Black History and the Class Struggle-In Honor of John Brown-"John Brown" An Address By Frederick Douglass(1881)

Black History and the Class Struggle-In Honor of John Brown-"John Brown" An Address By Frederick Douglass(1881)  Workers Vanguard No. 1128	23 February 2018

Black History and the Class Struggle

In Honor of John Brown

On 16 October 1859, revolutionary abolitionist John Brown led an armed and racially integrated group in a daring raid on the Harpers Ferry federal arsenal in what was then Virginia. His aim was to procure arms, free slaves in the area and lead his army into the mountains where they could establish a liberated zone and, as needed, wage war against the slave masters. Brown’s forces fought heroically but were overwhelmed and defeated by U.S. marines led by Robert E. Lee, who would soon become the commander of Confederate forces during the Civil War. Brown and his surviving comrades were captured. On December 2, he was hanged.

Throughout his life, John Brown burned with hatred for slavery. Several years before the Harpers Ferry raid, in what became known as “Bleeding Kansas,” John Brown and several of his sons led a struggle to crush pro-slavery forces and ensure that Kansas entered the Union as a free state. On the day of his execution, he scrawled a small note to a friend that prophetically stated: “I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with blood.” The raid on Harpers Ferry was the real opening shot of the Civil War, which broke out in 1861. It took the blood and iron of that war, including the 200,000 black soldiers and sailors who helped ensure Union victory, to finally destroy the American slave order.

We print below extracts of a 30 May 1881 address by Frederick Douglass paying tribute to the courage of John Brown. The speech was delivered at Storer College, a historically black college in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Douglass, who had escaped slavery in 1838, was an electrifying agitator and one of the most powerful champions of black freedom in America’s history.

As Trotskyists, we stand in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown and Frederick Douglass. We fight to complete the unfinished tasks of the Civil War, which require sweeping away the American capitalist order. As we wrote in the first issue of Black History and the Class Struggle (1983), “The whole system stands squarely counterposed to black freedom. Forward to the third American Revolution, a proletarian revolution led by a Trotskyist vanguard party with a strong black leadership component. Finish the Civil War—For black liberation in a workers’ America!”

---

John BrownAn Address by Frederick Douglass

The bloody harvest of Harper’s Ferry was ripened by the heat and moisture of merciless bondage of more than two hundred years. That startling cry of alarm on the banks of the Potomac was but the answering back of the avenging angel to the midnight invasions of Christian slave-traders on the sleeping hamlets of Africa. The history of the African slave-trade furnishes many illustrations far more cruel and bloody....

Your interests, like mine, are in the all-commanding figure of the story, and to him I consecrate the hour. His zeal in the cause of my race was far greater than mine—it was as the burning sun to my taper light—mine was bounded by time, his stretched away to the boundless shores of eternity. I could live for the slave, but he could die for him. The crown of martyrdom is high, far beyond the reach of ordinary mortals, and yet happily no special greatness or superior moral excellence is necessary to discern and in some measure appreciate a truly great soul. Cold, calculating and unspiritual as most of us are, we are not wholly insensible to real greatness; and when we are brought in contact with a man of commanding mold, towering high and alone above the millions, free from all conventional fetters, true to his own moral convictions, a “law unto himself,” ready to suffer misconstruction, ignoring torture and death for what he believes to be right, we are compelled to do him homage....

Slavery is indeed gone; but its long, black shadow yet falls broad and large over the face of the whole country. It is the old truth oft repeated, and never more fitly than now, “a prophet is without honor in his own country and among his own people.” Though more than twenty years have rolled between us and the Harper’s Ferry raid, though since then the armies of the nation have found it necessary to do on a large scale what John Brown attempted to do on a small one, and the great captain who fought his way through slavery has filled with honor the Presidential chair [Abraham Lincoln], we yet stand too near the days of slavery, and the life and times of John Brown, to see clearly the true martyr and hero that he was and rightly to estimate the value of the man and his works. Like the great and good of all ages—the men born in advance of their times, the men whose bleeding footprints attest the immense cost of reform, and show us the long and dreary spaces, between the luminous points in the progress of mankind,—this our noblest American hero must wait the polishing wheels of after-coming centuries to make his glory more manifest, and his worth more generally acknowledged....

To the outward eye of men, John Brown was a criminal, but to their inward eye he was a just man and true. His deeds might be disowned, but the spirit which made those deeds possible was worthy [of] highest honor. It has been often asked, why did not Virginia spare the life of this man? why did she not avail herself of this grand opportunity to add to her other glory that of a lofty magnanimity?...

Slavery was the idol of Virginia, and pardon and life to Brown meant condemnation and death to slavery. He had practically illustrated a truth stranger than fiction,—a truth higher than Virginia had ever known,—a truth more noble and beautiful than Jefferson ever wrote. He had evinced a conception of the sacredness and value of liberty which transcended in sublimity that of her own Patrick Henry and made even his fire-flashing sentiment of “Liberty or Death” seem dark and tame and selfish. Henry loved liberty for himself, but this man loved liberty for all men, and for those most despised and scorned, as well as for those most esteemed and honored. Just here was the true glory of John Brown’s mission. It was not for his own freedom that he was thus ready to lay down his life, for with Paul he could say, “I was born free.” No chain had bound his ankle, no yoke had galled his neck. History has no better illustration of pure, disinterested benevolence. It was not Caucasian for Caucasian—white man for white man; not rich man for rich man, but Caucasian for Ethiopian—white man for black man—rich man for poor man—the man admitted and respected, for the man despised and rejected. “I want you to understand, gentlemen,” he said to his persecutors, “that I respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of the colored people, oppressed by the slave system, as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful.” In this we have the key to the whole life and career of the man....

It must be admitted that Brown assumed tremendous responsibility in making war upon the peaceful people of Harper’s Ferry, but it must be remembered also that in his eye a slave-holding community could not be peaceable, but was, in the nature of the case, in one incessant state of war. To him such a community was not more sacred than a band of robbers: it was the right of any one to assault it by day or night. He saw no hope that slavery would ever be abolished by moral or political means: “he knew,” he said, “the proud and hard hearts of the slave-holders, and that they never would consent to give up their slaves, till they felt a big stick about their heads.” It was five years before this event at Harper’s Ferry, while the conflict between freedom and slavery was waxing hotter and hotter with every hour, that the blundering statesmanship of the National Government repealed the Missouri compromise [of 1820, which banned slavery in most of the northern part of the Louisiana territory], and thus launched the territory of Kansas as a prize to be battled for between the North and the South. The remarkable part taken in this contest by Brown has been already referred to, and it doubtless helped to prepare him for the final tragedy, and though it did not by any means originate the plan, it confirmed him in it and hastened its execution....

