The Golden Arrow, I had never seen or certainly I do not remember from childhood a Bette Davis movie before I hear folk-singer/songwriter Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row in 1965 where he sang as part of the lyrics “and puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis-style” and that got me intrigued about her old time black and white movies appeal (although whether she ever really put her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis-style is still an open question). That interest got me doing as my old friend and colleague endlessly reminds when I follow his lead a “run” on her films most notably All About Eve. It also got me interested in her biography enough to find out that she was born in Lowell, Ma about fifty miles from where Sam Lowell grew up the same town where Jack Kerouac came of age (and fled) before making his big dent on his (and my) generations with the timeless On The Road which Sam, book critic Zack James and I have spent the last few month commemorating the 60^th anniversary of with various appreciations. Must be something about that mill-town Merrimack River cascading down the rushes.            

But enough of biography and old-time lyrical references except to mention that looking back in my files (both old-time hard copy and work processor saved which tells the tale of how long I have been writing this stuff for a living) I did a number of reviews, six, of Bette Davis movies back in 1965-1966 when I was doing that “run” and have not done anymore since then until now. The “now” a result of Sam Lowell in his role of film critic emeritus (he hypes it up to film editor but I will let that pass out of our old-time friendship) deciding that he didn’t want to review the assigned by Pete Markin The Golden Arrow to concentrate on finishing up his “run” on a series of B-film noir movies produced in the 1950s by the English Hammer Production Company and foisted the assignment on me. I am not complaining or only a little but I have a feeling that I will also be on a “run” with Ms. Davis’ long list of screen credits.    

Mention of a long and illustrious career brings the inevitable question of what was good and what was not in that career. I have long ago under Sam Lowell’s guidance I will admit given up on understanding why perfectly good actors, and Ms. Davis is one with two Oscars and ten nominations up her sleeve, succumb to less worthy film scripts. Not that The Golden Arrow is horrible quite the contrary it is a nice slim little romantic comedy but it hardly let’s Ms. Davis show her stuff, show those Bette Davis eyes to good effect.

I might as well give you, as Sam Lowell made a long career out of saying, “the skinny” on this slender piece and you decide. Daisy, the role played by Ms. Davis, is a high-end society heiress who is whiling away the hours until the next best thing comes along avoiding newspaper reporters like the plague, like seven plagues. Along comes “penny a word” down at the heels reporter Johnny Jones, played by George Brent last seen in this space when my associate Alden Riley reviewed In This Our Life when the affable Brent was given the heave-ho no go engagement by Ms. Davis so that she could run off with her sister’s husband, to try for an interview under mistaken circumstances.

Despite Johnny’s horrible but honorable profession and his personal ethics (he will not publish the results of their conversation) Daisy likes him. Likes him enough that she proposes a deal-they get married so she can avoid the paparazzi and gold-diggers after her so-called fortune and he can write that great American novel he had in him and which is thwarted by his struggle for daily bread working the newspaper gag. He buys in. Except he doesn’t buy into Daisy’s board of directors who want to control his actions. Rebellion takes the form of dating another high society dame to fend off the feelings he has for Daisy. Daisy who seemed indifferent suddenly realizes that she loves the poor bugger penniless reporter. What to do. Well what to do was using her feminine wiles to get him jealous. And in the end when Johnny finds out that his Miss Daisy is not rich but just employed an advertising ploy to sell soap they unite and head off into the sunset. If you only watch one Bette Davis film this is not the one. After re-watching that All About Eve that I had reviewed many years ago watch that. If you have time on your hands then watch this one.                

After Charlottesvile -The Greensboro Massacre 1979- Never Forget

After Charlottesvile -The Greensboro Massacre 1979- Never Forget

A YouTube film clip about the events of that day in 1979 when right wing thugs in Greensboro, North Carolina murdered five communist workers.

COMMENTARY

This is a repost of last year's commemorative commentary. The struggle remains the same.


REMEMBER SLAIN LABOR MILITANTS-CESAR CAUCE, MICHAEL NATHAN, BILL SAMPSON SANDI SMITH AND JIM WALLER





For those too young to remember or who unfortunately have forgotten the incident commemorated here this is a capsule summary of what occurred on that bloody day:

On November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, five anti-racist activists and union organizers, supporters of the Communist Workers Party (CWP), were fatally gunned down by Ku Klux Klan and Nazi fascists. Nine carloads of Klansmen and Nazis drove up to a black housing project-the gathering place for an anti-Klan march organized by the CWP. In broad daylight, the fascists pulled out their weapons and unleashed an 88-second fusillade that was captured on television cameras. They then drove off, leaving the dead and dying in pools of blood. From the outset, the Klan/Nazi killers were aided and abetted by the government, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who helped train the killers and plot the assassination to the "former" FBI informer who rode shotgun in the motorcade of death and the Greensboro cop who brought up the rear. The five militants listed above died as a result. The Greensboro Klan/Nazis literally got away with murder, acquitted twice by all-white juries.