Such was the man whose name I heard uttered in whispers—such was the house in which he lived—such were his family and household management—and such was Captain John Brown. He said to me at this meeting, that he had invited me to his house for the especial purpose of laying before me his plan for the speedy emancipation of my race. He seemed to apprehend opposition on my part as he opened the subject and touched my vanity by saying, that he had observed my course at home and abroad, and wanted my co-operation. He said he had been for the last thirty years looking for colored men to whom he could safely reveal his secret, and had almost despaired, at times, of finding such, but that now he was encouraged for he saw heads rising up in all directions, to whom he thought he could with safety impart his plan. As this plan then lay in his mind it was very simple, and had much to commend it. It did not, as was supposed by many, contemplate a general rising among the slaves, and a general slaughter of the slave masters (an insurrection he thought would only defeat the object), but it did contemplate the creating of an armed force which should act in the very heart of the South. He was not averse to the shedding of blood, and thought the practice of carrying arms would be a good one for the colored people to adopt, as it would give them a sense of manhood. No people he said could have self-respect or be respected who would not fight for their freedom....

Slavery was a state of war, he said, to which the slaves were unwilling parties and consequently they had a right to anything necessary to their peace and freedom. He would shed no blood and would avoid a fight except in self-defense, when he would of course do his best. He believed this movement would weaken slavery in two ways—first by making slave property insecure, it would become undesirable; and secondly it would keep the anti-slavery agitation alive and public attention fixed upon it, and thus lead to the adoption of measures to abolish the evil altogether. He held that there was need of something startling to prevent the agitation of the question from dying out; that slavery had come near being abolished in Virginia by the Nat. Turner insurrection, and he thought his method would speedily put an end to it, both in Maryland and Virginia. The trouble was to get the right men to start with and money enough to equip them. He had adopted the simple and economical mode of living to which I have referred with a view to save money for this purpose. This was said in no boastful tone, for he felt that he had delayed already too long and had no room to boast either his zeal or his self-denial.

From 8 o’clock in the evening till 3 in the morning, Capt. Brown and I sat face to face, he arguing in favor of his plan, and I finding all the objections I could against it. Now mark! this meeting of ours was full twelve years before the strike at Harper’s Ferry. He had been watching and waiting all that time for suitable heads to rise or “pop up” as he said among the sable millions in whom he could confide; hence forty years had passed between his thought and his act. Forty years, though not a long time in the life of a nation, is a long time in the life of a man; and here forty long years, this man was struggling with this one idea; like Moses he was forty years in the wilderness. Youth, manhood, middle age had come and gone; two marriages had been consummated, twenty children had called him father; and through all the storms and vicissitudes of busy life, this one thought, like the angel in the burning bush, had confronted him with its blazing light, bidding him on to his work....

Two weeks prior to the meditated attack, Capt. Brown summoned me to meet him in an old stone quarry on the Conecochequi river, near the town of Chambersburgh, Penn. His arms and ammunition were stored in that town and were to be moved on to Harper’s Ferry. In company with Shields Green I obeyed the summons, and prompt to the hour we met the dear old man, with Kagi, his secretary, at the appointed place. Our meeting was in some sense a council of war. We spent the Saturday and succeeding Sunday in conference on the question, whether the desperate step should then be taken, or the old plan as already described should be carried out. He was for boldly striking Harper’s Ferry at once and running the risk of getting into the mountains afterwards. I was for avoiding Harper’s Ferry altogether. Shields Green and Mr. Kagi remained silent listeners throughout. It is needless to repeat here what was said, after what has happened. Suffice it, that after all I could say, I saw that my old friend had resolved on his course and that it was idle to parley. I told him finally that it was impossible for me to join him. I could see Harper’s Ferry only as a trap of steel, and ourselves in the wrong side of it. He regretted my decision and we parted....

But the question is, Did John Brown fail? He certainly did fail to get out of Harper’s Ferry before being beaten down by United States soldiers; he did fail to save his own life, and to lead a liberating army into the mountains of Virginia [now West Virginia]. But he did not go to Harper’s Ferry to save his life. The true question is, Did John Brown draw his sword against slavery and thereby lose his life in vain? and to this I answer ten thousand times. No! No man fails, or can fail who so grandly gives himself and all he has to a righteous cause. No man, who in his hour of extremest need, when on his way to meet an ignominious death, could so forget himself as to stop and kiss a little child, one of the hated race for whom he was about to die, could by any possibility fail. Did John Brown fail? Ask Henry A. Wise in whose house less than two years after, a school for the emancipated slaves was taught. Did John Brown fail? Ask James M. Mason, the author of the inhuman fugitive slave bill, who was cooped up in Fort Warren, as a traitor less than two years from the time that he stood over the prostrate body of John Brown. Did John Brown fail? Ask Clement C. Vallandingham, one other of the inquisitorial party; for he too went down in the tremendous whirlpool created by the powerful hand of this bold invader.

If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery. If we look over the dates, places and men, for which this honor is claimed, we shall find that not [South] Carolina, but Virginia—not Fort Sumpter, but Harper’s Ferry and the arsenal—not Col. Anderson, but John Brown, began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic. Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim, shadowy and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was one of words, votes and compromises. When John Brown stretched forth his arm the sky was cleared. The time for compromises was gone—the armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the chasm of a broken Union—and the clash of arms was at hand. The South staked all upon getting possession of the Federal Government, and failing to do that, drew the sword of rebellion and thus made her own, and not Brown’s, the lost cause of the century.

— Reprinted from John Brown/Boyd B. Stutler Collection, a Feature of West Virginia Archives and History

In The Time Of The Nine Realms-A Walk Down Valhalla Lane-Marvel Comic “Thor” (2011)-A Film Review

In The Time Of The Nine Realms-A Walk Down Valhalla Lane-Marvel Comic “Thor” (2011)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

Thor, starring Natasha Portman, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleton, Marvel Comics Production

You never know in the publication business, the staff writer end of the business anyway, what you will wind up writing about and why. Normally in a film review I go right to the topic with some kind of first paragraph lead which sets up what I want to look at in the film. The film under review Marvel Comics Thor is a little different in that it is both a film I would not usually touch with a ten foot pole and is not a film which under recently departed old regime would have come up for assignment with that same ten foot pole. There is no need at this late date to go into the details of the regime change, my long-time companion and fellow writer Sam Lowell has outlined the key parts elsewhere. (See Archives, dated February 10, 2018). The new site manager Greg Green as part of an attempt to reach a younger audience, the tweens, teens, twenty somethings from the subject matter at hand early on in his tenure decided that this site needed to drift away from the classic black and white film noir type films that were the staple here but which he wrote off as strictly for aficionados and 1960s and 1970s cheap college date retrospective freaks and reach the younger crowds and thus this wall to wall coverage of the Marvel and DC super-hero comic book come to screen film line-up.

Therefore every writer in the stable, younger or older, was forced marched into reviewing Batman, Superman, Ironman, whatever Marvel or DC put on the screen. And in a funny way given the 2018 mega-hit Black Panther there is certainly a niche on a site dedicated to various aspects of American culture, including popular culture, to run the rack on this genre. Things did not work out, have not worked out so simply though. First every writer, young or old, pro-old regime or dedicated to the new regime complained in the public prints about this particular shift. More importantly the admittedly older readership base started asking WTF was going on with this craze for fantasy super-hero stuff. And that was the rub.

Attempting to get to the younger set through some misplaced sense that we needed to be more relevant ran up against one hard fact. The kids who would go crazy for action fantasy super-hero comic book characters don’t read, don’t read arcane blogs or other such venues to get a grasp of what is playing at the movies. Hell, my companion Sam who has had to both write some of these type reviews and sit with me to watch them, has made the whole staff laugh with his comment that Marvel and DC were onto something when they went cinematic-the kids won’t sit still to read a freaking comic book much less a review. So that is genesis on the matter except to say that once Greg got wise to what we had all been telling him he had already committed to doing the whole universe of such films in the interest of completeness finish what was started and so here we are.                              

    

One of the things I learned from Sam about film reviews that it is always good to give a little summary, what he calls “the skinny” a term from his old neighborhood days in North Adamsville of what you are reviewing. So here goes. Everybody has heard of the great Thor, either from Greek times or more likely the various Viking sagas out of Northern Europe. You know the guys from Valhalla, the warriors who died on their shields, plundered and pillared when necessary to keep order. Here we are in the realm of the nine planets (don’t worry Earth will be one of them), in Asgard where the old king is ready to turn over his kingship to one of his younger sons, Thor, played by hunk (sorry Sam) Chris Hemsworth, or Loki, played by Tom Hiddleton, with Thor the odds on favorite to win the crown.         

The problem for Thor though is the times are out of joint for warriors just then, especially brash upstart warrior-princes when the old man is trying to work out a lasting peace, a peace particularly with the nemesis Frost Giants whose leader and the king have clashed before. So to teach the brat a lesson after Thor and his small intrepid band of devotees tried to tame those same Frost Giants he is banished to, well, to Earth and deprived of his magic hammer. Not good.

Seemingly not good except through interplanetary flight Thor winds up in New Mexico when a team of hot shot astrophysicists led by Jane, played by Natasha Portman last seen in this space in The Black Swan when we were looking at more arty movies here, founder the old regime, find  him or he finds them. After some confusion about what they have found, a guy from the past, a hunk (an early beefcake shot of him has Jane’s college student assistant and maybe Jane too ready to take off their clothes and get under the silky sheets with as Sam likes to jokingly say), a guy pretty non-plussed by cellphones and modern life in general) they get the idea he is from another planet, an alien, an alien, earthling or not, not a good thing to be these days. Especially when nefarious intelligence agendas working for who knows who maybe the Chinese get on to who he is.             

Enter Loki who had not only had a lifelong jealous rage over his favored brother but was not a real brother rather as it turned out an orphan from earlier wars with the Forest Giants and is no other than the son of that nefarious Frost Giant leader although he looks strangely more like a Viking than Frosty the Snow Man. So Loki tries might and main to kill Thor and usurp that treasured crown mainly by keeping Thor hamstrung on Earth. Not to worry though because Thor’s trusty devotees come into the scene on good green Mother Earth to help bail him out. Better that early look at the beefcake Thor has our staid Jane astrophysist all a-flutter acting like a silly schoolgirl while figuring out what makes him tick.

But back to the good versus evil, Cain and Abel business as Thor and Loki start the inevitable show-down for who will be king of the hill especially when Loki has ugly Oedipal plans to kill his real father and waste that planet for good creating who knows what kind of interplanetary problems. Goodbye peace in any case good planet or bad.  Thor in a sign of these times going back to an “Asgard First” policy destroys the bridge to the other worlds including Earth thwarting Loki’s plans and leaving Thor forlorn about that budding romance with Earthling Jane and she him. Stay tuned since you should already know there is a sequel, two in fact.

Once Again, All That Glitters Is Not Gold-Claude Rains And Kay Francis’s “Stolen Holiday” (1937)-A Film Review

Once Again, All That Glitters Is Not Gold-Claude Rains And Kay Francis’s “Stolen Holiday” (1937)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont    

Stolen Holiday, starring Kay Francis, Claude Rains, Ian Hunter, directed by Michael Curtiz, 1937     

Sometimes going public with some private hurt, private gripe might be a  better way to put it in this case, gets you what you need, or at least a hearing. In my last film review Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ classic dance musical production Swing Time I complained out loud that that was my fifth consecutive “women’s film,” meaning of course the tried and true Hollywood girl meets boy formula that forms the plotlines of half the films ever produced playing to the hard demographic that the majority of movie goers have historically been women, and younger women to boot.