This writer has recently been raked over the coals by some leftists who were appalled that he called for a no free speech platform for Nazis and fascists (see below) and argued that labor should mobilize its forces and run these vermin off the streets whenever they raise their heads. Despite recent efforts to blur the lines of the heinous nature of and political motivation for these murders in Greensboro by some kind of truth and reconciliation process militant leftists should etch in their brains the reality of the Klan/Nazis. There is nothing to debate with this kind. The niceties of parliamentary democracy have no place in a strategy to defeat these bastards. The Greensboro massacre is prime evidence that any other way is suicidal for militants. No more Germany, 1933's. No more Greensboro, 1979's. Never Forget Greensboro.

REPOST FROM SEPTEMBER 15, 2006

In a recent blog (dated, September 4, 2006) this writer mentioned that one of the Klan groups in this country held a demonstration at the Gettysburg National Cemetery over the Labor Day 2006 weekend around a list of demands that included bringing the troops home from Iraq in order to patrol the borders. Symbols mean a lot in politics and the notion that Klansmen were permitted to demonstrate at a key symbol in the fight to end slavery and preserve the union raised my temperature more than a little. As I said then Gettysburg is hallowed ground fought and paid for in great struggle and much blood. At that time the writer posed the question of what, if any, opposition to the demonstration leftists had put together to run these hooded fools out of town. In response, this writer was raked over the coals for calling for an organized fight by labor to nip these elements in the bud. Why? Apparently some people believe that running the fools out of town would have violated the Klan's free speech rights. Something is desperately wrong here about both the nature of free speech and the nature of the Klan/fascist menace.

First, let us be clear, militant leftists defend every democratic right as best we can. I have often argued in this space that to a great extend militant leftists are the only active defenders of such rights- on the streets where it counts. That said, the parameters of such rights, as all democratic rights, cannot trump the needs of the class struggle. In short, militant leftist have no interest in defending or extending the rights of fascists to fill the air with gibberish. Now that may offend some American Civil Liberties Union-types but any self-respecting militant knows that such a position is right is his or her 'gut'.

In the final analysis we will be fighting the Klan-types on the streets and the issue will no be rights of free expression (except maybe in defense of ours) but the survival of our organizations. A short glance at history is to the point.
One of the great tragedies of the Western labor movement was the defeat and destruction of the German labor movement in the wake of the fascist Hitler's rise to power in 1933. In the final analysis that destruction was brought on by the fatally erroneous policies of both the German Social Democratic and Communists parties. Neither party, willfully, saw the danger in time and compounded that error when refused to call for or establish a united front of all labor organizations to confront and destroy Hitler and his storm troopers. We know the result. And it was not necessary. Moreover, Hitler's organization at one time (in the mid-1920's) was small and unimportant like today's Klan/Nazi threat. But that does not mean that under certain circumstances that could not change. And that, my friends, is exactly the point.

The Rich Really Are Different, Very Different From You and I, Me, And That Ain’t No Lie-Audrey Hepburn And Humphrey Bogart’s “Sabrina” (1954)-A Film Review

The Rich Really Are Different, Very Different From You and I, Me, And That Ain’t No Lie-Audrey Hepburn And Humphrey Bogart’s “Sabrina” (1954)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Fritz Taylor

Sabrina, starring Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, directed by Billy Wilder,  1954

How the hell did I get this assignment, this woman’s fairy tale romance assignment from site manager Greg Green? And that is posed as a question with about seven riddles since I am basically a stringer, an occasional writer in this publication and moreover when I do write it usually is about some military matter stemming from my now long- ago Vietnam War hell on wheels service. What got me this assignment if you can believe this though from what Greg said was that I had done a good job on a previous film review I was asked to do to give a side glance view of another film and so he thought that I would be ideal to go through my paces on a “women’s film” from back in my youth. Hence my review of Sabrina forthwith.

Since I don’t have much experience with getting what Sam Lowell, a now retired film editor and occasional contributing writer has called “the hook”, the way to lure the reader in to what the film is all about I asked old friend Seth Garth to help me out one day when we were standing around the office water cooler and I was perplexed for an angle on the film. He almost automatically, having seen the film many years ago, threw out the idea gathered from F. Scott Fitzgerald that here was yet another example of the rich, meaning to both Fitzgerald and to Seth the very rich, the old money Yankee-Dutch rich and not the latter day new technology rich like Bezos, Jobs, Musk and that lot who are still wet behind the ears in getting adjusted to the ways of that segment of the ruling class that actually made things and have prospered since Mayflower/Half Moon times.

Funny once Seth grabbed that idea the rest was easy except of course the romance among the Mayfair swells part and Billy Wilder’s ironic and sardonic look at the mores of in this case the New York upper gentry living out in Long Island and not in Manhattan. The plot is simple enough beyond what Seth also called, in the end “the boy meets girl” trope that has saved more than one Hollywood production when the going got slowed down. Sabrina, to the stable born via her father’s job as chauffer to the ultra-rich family, played by sparking vivacious girl next door with a bit of the devil in her eye Audrey Hepburn who almost any guy from my generation would have had at least a momentary crush on, is in love with the younger son, David, a scion to that family wealth played by ruggedly handsome pretty boy William Holden last seen in this publication according to Sam Lowell face down in ancient film star Norma Desmond’s swimming pool in anther Billy Wilder classic Sunset Boulevard and doing the dance of sexy dances with young Kim Novak as an iterant in Picnic. David, starting out anyway has no eyes for her and so that seems like a lot of things about the lives of people to the stable born the end of it.

Except that through a strange twist of funny fate Sabrina is sent to Paris to learn to become, well, a cook well within her station in life. 

But you know as well as I do that Audrey Hepburn is not going to be slaving over hot stoves and steaming kettles for long and she didn’t by virtue of an acquaintance with a French aristocrat of the old school. When she returns to the estate David has nothing but eyes for her as she has become a sophisticated young woman. He is ready to dump everything for her, including a Mayfair swell gal whose family just happens to have extensive sugar cane interests. Enter Linus, the older brother played by aging Humphry Bogart last seen again according to Sam either sending Mary Astor over to save his ass in some stuff of dreams caper in The Maltese Falcon or getting waylaid by come hither young Lauren Bacall in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s  To Have Or Have Not.  

Business is business to old Linus and abandoning that sugar interest for some dazzling fairy princess from Paris is not in the program so he is committed to sabotaging David’s plans whatever the cost. Including taking a run at Sabrina himself. 

That would eventually be his undoing and his break from the man in the grey flannel suit 1950s business chain gang existence. See Linus went too far, fell for the much younger Sabrina (Bogie remember had that thing for Lauren Bacall on and off screen, so this was nothing new) but that is where things get interesting. His falling in love complicated things to such an extent that Sabrina agreed to head back to Paris and forget this cagey pair. Then Linus does a double reverse maneuver attempting to send David to Paris with Sabrina but David decided to do the family right thing and confronted Linus with his hangdog look and told him that he would marry that convenient heiress after all and booted Linus out the door to grab the ship to Paris with Sabrina. Yeah, the rich are very different in lots of ways even the way they romance among themselves.

The Trials And Tribulations Of The Lovely Arts-Hugh Grant And Marisa Tomei’s “Rewrite” (2014)- Film Review

The Trials And Tribulations Of The Lovely Arts-Hugh Grant And Marisa Tomei’s “Rewrite” (2014)- Film Review  

DVD Review

By Josie Davis

Rewrite, starring Marisa Tomei, Hugh Grant, 2014

Here is a hard fact that I can impart to the reader  young as I am and only a stringer at this publication where I actually have done more rewriting of other people’s work than pieces for publication under my own name. Hollywood, or wherever other locations films are produced these days chews up writers, screenwriters, and you will very seldom see a screenwriter over forty who is actually doing a script rather than a rewrite no matter how famous or successful he or she was in the past. I should know because of all the writers here young and old, having worked at American Film Gazette or not as many have, I am the only one who succumbed to the lure of Hollywood to make my mark writing scripts for films. (The older writers tell me there was something like used to be the case in the old days among actors, those who would only do legitimate theater, meaning Broadway, and those heathens who went to “debase” their art in Hollywood here in regard to screenwriters.)