UntiI recently I had a by-line at Women Today where I only occasionally did film reviews and those few I did do usually having some political point, some such hook. I have also noted that in the distant past I have been a stringer at this publication in the days of its hard copy version when Allan Jackson was publisher and that I had left when it was clear to me that he, and his cohort of old comrades including my then companion Josh Breslin, were slowly drifting in some kind of “good old boys” 1960s coming of age nostalgia trip. After a recent internal fight over that very question and the departure of Allan as site manager (the on-line name for publisher-editor here) the new site manager Greg Green “lured” me away to come over and do some pieces with the idea that I would be able to do whatever struck my fancy. I knew that would include film reviews since that is one of the several staples that drives this publication. What I did not know and which formed the basis for going public was that I would be a de facto “women’s films, women’s issues” fixture. Even at Women Today I didn’t fill any such role. When some readers complained after I went public Greg and I had another candid talk and made our respective positions clear. Hence this not women’s film review as my “prize.” We shall see how this new understanding works out.             

I mentioned a minute ago that half the films from Hollywood have been a work-out of the tried and true girl meets boy formula. And that factor is in play here but that is not what drives the film, this Stolen Holiday.  Such things as duplicity, fraud, social over-reaching, status, loyalty, cowardice and fidelity give this one a very decided broader scope. It almost had to since the plotline was based on the notorious Stavisky Affair which roiled through Third Republic France in the 1930’s and exposed the corruption and rot of that society just prior to World War II. Maybe helped bring down the Republic and bring on the German Occupation when the French Army proved unequal to the task of defending the country due to faulty leadership and outdated theories of war.      

The action starts out in 1931 in Paris with upstart con man Orlov, played by durable Claude Rains, he of the beautiful friendship with Rick of Rick’s Cafe Americain after Rick gave up his love for the good of the cause in Casablanca another film directed by Michael Curtiz, cons high fashion model Nicole, played by elegant Kay Francis although wobbly as a model, but with serious ambitions to run her own fashion operation into playing the straight role in a small con he wanted to play to get the initial capital to run the table on the French financial markets. Forward to 1936 after the success of that initial encounter with Orlov, now a captain of French finance with the place and position that brought, and Nicole the rage of the high fashion also in the chips. Their romantic relationship though hovering between non-existent and sputtering since every action of Orlov, other than jealousy, is connected with his trying to corner yet another market. Corner some respectably in French high society as well.

That conniving of Orlov would be his undoing since he was basically running a Ponzi scheme, was issuing watered stock, and the like. Once the authorities saw what was happening in the markets, and who was manipulating what, they started zeroing in on Orlov. His duplicity would number his days quickly despite his ever conniving actions. Eventually when in another corner he asked Nicole to marry him to cover up his dealings, or try to. Nicole agrees out of loyalty for what he had done for her once she became aware of his dire situation. In the meantime she had met and fallen in love with a British diplomat, played by Ian Hunter, who had swept her off her feet. So Nicole was doubly loyal and true to the scheming Orlov. Here’s where the Hollywood tried and true came to the rescue though. Orlov was finally cornered and shot by the French authorities who chalked it up as a suicide to avoid more scandal and maybe topple a few more people in high places which left Nicole free to marry the still pursuing British diplomat. Nice twist right. 

Yes, The Way You Look Tonight-Ginger Rogers And Fred Astaire’s “Swing Time” (1936)-A Film Review

Yes, The Way You Look Tonight-Ginger Rogers And Fred Astaire’s “Swing Time” (1936)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

Swing Time, starring Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, and all importantly music and lyrics by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, 1936

It probably is not good form to start off a review of a light-hearted musical comedy, what the heck, a dance film with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers with the music and comedy as filler, or the comedy part anyway complaining about the assignment. But I will try the reader’s patience long enough to make a point that I made in my last film review since this is of a piece with that comment. Then, and now, I have complained I won’t say bitterly yet that I have now been given five straight “women’s films,” the modern cinematic term “chick flicks” although that does not ring as a true statement with the ones I have done by new site manager Greg Green.

As I pointed out in that last review, Coco Before Chanel, once Greg became the day to day manager here he went out of his way to “lure” me from a very comfortable by-line that I had with Women Today. I also noted that I had over a decade ago been a stringer here under the old management when my companion Josh Breslin worked here (which he still does) and had left for that Women Today by-line when the old site manager Allan Jackson would not give me a by-line. Those were the days when it was clear for all to see, all who wanted to see, that while the site had all the right positions on the women’s liberation struggles (and still does) that Allan, who moreover was Josh’s very long time friend, was starting down the road to keep the place very much a male bastion haven for his “good old boys” friends whose friendship was defined by the litmus test of being stuck in the nostalgic 1960s when all hell broke loose in American society as they came of age. Greg was supposed to be a welcome break from both of those conditions. Right now I wonder, wonder out loud.                  

Don’t get me wrong this little Rogers-Astaire vehicle Swing Time one in about ten that this pair danced away the stars in is fine, is worth reviewing if for no other reason that the Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields music and lyrics collaboration on some classic songs from the American Songbook which torch-singers like Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee would feast on later. One good example which served as headline here-The Way You Look Tonight. Looking at the site archives though, after storming out of Greg’s office when I received the assignment and I could not budge him off his position that I needed to “broaden my horizons” since at Women Today any film reviews that I did, which were not many, were contemporary efforts I noticed that all the previous four or five Rogers-Astaire reviews had been done by men. Men who did a very good job of making the salient points about the films but who also made the point that from their collective perspectives these films were geared to the tastes and heartstrings of the women of those times who made up the majority, in some cases as during World War II the great majority, of the movie-going public. In other words-women’s films. So I bring no special wisdom to this genre, and maybe less so since I, unlike Sam Lowell, Sandy Salmon, and even one by my old heart-throb Josh did not live and die by watching college time revivals of such films in the 1960s having been a child of the late 1970s when that revival had burned itself out as a cheap date college night out.

As to the film itself well I think I telegraphed my take on these flashy big budget productions which were merely, let’s face it, an excuse to have Fred and Ginger dance and sing between coos. Here Fred plays Lucky, as in lucky at cards, gambling that sort of thing who also happens to be light on his feet (not that “light on his feet” used back then to signify a homosexual trait but dancing feet) who is stepping up in class, literally. That step up to be done by marrying a town debutante and on to easy street. Except through a series of lame pratfalls it never happens. No wedding and so Lucky (and Pop) lam in to the Big Apple, to New York to see if they can make some jack either from gambling or from his hoofing.  