After I finished graduate school in Cinematic Studies I went out to Hollywood with the idea of getting a job as a screenwriter. It was kind of unknown territory since none of my friends or the professors had any experience with that end of the business. When I got out there and this is important in the #MeToo era I found out that even in screenwriting the young, mainly young women but I heard of the same with some young men, were expected to have sex with whoever would hire them if they wanted to move up the food chain. We all knew that this was the great unwashed secret among female actors but for those off-camera came it as shock (even something as secondary as getting a freaking job as a “script girl” required some kind of sexual transaction). I didn’t feel that I wanted to go that route and after many rejections, even for rewrite, and feeling that working in a CVS drug store was not going to advance my career I headed back East. The other thing I learned was that even in screenwriting fame is fleeting. If Hollywood uses an older screenwriter’s name the real work, the writing is done by the young and fresh. Mostly and this is sad older writers often wound working rewrite if they wanted to stay in the business. It was no surprise to me that Greg Green would assign me this film Rewrite when he approached me to do my second published review.           

We might as well dig right into the plot because in many ways, except the inevitable romantic interest material, what I mentioned above gets played out here. Keith Michaels, Hugh Grant’s role in which he basically carries the film across the finish, is an older, well, washed up screenwriter who maybe does not realize that fact, or that Hollywood spits out older writers no matter what they did-back in the day. (The only surprising part was that he was not even offered rewrite work although he almost begged the shakers and movers in the film despite his faded fame which in real life any studio would be willing to pay day labor wages for.) Somehow his agent dug deep in her well of contacts and got him a job teaching at a dink college Binghamton U. (dink to him anyway) in cold dark upstate New York where the townies roll up the streets come sundown (the students roll up their joints or whatever universal college kids do wherever they find themselves). Not even a gig in New York City at say NYU despite that big tinny Oscar for screenwriting he had won a million years ago but outer DInktown.

Went to the job holding his nose because if there were certain traditions among Broadway actors long ago and among journalists here about screenwriters that lofty profession held teaching in the same regard-those who cannot write, write the great American novel, play, screenplay-teach. Keith had this added chip on his shoulder, added baggage that there was no sense in teaching writing, screenwriting because you either had the goods or not-end of story. Well, of course not end of story since he must in the process of becoming actually a pretty good teacher, learns that his so-called wisdom was fit for the toilet. Naturally, and I say this naturally after that grinding Master’s program in Cinematic Studies in which I concentrated on screenwriting, his comeuppance, his new found awakening had to come via an off-hand romance which blossomed between him and this older workaholic mother of two student, a type to be found more these days than say the older generations where most students were barely out of their teens. 

Mercifully this student Holly, played by winsome Marisa Tomei, just wanted to see if she could learn something about screenwriting skills from the great man starting out and was not in some shadow competition to beat him at his own game. And yes in true feel-good form they go off in the sunset at the end as a couple after some sullen foreplay.   

Naturally as well Keith must be dragged down in the mud before he realizes his affections for Holly and his joy in teaching. This is where the film shows its time. Time before #MeToo anyway which might have changed the axis of the film if made today when political correctness has taken another of its lazy turns. Keith, good-looking award-winning Keith is the target of a young woman trying to move up the screenwriting food chain or at least the English Lit branch who winds up sleeping with him in the time-honored or maybe dishonored is better tradition among some college students of sleeping their way to the top. And down at the heels divorced Keith buys into that scenario thinking that this was similar to the Hollywood ethos for moving up the food chain. No harm, no foul.

Except, except under the table so to speak, this is a no-no in academia no matter who initiated the affair. Keith winds up on a very hot seat when the English department honchos find out and are ready to ride him out of town on a rail. Especially one straight- assed tenured female professor who is the font of political correctness and frankly took a total dislike to Keith from Day One when he trivialized her work as a Jane Austen scholar (I love Jane as well so I too thought he was boorish particularly when his frames of reference were from the many film adaptations of Ms. Austen’s works). Since I have already telegraphed the sunset scene you know Keith barely made it through, but he made it through. Mercifully we were not treated to the big Derrida and friends “deconstructionist” theories that ran through the colleges when I my older sister was in college. Yes, Hugh carried this one off well but I suddenly realized that I am very happy I am not out in the market grind of Hollywood even if does not look like I am going to get a by-line here anytime soon.  

It Ain’t The Singer It’s the Song-Townes Van Zandt’s A Far Cry From Dead (1999)-A CD Review

It Ain’t The Singer It’s the Song-Townes Van Zandt’s A Far Cry From Dead (1999)-A CD Review

CD Review

By Zack James

A Far Cry From Dead, Townes Van Zandt, Arista Records, 1999

[The world of on-line editors and named bloggers is actually rather small when you consider what cyberspace can allow the average ingenious citizen to do. I have been highlighting some of the conversations between long-time music critic Seth Garth and some of his growing up in Riverdale (that is in Massachusetts west of Boston) friends as he/they discuss various older CDs which reflect a certain period in their then youth lives growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Part of this latest series of sketches by me is based on information that Seth has provided comes under the sign of the Summer of Love, 1967 out on the West Coast, especially in the San Francisco and Bay area.      

I am a bit too young by about a decade to have had anything but a nodding acquaintance with the Summer of Love experience. That era’s music did not form the basis for my musical interests although I heard it around the house from older siblings but rather the music of the 1970s which when I get a little bored with book reviews or general cultural pieces I write about for various publications including this one I write some music reviews. Knowing that let me take a step back so that you will understand why I made that statement about the review world is really a small place.

As I said earlier I was a little too young to appreciate the music of the Summer of Love first hand but my eldest brother Alex was not. Had in fact gone out to the West Coast from our growing up neighborhood the Acre section of North Adamsville that summer along with a bunch of other guys that he had hung around with since highs school. He wound up staying in that area, delving into every imaginable cultural experience from drugs to sex to music, for a couple of years before heading back to his big career expectations-the law, being a lawyer. The original idea to head west that summer was not his but that of his closest friend, the late Peter Paul Markin forever known in town and by me as the Scribe (how he got that is a long story and not germane to the Seth sage). The Scribe had dropped out of college in Boston earlier in 1967 when he sensed that what Alex said he had been yakking about weekly for years that a “new breeze,” his, the Scribe’s term, was going to take youth nation (and maybe the whole nation) by a storm and headed west. A couple of months later he came back and dragged Alex and about six others back west with him. And the rest is history.            

I mean that “rest is history” part literally since earlier this year (2017) Alex, now for many years a big high-priced lawyer after sowing his wild oats and get “smartened up” as he called it once the bloom of the counter-culture they were trying to create faded had gone to a business conference out in San Francisco and while there had seen on a passing bus an advertisement for something called the Summer of Love Experience at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. He flipped out, maybe some latent recoil from those long ago drugs, and spend one “hooky” afternoon mesmerized by the exhibit of poster art, hippie clothing, photographs and music. That was not all though. When he got back to Boston he contacted all the old neighborhood guys still standing who had gone out there in 1967 to put a small memoir book together. One night they all agreed to do the project, do the project in honor of the late Scribe who had pushed them out there in some cases kicking and screaming (not Alex at the time). That is when Alex, knowing that I have had plenty of experience doing such projects contacted me to edit and get the thing published. Which I did without too much trouble.   

The publication and distribution of that book while not extensive got around to plenty of people who were involved in the Summer of Love, or who knew the Scribe. And that is where Seth Garth comes in. While he was not part of the Summer of Love experience he did drift out west after college to break with his Riverdale growing up home in the early 1970s. As a writer he looked for work among the various alternative presses out there and wound up working first as a free-lancer and then as staff as a music critic for the now long defunct The Eye which operated out of Oakland then. Guess who also was working as a free-lancer there as well after he got out of the Army. Yes, the Scribe who was doing a series of articles on guys like him who had come back from Vietnam and couldn’t relate to the “real world” and had established what amounted to alternative communities along the railroad tracks and under the bridges of Southern California. So yeah it is a small world in the writing for money racket. Here is what Seth has to say right now. Zack James]    

Recently in reviewing a bluesy CD by outlaw cowboy singer Willie Nelson (at least that designation was the basis for my introduction to him back in the early 1980s) I mentioned that I was reminded by my oldest brother Alex’s high school friend, Seth Garth, who like me became a writer and later a music critic for many alternative newspapers and rock and roll scholarly journals and publications, that back in those late 1970s and early 1980s I was drawn to such outlaw cowboy music that had broken sharply with the traditional stuff out of Nashville that I could not abide., always associated with the Grand Ole Opry and stuff like that, redneck music.    

I also noted that just then, just that late 1970s, early 1980s, rock and roll was taking one of its various detours, a detour like in the late 1950s when the soul went out of rock for a while before the storm of the British invasion and “acid” rock saved it which I could not follow, folk music, the social protest kind anyway that had attracted me in my youth was fading fast even among aficionados as more mundane concerns filled that niche, and the blues was losing its star mostly black performers by the day and the younger crowd, mostly black, was leaving the field to white aficionados like Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn and heading to what would become hip-hop tradition so I was up for listening to something different. Something that might catch my ear for roots-based music, the music of the “big tent” American songbook beyond Tin Pan Alley.

What Seth hadn’t remembered was the genesis of that outlaw cowboy moment. My finding of an old used record by artist under review Townes Van Zandt at Cheapo’s Records in Cambridge (still there) of all places to find such music. And of course once I get on to a sound I like I tend to look just like every other writer, writer for publications with dead-lines, for everything I can find by the artist (film-maker or writer too). Done. But more than in that outlaw moment I actually saw Townes in person at, well, several places over a couple of years, but all of them in the heart of “outlaw country” music, ah, Harvard Square. So in those days I was not alone in looking for a new sound since all the venues were sold out.        