Through another series of lame pratfalls Lucky meets Penny, Ginger’s role, a dance instructor. Meets and the rest is really history. No, the rest is a song and dance through the Kerns-Fields score interrupted by the usual attraction, distraction, misunderstanding, and finally, lovers’ bliss. I would have thought that it would have been hard for this pair to stumble through a series of plot-lines that would freeze the most indulgent brain but they did until audiences got weary. But watching one or two, and make this film one of them, will carry you through a few blue spots.          

Fighting For The Brass Ring- Kate Hudson’s “Almost Famous” (2000)- A Film Review

Fighting For The Brass Ring- Kate Hudson’s “Almost Famous” (2000)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Alden Riley

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up here a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Allan Jackman (using the moniker Peter Paul Markin in honor of fallen comrade from high school days) some organizational norms have changed. That vote was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, and in the aftermath the habit of previous site manager of assigning writers to specific topics like film,  books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

Almost Famous, starring Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup, Patrick Fugit some of the story is based on real events in the young life of director Cameron Crowe, 2000  

[If any reader has read the announcement from the Editorial Board below my name above or has been following the developing situation around the change in leadership at this site they know that there has been a certain amount of fall-out around the question of whether the old site administrator, Peter Paul Markin (not his real name but a moniker he has used for the past decade of more of his leadership I will get to a bit later in this introduction) had retired or been purged. The “official” stance is that he has retired to parts unknown making that “purge” rumor only stick faster especially among the older writers, Markin’s contemporaries from the 1960s, their growing up and coming of age days which was, is, one of the issues which caused Markin’s tumble from grace. This “disappearance” a stinging remind to those guys who graphically remember the Cold War Stalinist habit of sending deposed opponents out to Siberia some place for “rest” or from their own personal experiences in the latter part of the 1960s, toward the ebb part, when among radicals the “politically incorrect” of that time were banished never to be heard from again although that was more shunning that sending them to outer Utah or someplace like that.

In an attempt to clear the air and give the readership a better understanding about what has happened over the past several months to cause the shake-up the new site administrator, Greg Green, who held a similar position at the American Film Gazette and who I knew there from the time I worked as a stringer, has allowed us free reign to tell our take on what has happened and why after Markin was deposed when he lost a vote of no confidence among the collection of writers who write for this site. In the interest of transparency I was among the “Young Turks” who led the revolt and was also a key person in bringing Greg into the fold. 

Others like my former “boss” Sandy Salmon whom I also knew at the Gazette and who brought me in to be his associate film critic after he replaced the now retired Sam Lowell another key “coup” member have given their take so I will not burden the reader with too much detail about the actual events which led up to Markin’s ouster except to broadly outline what triggered everything. (That “former boss” reference reflects as noted above the new policy of only using surnames to identify writers in an effort by Greg to break down the barriers between younger and older writers.) 

A few years ago Markin, in what at the time seemed like a good move to “pass the torch” according to the older writers who had been with him for a long time (and some whom he had known from his hometown growing up days or from his wild and wooly 1960s hippie days) and widen what was increasingly a nostalgia trip tied to the turbulent 1960s experiences which formed most of their worldviews brought in some younger writers. (Don’t make as much out of the “younger writers” designation since most of us are pushing fifty very gingerly and the only really younger writers, twenty somethings, were free-lance stringers.) That perspective was honored more in the breech that the observance as increasing the younger writers were assigned projects relating to that same period, that turbulent 1960s era,  which for the most part were not events that we were that familiar with or gave a fuck about. So some of this stuff had been simmering for a while, for a couple of years anyway.

This summer, the summer of 2017, everything came to a head when Markin after being coaxed by his old growing up neighborhood friends and a couple of the older writers whom I will not name since they have survived the tumult just as they had survived every regime change when they were younger and into radical politics he “force marched” everybody into writing about the Summer of Love, 1967 after an old friend Alex, Zack James’ brother, told him about how San Francisco was commemorating the 50^th anniversary of that experience. That started the mad rush. Someone called those older turncoat writers who should be handled in the same manner as deadly snakes as ready to change their principles with the new wind blowing as their shirts and that seems about right. They had no trouble leaving Markin in the lurch wherever he is and moving on without a ripple. Whatever they thought of the project everybody was forced to reference some aspect of the 1960s fun and foolishness whatever they were writing about even if it was not germane to their subject or whether they gave a damn about it.

I will give my personal “awakening” which led me to join the “Young Turks,” join with a vengeance if you must know. Sandy to appease Markin had taken it upon himself to write a film review of the well-known documentary by D.A. Pennebaker on the first Monterey Pops Festival also held in fateful 1967 which is where the big belting blues singer from Texas Janis Joplin made her big breakthrough to stardom. As was his wont during the few years I have known him (he worked at American Film Gazette when I was a stringer there but I did not know him since I was a stringer and would submit my articles via FedEx or later e-mail attachments) he mentioned how well the documentary had held up unlike many others from that time and how Janis “stole the show.” That is when I made what would be my fatal error and told him that I did not know who Janis Joplin was. He laughed and let it pass.

Somehow though Markin got wind of the fact of my ignorance and “ordered” over Sandy’s head and without his knowledge me to “do penance” (Markin’s words) by reviewing a bio/pic on Janis entitled Little Girl Blues. If that sleigh-of-hand was not enough Markin almost went apoplectic when I mentioned in some detail that after my viewing of the Pennebaker documentary for my article that I thought that Otis Redding equally “stole the show” that year. Since this year is also the 50^th anniversary of his death and of his signature song Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay released shortly before his death I gave that perspective amble space in the piece. Markin red-pencilled most of it and in a rage told me (in front) of several senior writers that while he appreciated Redding’s contribution to soulful music the piece was supposed to be a homage to Joplin’s effect on he and his growing up hometown friends who went West partially to see the “acid” rock scene emerging in the Bay Area during that decisive year.

I nursed my “wounds” over that slight and frankly Markn’s misjudgment about not putting Redding in the picture as part of the turbulent and fateful 1960s mix from the perspective of a guy who was looking at the times from the outside, a guy who didn’t go weak-kneed any time the number 60 came up. Then Sandy, who was, is, roughly Markin’s, wherever he is, contemporary and who knew his close growing up hometown friend Sam Lowell from their Gazette days and who brought Sandy in when he, Sam, decided to retire, in early September assigned me the review below, Almost Famous. Like others have said the original intent of this site was to cover all aspects of the American political, social and cultural history through commentary about events, movements, books, films, music and the like.