What drew me Townes then, and drew me to this CD recently although it had been put out in 1999 a few years after his untimely death in 1996 was he command of lyrics that “spoke” to me, spoke some kind of truth of things that were bothering me just then like lost loves, not understanding why those loves were lost, and about just trying to get through the day. Yeah, that gravelly voice on that first record kind of fit my mood then, and it still sounds good although unlike that first live in Houston album this one is much more a produced product of the studio. Still the searing burning messages and lyrics are there for to help you get through those tough days that creep up and pile up on you. Listen up.  

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Dane Clark’s “The Gambler And The Lady” (1952)

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Dane Clark’s “The Gambler And The Lady” (1952)

DVD Review

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

The Gambler and the Lady, starring Dane Clark, Naomi Chance,  Hammer Productions, 1952

You know I really only have myself and my furtive furious need to take a “run” when I find something of interest to review and need to go overboard to cover every bet. Been that way since I was a kid and even in retirement and not having to face the daily grind has not deterred me from this overkill. The overkill in question is my interest in of all things a bunch of B-film noirs, B at best, produced over in England during the early 1950s. Starting out when I came across a first DVD at a book sale at the local library I thought that was it until looking at dreaded (on this occasion) Wikipedia I found there were ten in the series. So once started here I doing another one. And guess what while some have a certain merit none is going to break me from my classics-that is for sure. But enough of my woes as I trek another offering out for your perusal.        

*****

I am now deep, too deep but also too deep to given my personality stop now, into my retro-reviews of the classic Hammer Productions film noir in which an American producer, the well-known Robert Lippert and his organization, contracted with that organization to do a series of such efforts, the now woeful ten films, using known, although maybe fading American film stars, down on their uppers film stars, backed by English character actors to do the whole thing on the cheap. My whole operation started the day I went to a book sale at the local library and spied a Hammer Production DVD which led to a review of the film Terror Street (distributed in Britain as 36 Hours which actually made more sense since the star had that amount of time to find the murderer of his wife otherwise he was going  to be taking the big-step off for it and would not have worry about the time at all and there was no particular terror that I saw going on) and subsequently another 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 sixth such review of B-film noirs and hence proof positive that I am now in deep and that I still have the bug.

I mentioned 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 candy bar scam.)

That is where the bulk of my noir experiences were formed but I should mention 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).

Readers should be aware from prior series 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  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 Gambler and the Lady (distributed in England, Britain, Great Britain, United Kingdom or whatever that isle calls itself these Brexit days as unlike others in the series by the same title although one cannot say much for their choice of titles under any circumstance) is the sixth such effort. On the basis of these seven viewings (remember one didn’t make the film noir aficionado cut so that tells you something right away how bad it must have been to take the toss in the B-world) I will have to admit they are clearly B-productions none of them would make anything but a second or third tier rating. (I have already wailed in my introduction about my extreme tiredness over the whole project already.)         

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 too long 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 had to cash 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 who would stop at nothing including whoring although in those days that would have been inferred not shown to get what she wanted. Those were some of the beautiful and still beautiful classics whose lines you can almost hear anytime you mention the words film noir. The entries in this series are definitively not ones with memorable lines or plots.  

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 to make my point about the lesser production values of the Hammer products.  In the Gambler and the Lady not surprisingly the two main characters are Jim, an ex-pat American gambler from nowhere seeking in Merry Olde England to get in tight with the Mayfair swells and Lady Susan, played by Naomi Chance, as the Mayfair swell, well, Lady. Jim had clawed and climbed his way from nothing to the top of the gambling rooms in London and intended to stay there-with plenty of backup to enforce his will. But instead of craving more dough like a real racketeer like Johnny Rocco in Key Largo Jim has big ideas about crushing high society not knowing that those bastards are worse than the scumbags he had to deal with back in the say. Christ Jim even had some old biddy teaching him table manners, you know what spoon or folk to use with which course, Jesus.          

One of Jim’s clients, a Lord no less, bounced a check and that is where the trouble began. One of Jim’s boys got rough without permission (Jim didn’t even want a dead-beat Mayfair swell touched-double Jesus). This Lord had a sister though, the Lady Susan in question and she and Jim became against all good sense by either party an item. (Not without the others swells ripping him apart for trying to crash the gate to their class.) Everything was going fine until two things happened. One some foreign tough guys wanted to crash the London gambling scene and before it was over Jim had cashed his chips and sold out to them in order to get “legit.” And second he invested all his dough in a project he got conned into by that deadbeat Lord and his father with a little assist from Lady Sue. That thing turned out to be a Ponzi scheme and Jim went belly up. But not before an irate ex-heavy put the bad news on him and an ex-girlfriend who was crazy for him tried to take him down in her speeding car. All this to grab the lapels of decadent nobility gone wrong. Jim, I thought you were a smart guy.         

This one almost got that Wings of Danger treatment mentioned above, a non-review, but with an actor like Dane Clark who seems to have been down on his uppers more than most of those fading American stars recruited for this series since he is in at least three and a couple of minutes on my hands I figured once again what the hell.     

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.                 

Once Again, One Johnny Rocco, More Or Less, Is Not Worth Dying For-With Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell and Gloria Graham’s “Macao” (1951) In Mind

Once Again, One Johnny Rocco, More Or Less, Is Not Worth Dying For-With Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell and Gloria Graham’s “Macao” (1951) In Mind

As Told To Lance Lawrence by Frankie Devlin

Macao, starring Jane Russell, Gloria Grahame, Robert Mitchum, 1951

Frank McCloud, he of the U.S. Army officer corps and a fistful of serious medals slogging through hell-hole Europe during World War II said it best, said it best one night when we were in the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston trading shots of whiskey shortly after the war, maybe three years after, and he was trying to put his pre-war life back together, trying to get back in the publishing business but was meeting resistance at every level -“One Johnny Rocco, more or less, was not worth dying for.” Meaning he was fed up to his eyebrows with defending this and that, defending democracy when the old crap was just rising back up again after he thought the war had put an end to that. See Frank had run into Johnny Rocco, everybody back then knew Johnny ran every evil thing dope, gambling, numbers, high and low-end pornography, women doing everything possible with man, woman, beast and that was just the top of the iceberg, as the king-pin gangster boss out of Chi town, Chicago down in the Keys, down in Key Largo I think it was not Key West, when Johnny was doing some evil scheme to get back on top. When Frank told me that, that dust up he had with Johnny I was all ears. Despite his keen observation Frank went head to head with Johnny once Johnny made the fatal mistake of trying to mess with Frank’s woman. Under those circumstances all bets were off, all wisdom floated down the Gulf, as they should but Frank’s advice is still stand-up stuff.

Soldier Cocrane should have listened to those words, listened to his fellow ex-soldier it would have saved him a lot of grief. Soldier from the time he was a kid out of Brooklyn hustling milk money from young kids had been nothing but a two-bit grifter, a small-time operator who had been run out of the States. Some say it was over a woman, another man’s woman, in a bar, drinking, and that was that. He either killed the other guy, or so grievously wounded him that he died later in the hospital. Took the guy’s car, wallet and woman spent a few days running her to ground and when the news came in slipped out the back door one night with her tied to the bedposts. Here is where chance is a funny goddess, can play mean tricks. He decided to head west instead of east that sultry night when things got too hot on the news of the other guy’s death and Soldier decided he was built for love not cages.

Like every small time grifter, every two-bit operator who tried to horn in on a good thing that was already somebody else’s nut  Soldier got run out of a few places in the Orient too, the usual, Singapore, Hong Kong, Saigon so only one place was left-the sinkhole, lands’ end the colony of Macao in the days when that was something out of the Wild West in America. Late Chance Ranch some guy called it when he was writing a novel based on the place. Every illegal venture in the world, dope, gambling, women again being just the normal evil stuff and descending from there to deep hells with sadistic adventures the least of it. Let’s put it this way, the way that safe from harm novelist put it in one of the books he which he set in Macao-life was cheap, cheap and expendable.  Soldier had hopped the boat with about three bucks in his pocket, the clothes on his back-and an idea. An idea he would ask Vin Halloran to put him to work. Yes, that Vin Halloran, the American gangster who “owned” Macao, owned every Portuguese colonial official and cop worth owning and had everything tied up with a bow. 

There, maybe elsewhere too they mention his name in hushed tones. One hundred years from now their progeny will be speaking in hush tones about Vin, about the days when men were not afraid to get blood on their hands- or order the hit.                    