But when Sandy went to check with Markin on assignment and told him I was expected to do this review he again went apoplectic not against me personally, I don’t think, but about the idea that a review of music and the trials and tribulations of bands getting a leg up not from the 1960s, the subject of the film, was being covered. That heavy-handed maneuver along with other smoldering grievances led to the “Young Turks” uprising. Led me to join in if for no other reason that while I appreciated what Markin and the others had done in the 1960s I didn’t want to be trapped in a time machine stuck in that era.  So until Markin was “deposed,” sent to Siberia, or whatever happened to him after that vote of no confidence this review was put on hold. Now it can see the light of day.

********

I assume that director Cameron Crowe had a field day directing this little gem of a film Almost Famous about the coming of age of a teenage rock journalist based on his own rock journal experiences and the trials and tribulations of a band, a set of personalities and varying degrees of musical showmanship, trying to break out of the garage or wherever they hung out and practiced. This film had a special appeal to me since it featured an up and coming rock group that was situated in the thick of the 1970s and 1980s a time when I came of musical age, the Peter Frampton, Heart, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the “heavy metal” rock scene.

Young musical beat writer whiz kid William Miller (the character based in part on director Crowe’s youthful experiences), played by Patrick Fugit, is adrift in the world, a world where he doesn’t fit in except he has an ear for music and a big steady hand to write with (in the days when a pencil and notebook of not blessed memory were the tools of the writing trade). He works his way, despite his over-bearing mother’s attempts to thwart him at every turn from beginning to end it seemed, into the scene, the 1970s music scene of blessed memory by getting a free-lance assignment to review a Black Sabbath concert for Rolling Stone magazine despite his tender age of fifteen. Although that famous rock group does not play into the story the fictional front group band, the Stillwaters, led by William Hammond, played by Bill Crudup, does as he latches onto the idea of promoting them as the next big thing in heavy metal rock.

Two things aid him in getting on the inside of this group’s network. First Hammond liked him, likes the young kid although that relationship would have its fair share of ups and downs when the mercurial Hammond questions William’s motives and what he expected to get out of the whole thing. Then William along the way meets what is inevitable in rock circles, maybe all musical circles, the lead “groupie” Penny Lane, played by Kate Hudson, who befriends him and gets him the inside track on the group. Gets him a seat on the touring bus with Stillwater as they claw their way to what they hope will be the brass ring-that coveted cover on Rolling Stone which in those days if not now signified that you had arrived. William was there at the creation to chronicle all of that. Naturally along the way he has all the coming of age experiences of friendship, betrayal, misunderstandings, fun and frolic, and losing that virginity his mother fretted about when he went on the road. Not the best story line on the emergence of a rock group but very well done, very well done indeed. (And now I can say not about a rock group emerging from the pack in the 1950s and early 1960s age of what is name classical rock, praise be.)                                                    

How The West Was Won-The Coen Brothers Remake Of “True Grit” (2010)-A Film Review

How The West Was Won-The Coen Brothers Remake Of “True Grit” (2010)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up here a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Allan Jackman (using the moniker Peter Paul Markin in honor of fallen comrade from high school days) some organizational norms have changed. That vote was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, and in the aftermath the habit of previous site manager of assigning writers to specific topics like film,  books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

True Grit, starring Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn, Haillee Steinfeld as Mattie, Matt Damon as Texas Ranger LeBoeuf, from the novel by Charles Portis, directed and produced by the Coen Brothers as a remake of the 1969 version of the film which starred John Wayne, 2010

[Apparently the fall-out from the change of leadership of this site from the now seemingly disgraced and exiled Allan Jackson out  to the wilds of Utah where he is reportedly by rumor said to be hustling copy for the Mormons although that sounds improbable on its face since he went out of his way to skewer the most well-known Mormon Mitt Romney for disowning his great grandfather’s astounding feat of juggling five wives at one time back in the day Allan Jackson to Greg Green brought in from a similar position that he held at American Film Gazette is not over. The basic issue which the reader should know about was Jackson’s heavy-handed manner of assigning projects tilted heavily toward the turbulent times of the 1960s when he and a number of the older writers including a few he had known since high school had come of age. That emphasis despite the well-known proposition stated in the masthead that the whole of American history (albeit from a decidedly leftist perspective), culture, society, mores and all were within its purview. He had brought in a slew of younger writers, not kids out of journalism school or English dissertations but younger.

They, according to younger writer and “Young Turks” leader Lance Lawrence, were to broaden the outlook, widen the time frame and range of subjects. Instead Allan used them as “cannon fodder” (Eliot Francis’ term) for a continued expansion of that 1960s perspective. The whole thing came to a head this past summer when he unilaterally decided that everything of importance was to be thrown through the prism of the Summer of Love, 1967 which was being commemorated mainly in the Bay Area on its 50^th anniversary. The younger writers balked sensing that this was merely the first shot in another total immersion in various 50^th anniversary commemorations to come over the next few years. In a heated debate and contentious procedure in early fall the younger writers aided by the decisive vote of Sam Lowell one of Allan’s old high school friends who saw the writing on the wall he received a vote of no confidence.

Subsequently Jackson announced his retirement through a third party to the assembled audience. That so-called retirement versus what has been whispered about that he had been “purged” never to be heard from again like in the time of Stalin in Russia or among New Left fanatics in late 1960s radical circles seeking purity is what the fall-out is all about. Nobody quite has the whole story, or at least I have not heard anything that sounds like the whole story but younger writer Brad Fox in a recent review of Goya’s Ghosts went way out of his way to inform the reading public that something closer to being purged had been the previously missing Jackson’s fate. And Brad would know since he owes his job to his father’s friendship with Allan going back to their high school days.           

Here is some of what Brad mentioned with a little comment by me in places as we try to consolidate the new regime and provide a wider perspective for the reader to imbibe.

Brad thought it ironic, and I do too, that one of the first assignments that our new site administrator Greg Green has handed out, handed out to him especially knowing his father relationship with Allan, Goya’s Ghosts, dealt with the turmoil of the French Revolution through the prism of the Spanish occupation in Napoleon’s time by French troops aided by a bureaucracy of both imported French bureaucrats and Spaniards looking for the main chance. What Brad called guys who change their allegiances as easily as their shirts. 