Not a bad idea on Soldier’s part since Macao was the end of the road. If he couldn’t score there he might as well have taken a ride in some sampan and put a hole in the bottom. He tried to move up in class, maybe be an enforcer, a hit man, a repo man for Vin. Made sense since Soldier was rugged enough, big broad shoulders, barren chest, good enough looks that no woman would throw him out of bed and so no public eyesore for Vin to bother about like some of the help whom he had to keep strictly for night alley night work. Except on the trip over from the mainland he met this Jane, Jane something but you know as well as I do it was alias so don’t worry about last names. A brassy buxom no holds barred dame, hell, lets’ call things by their right name, a tramp, any man’s woman, any man with some dough and a bottle maybe, or dope she looked the type. Without getting hung up on silly morality in those days, now too the last I heard, no decent dame was heading to Macao when Vin was running the show. Period. So, although she claimed to be a song bird, a canary, and did have one of those smoky voices she would have had a hard time getting her cabaret license in New York City. Especially when Billie was around. She was either going to some high-end whore-house Vin ran for Asian businessmen with a taste for the wild side or into the South China Sea. Maybe join Soldier in that holey sampan.            

Here’s the funny part, not so funny maybe but you never know what will twist a man’s mind. Vin went for her, went big, gave her a spot singing and a nice nest. Turned out she could sing a bit but even then she was nothing but bedrooms and booze. Worse, worse for her and maybe she would not have to bother with that sampan gag was this other dame, this Gloria something, again don’t worry about last names because when the smoke cleared she would have another one didn’t want Janie girl around her man. Period. The Soldier-Jane match-up was not made in heaven. No way.  

Back to Soldier and his dreams since this Jane would probably land on her back whatever happened. That good idea, that enforcer, gunsel, hit man idea went nowhere. Vin was not in the market for gringo enforcers since he had half the Tong Society on the payroll so Soldier was down on his heels. Vin gave him five bucks and the air. Then this sleaze-ball salesman, a guy he had almost met on the boat over, made Soldier a proposition, makes him a sub-salesman, no, independent contractor, I guess you would call it.  Except it would all turn out to be a ruse, bullshit. See he was really New York City cop who was on Vin’s trail because another NYC cop had been trying to bust Vin and would up down in some sinkhole for his efforts. Vin had started out in New York and the cops there were looking to clean up their cold files docket by bringing his in for the third degree. The problem for the coppers was that Vin was invincible in Macao in those days as long as he didn’t go into international waters, the three-mile limit. Smart guy, mostly, that Vin and maybe the locals were not wrong to whisper his name in their dreams after all.       

Dink salesman, Bill Bendix, or something like that although he used another name, names, conned Soldier into doing his legwork for some commission, a few thou which must have looked good to Soldier since was living off the cuff. The deal the Bendix put forward was to sell Vin a high-end diamond necklace cheap and Soldier would get his cut from that end. Except silly Billy forgot to say said necklace was already owned by one Vin Halloran who had been trying to sell the damn thing in Hong Kong where his agent fell down, copped a plea and gave the necklace up to get to some safe house in America.

Vin therefore took umbrage when Soldier presented the proposition. Threw him in irons, ready to throw him into the South China Sea with or without sampan if necessary. It is hard to read what this Jane was thinking, making she had had sweaty dreams, although who knows really but she switched sides. Queen Jane was giving up her kingdom with Vin for no known reason when she decided that she should share her fate with Soldier who was getting help from that blonde bundle of lust who was looking to get Jane the hell out of Macao. When the story came out later it seems that Vin was hard on his women like a lot of guys, like Johnny Rocco, hell, like Soldier with that fluff he killed that deadass guy over. Once Jane, and Gloria too, gave the drift on Vin and his sadistic habits, once Soldier claimed Jane for his own, that taboo messing with a guy’s woman is what tagged Vin for the undertaker, for the big step off. This is what I never figured about a smart guy like Vin though he decided to go to Hong Kong to get that freaking two-bit necklace (against his whole operation profits) stepping out of the three mile zone and easy bait for the international police once Soldier decided to drop the dime. That stoolie business got him maybe a new lease on life since the coppers were going to go to bat for him with the New York authorities. Got him feeling good about doing his good deed to save the world from bums like Vin, guys whom he too thought would vanish once the war cleaned up the world’s mess.  

Still Frank’s advice would have saved Soldier a lot of grief since two things happened after Vin went to sleep with the fishes. Gerry O’Leary, the rising American gangster out of Albany, New York moving up the food chain took over Vin’s operations, streamlined everything and made plenty of profitable changes like cutting the bribery payroll putting some poor Portuguese coppers on public relief or something.  And Jane decided she liked the idea of luxury on Macao better than being some housewife in the Bronx and dumped Soldier for Gerry. Yeah, Frank had it right, right as rain. (I heard later she was running that high end whorehouse for Asian businessmen with a taste for the wild side and Gloria was running the gambling tables. Jesus.)