Sometimes apparently, and this may have been Greg Green’s point in assigning the review life mirrors art. The staff at American Left History were, are as ardent as any Bolshevik was in his or her time to draw whatever lessons they can from the experiences of the French Revolution. Including many a hot “debate” over whiskeys at Jimmy Jake’s Tavern near the Seaport in Boston.     

Seemingly, at least to Brad and I buy some of his argument since I do believe that Green was trying to promote a literary cautionary tale in the guises of a harmless hapless film review a parallel example existed between rabid Inquisitor turned French Revolution devotee Lorenzo’s topsy-turvy career and fate and that of Jackson. I have already mentioned the main reason given but it bears repeating was Allan’s obsessive tilting of the coverage of subjects in this space toward events from the turbulent 1960s when most of the older writers came of age exemplified by the over-the-top coverage of the Summer of Love, 1967 he ordered the writers, young and old, familiar with the period or not to cover. There has been, and here the parallel with Francisco who would go to his execution under the Inquisition once the French were defeated and swept out of Spain by the British with the aid of Spanish guerillas, a persistent rumor that Allan was purged and that the retirement ploy was just that a cover for the more aggressive removal mainly through the efforts of the younger writers. On the heels of what Brad has said I will try to track this down as I get more information. Information that I believe will implicate Allan’s his old friend Sam Lowell who may have been used by the younger writers as a stalking horse once they knew he was anxious to show his old time “revolutionary turn the world upside down” credentials or maybe the mastermind behind a plan to ease Allan out for other reasons. For now if you heard that one Allan Jackson has fallen under the wheels of a modern day Inquisition don’t be surprised. Don’t be surprised at all.]

*********

Here is the real deal though:

For those more interested in old time Old West, Old Revisionist West than the internal struggle for a new direction at this site you are now home. Old Revisionist West meaning not the stuff that guys and gals like many of the older writers and me who grew in the 1950s had to swallow on television where the guys in white hats were pure good and fast on the trigger if they needed to be and black hats signifying pure evil and somehow very bad trigger action which makes one wonder today how they survived to be bad boys, but the dirt under the fingernails, didn’t wash for a week, put that trigger quick and ask questions later. For that desire here is a film, a remake of a classic Old West western, True Grit which won John Wayne an Oscar for his performance as lead character Rooster Cogburn by the bloody thirsty Coen Brothers last seen in this space as the producers of the remake of the bloody 1955 British film The Lady Killers where an old widowed woman held off a horde of ruffians ready to do her in praise the Lord.

Recently Sam Lowell who use to do the film reviews here all by his lonesome before he retired and persuaded me to take over before I retire made some commentary about the 1961 film The Misfits, the film adaptation of playwright Arthur Miller’s story. He mentioned that the characters in that film, male and female alike, born in the West, born in the saddle really, or transported from other parts, were just then at the crossroads where the Old West and its individualistic values was fast fading in the modern industrial skyline. That the strip malls, suburban ranches, golf courses, and tourist traps were heading west. That is not the case in True Grit. Here we have all the bloodshed, the fast triggers, the fatal triggers the lawlessness needing to be tamed, the lost boys, the losers in the Civil War, the raw emotions and rawer whisky that made up a big part of the lifeblood of the Old West, the West that those who could not for one reason or another make it in the East headed for to start anew-or keep on doing the same thing in new quarters.

In a funny way, just like the plotlines from Zane Grey on, this one is simplicity itself “the age of vengeance is mine saith the Lord. Young Mattie, all of 14, played by Hailee Steinfeld, feisty as hell even if only 14, is out to avenge the death of her father by a no account bastard who just shot him down in cold blood named Tom Clancy. Little did he know his days were numbered with Mattie on the case no matter that he headed out to desolate Indian country (Native American or indigenous peoples now).

But even a feisty precocious 14 year old needs some help against a bad man desperado and so she hires for a bounty a U.S. Marshall to bring old Tom in to face justice, to face the big step-off which Mattie makes very plain is her goal-no anti-death penalty advocate she. So she hires the toughest of them all, the one with, hey, true grit, Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn played by Jeff Bridges like he was born for the role, and maybe he was. Mattie had a choice, could have and maybe should have picked Texas Ranger LaBouef, played by Matt Damon, who had been after bandito Clancy for crimes in Texas which would also require a hangman’s noose. But she took Rooster instead. 

Eventually after much banter they, all three, head out to that Indian country (remember think Native American) and before long all kind of calumny, false leads, a few confrontations and the like impede their progress. Also some internal bickering which would lead that LaBoeuf to head out on his own periodically. Not to worry though after a few rounds of rooty-toot-toot that Tom Clancy is gone to the great beyond-no one to mourn him. Along the way though Mattie and the Rooster bond, bond enough that when that Rooster went to his own great beyond he was buried in Mattie’s family plot. Yeah, wasn’t that a time boys, wasn’t that a time.

"Good Morning, Vietnam"-Indeed-The Trials And Tribulations Of One Adrian Cronauer

"Good Morning, Vietnam"-Indeed-The Trials And Tribulations Of One Adrian Cronauer

By Si Lannon     

I knew from the minute I picked up this guy Adrian Cronauer from the airport that no way was he going to last in our outfit. You can take it from me Eddie Garlick that he had a “misfit” target written all over him. Our outfit if you could call it that was producing, well, hell, producing propaganda and glad tidings to the increasing number of troops coming in-country and in need of some easy listening on the Armed Forces Radio Station-Vietnam edition. First of all Cronauer, nobody called him Adrian (and he told me once we got to know each other that nobody but his mother called him that and he would usually not answer to the name even from her. I wouldn’t answer to Edward either except to my own mother after she twisted my ear a few times when I faked not hearing her) came over from some good awful place, Crete, or some place like that and was Air Force whereas the rest of us were strictly Army, Regular Army. Second of all from minute one he had me both splitting a gut laughing and looking at him sideways like he was some guy from outer space.

But see the General, General Timothy Taylor, a tough guy street general as we would call a guy like him in the old neighborhood, back in Philly, back in the Acre housing project where I grew up and where we had our own General Baker and General Pratt although not with any stars on their shoulders, didn’t need them, had heard of him when he was in Europe. He was old school, bless his soul, who won his star going through the European Theater in World War II. He, the general, must have ruffled some feathers though, annoyed some General Staff guy because he had seen Cronhuaer as he was leaving some cushy job there and transfer to hellish Vietnam as the American troops on the ground expanded like crazy in 1965 once the shit hit the fan. The general though landed on his feet though since instead of throwing him out in the boonies with the 7^th Air Calvary they put him in charge of propaganda work, the radio station being one of his projects to supervise.    

The real reason though, and I proved right in the end even although I did everything in my power to try to save him including getting the grunts, you know the guys who were going in and out of the boonies looking for Mister Charlie to send fan mail to get him back on the air was Sergeant Major Dickerson, the “Dick” as we called him behind his back. (I didn’t do any fighting although I did face gun fire and bomb explosions in my tour of Vietnam like a lot of guys not on the line, it was that kind of war, but I had nothing but respect for the enemy and would not call him the derogatory Charlie but always prefaced it with the honorific Mister to show my respects). He was all spit and polish, all rules and regulations, all-lifer, the bad kind of lifer who lived to count the days until retirement but in the meantime raise seven kinds of hell, the only good commie is dead commie so you knew, I knew the minute I saw Cronauer half out of uniform, hair too long and with a laugh a minute that he wasn’t going to go the distance, would fuck up somehow and made hash out of everything. (Then I didn’t know I would wind-up being a lifer too but that was after I left the Army after my enlistment was up, seeing nothing around the Acre that I could do without winding up in stir so I re-upped. I just hope some of the guys that were under me don’t call be lifer the way I just did about the “Dick.”)

While he was riding high one Airman Cronauer was beautiful was like a breath of fresh air in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Would make a lot of guys who are making a good living doing comedy routines take up another profession, maybe lawyering or something, maybe learn to crochet. Yes, Cronauer was the avenging angel and the worst nightmare for guys like the Dick, a loose cannon. The only thing I didn’t like in the few months that Cronauer was around was that he would always kid me about my turning the key to start the engine of the jeep that I used to transport him around to his various doings when it was already running. Being around him made me nervous and forgetful. I admit I was trying to protect my stripes, maybe grab another one if I could control this force of nature. See General Taylor had personally assigned me to “look after” Cronauer since even the General knew he was loosely put together. I guess the general didn’t know in the end how big a can of worms Cronauer would be after the Dick got through with him. 

You have to know something about Armed Forces Radio back in ’65, maybe any time but mostly the thing was about presenting “happy” news, maybe cover a press conference of some important figure who was in-country to see what was really going on (and never taking the blinders off to find out, never leaving MAC-V headquarters and definitely never asking the soldiers, the grunts, what the hell was going on while they were doing their whirlwind tours) and play music like Ray Conniff, Percy Faith, I don’t know Guy Lombardo stuff our parents would dig, would find appealing. And the guys, good guys really, who took their shifts, usually four hours unless they were covering for somebody, and gave what the Dick and Army regulations dictated to him to read and play. They even had two donkeys, two brothers who must have been orphans because no mother could love them (or have carried them in her womb) who red-penciled everything especially the number of KIAs, and the lack of progress against Mister Charlie that was apparent to anybody except those idiot VIPs who had come in-country for more than five minutes. The worst lie though was the body count. The number of VC killed. The numbers just didn’t add up. Some guy during my second tour of Vietnam figured it out one time in 1968 I think that if you added all the numbers together from the body counts then to you would have more dead than were in the whole freaking country.

From day one, no, minute one, Cronauer blew all of that away. Started off at six o’clock in the morning with his signature call-“Good Morning, Vietnam” but he would stretch those three words out for what seemed like an hour. Guys would imitate him, guys on in the boonies too. Then he would do “mock” news reports, total bullshit of total bullshit, and then play something like James Brown, can you believe it, Brother James Brown. Needless to say the Dick blew his top, complained to General Taylor who told him to “fuck off” then because the men liked hearing Cronauer, and he did have a big breath of fresh air following. Like I said the General was what you would call a soldiers’ General if you know what I mean (unlike those General Staff guys who never came out of the bunker over at MAC-V).          

What did Cronauer in, what did a lot of guys stuck in Vietnam then before there were too many guys hanging around in Saigon and everything got to be a whorish merry-go-round was a girl, a beautiful Vietnamese girl who I told him was off-limits, was a no go. But Cronauer wouldn’t listen, spent every waking hour trying to figure out how to get next to this beauty, this Trinh. Including getting close to her brother Tran something I forget his full name, and it doesn’t matter since that was not his real name, his real Mister Charlie name as it turned out. Although Cronauer didn’t see it that way he was basically asking this Tran to pimp for his sister. Nothing good could come of that, and nothing did despite the extensive wooing that Cronauer did.

When push came to shove though nothing could save Cronauer. He had been too friendly with the natives as they say and the natives had bitten him, had used his as a cover to blow up a famous Saigon gin mill where GIs hung out. Not good, not good at all. Got me mixed up in it and almost ruined my career except the General had the Dick’s number and it was him that was hung out to dry not me. Cronauer, well, bad boy Cronauer got kicked out of the service for the good of the service as they say. Never did get too far with that Trinh before he became persona non grata in-country. Sent his young ass back to the States quick as a jack rabbit. End of story.   

Not quite. Some nights I still wake up thinking about some antic that mad clown did on the air or out in the streets of Saigon. Always think even though I am a Sergeant Major myself here at Fort Meade about that last gift he left me. His farewell tape to the troops which I delivered. Got to do my own version of Good Morning, Vietnam, and got to feel for just one moment what it was like to have the world in your hands. Yeah, Cronauer was one hell of a guy, was a piece of work no question.

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

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

By Lance Lawrence

“Fast Eddie” Felson was the greatest pool player to ever chalk up a stick and you had better believe that because I know from where I speak because in most quarters, among the serious followers of the game, I, Jackie “Big Man” Gleason think that title belongs to me. Maybe you never heard of “Fast Eddie,” never knew the story behind the story of how for a couple of years anyhow, maybe three he ruled the roost, he was the king of the hill. All I know is from the first moment Eddie entered Sharkey’s Pool Hall, the place where my manager, Bart, and I hustled all comers at the sport of kings, down on 12^th Avenue in the teeming city of New York I was afraid to play him. Afraid he would damage my reputation as the king of the hill. I had never played game one against him but still I sensed something in his swagger, in his bravado that made my hands shake. Shaking hands the kiss of death in our profession.               

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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