This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
On The 80th Anniversary-The Travails Of Single Motherhood-Barbara Stanwyck’s “Stella Dallas” (1937)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Leslie Dumont
(This is another film that was in the pipeline in 2017 but got pushed back due to the internal in-fighting on this site so 80th anniversary is appropriate. Greg Green)
Stella Dallas, starring Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Anne Shirley, directed by the legendary King Vidor, 1937
In a recent film review of Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Roger’s Stage Door I mentioned, apparently out of turn, that I was grateful to the new site manager Greg Green for taking me on as a regular writer in this space. That part was okay according to him. The part that was not okay was when I mentioned that I had known the previous site manager Allan Jackson for many years beginning with an initial connection with my then companion Josh Breslin in the 1980s who had met Allan out in San Francisco during the Summer of Love, 1967. Allan had refused to give me a regular by-line then at the hard copy version of this site, although he hired me as a stringer, freelance-writer for a while until I got a regular by-line at The Eye. Allan’s reason back then was that hiring me would be an act of nepotism, would look like he was stockpiling the place with his friends their friends and cronies. Strange because in the end he would as he got older and more nostalgic surround himself with a mother lode of just such people. Gave them titles and all everything that they abhorred back in their mainly 1960s youth.
Thinking about the matter recently I am more inclined to go with my feelings at the time of rejection that he really did not like women
working alongside him in his various publishing efforts. A look at the archives has pretty much confirmed that. The surprising part is that in person, and the politics he and the blog stood for, stand for, he, if not actually a feminist, none of the guys at this site, including Josh, could be classified that way then he was far forward on what he called “the women question” than most of the men that I worked in the industry with later. And I have made that statement on a number of occasions including that previously mentioned review. That is what got me in hot water with Greg. He told me that he was trying to get rid of Allan’s still very strong “presence” here despite his physical distance in, I think, Utah. I am not sure what to make of the statement but others have told me they have received the same “warning.” In short, except as a passing reference to some negative aspect of Allan’s regime, don’t write about him during the course of a review. Since this film review was already in the pipeline Greg has told me he will not “red-pencil” any such references here.
That brings us to the film under review Barbara Stanwyck’s Stella Dallas which deals with some women’s issues that could not get addressed in Stage Door although that was a very strong women’s film as well. (I hope that I am wrong, and I probably am, but I would be very unhappy if I was the token women here and hence will be given all the so-called “chick-flicks,” all the women-oriented films since that would both be a serious step back from what this site is supposed to stand for and drive me crazy as well since my attitude toward most women’s films, especially of late is that they should never have been produced for lots of reasons which I will get into sometime when I get another such assignment).
It is only recently, maybe the last few years, the combination of sex and class have begun to get a serious work-out in the body politic and its reflection in film. So it is rather surprising to see such issues, intentionally or not and maybe not is closer to the grain, in a 1930s Hollywood film, a melodrama, a tear-jerker to boot. Stella Dallas (nee Martin) is from minute one of the film all about getting out from under her banal mill-town working class upbringing. She wants the American rags to riches dream but via her sexual charms and feminine wiles to grab an eligible rich man and not through
her own education and acumen. Well once she put her claws out she hooks an up and coming guy, not rich but with prospects, Steve Dallas, played by 1930s rich and handsome leading man character John Boles, who on the rebound marries her quickly, too quickly for either party in the end.
The result of this union is a young daughter, Laurel, played by Anne Shirley as she ages, as she gets to be a good-looking young woman. But well before that the well-mannered Dallas-rough and tumble Martin class differences portent a marriage not made in heaven. Before long the paths separated with Stella in charge of the daughter on a set allowance from Stephen who was off to New York to make a ton of money. That situation goes on for years with Laurel periodically off with father and very different kind of lifestyle among the upper crust whom her father is associating with as he again rises in society.
Such a situation could not go on forever especially as Laurel is attracted to that high society life, although finally made aware that her ill at ease mother can’t keep up with that crowd, no way. In the best interest of the child though Stella finally agrees to divorce Stephen, an extremely hard thing to have to do in that time, and let Laurel go and soak up the lifestyle of the rich and famous. Stella’s sacrifice, although it turned out she couldn’t quite make that class jump herself, paid off when Laurel married some scion of the Mayfair swells as Josh always liked to call them. Sex, class, single motherhood, sacrifice a better than average melodrama from that period. Except Josh will also squash things a bit when he reads this review and start yelling about Ms. Stanwyck’s role as the femme fatale in the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity la and the hell with the frumpy housewife she plays in this film.
I Hear The Voice Of My Arky Angel-Once Again-With Angel Iris Dement In Mind
By Fritz Taylor
SWEET FORGIVENESS (Iris DeMent)
(c) 1992 Songs of Iris/Forerunner Music, Inc. ASCAP
Sweet forgiveness, that's what you give to me
when you hold me close and you say "That's all over"
You don't go looking back,
you don't hold the cards to stack,
you mean what you say.
Sweet forgiveness, you help me see
I'm not near as bad as I sometimes appear to be
When you hold me close and say
"That's all over, and I still love you"
There's no way that I could make up for those angry words I said
Sometimes it gets to hurting and the pain goes to my head
Sweet forgiveness, dear God above
I say we all deserve a taste of this kind of love
Someone who'll hold our hand,
and whisper "I understand, and I still love you"
AFTER YOU'RE GONE (Iris DeMent)
(c) 1992 Songs of Iris/Forerunner Music, Inc. ASCAP
There'll be laughter even after you're gone
I'll find reasons to face that empty dawn
'cause I've memorized each line in your face
and not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me
I'll miss you, oh how I'll miss you
I'll dream of you and I'll cry a million tears
but the sorrow will pass and the one thing that will last
is the love that you've given to me
There'll be laughter even after you're gone
I'll find reason and I'll face that empty dawn
'cause I've memorized each line in your face
and not even death could ever erase the story they tell to me
Every once in a while I have to tussle, go one on one with the angels, or a single angel is maybe a better way to put it. No, not the heavenly ones or the ones who burden your shoulders when you have a troubled heart but every once in a while I need a shot of my Arky angel, Iris Dement. Every once in a while when I am blue, not a Billie Holiday blue but maybe just a passing blue I need to hear a voice that if there was an angel heaven voice she would be the one I would want to hear.
I first heard Iris DeMent doing a cover of a Greg Brown tribute to Jimmy Rodgers, the old time Texas yodeller, on Brown's tribute album, Driftless. I then looked for her solo albums and for the most part was blown away by the power of Iris’ voice, her piano accompaniment and her lyrics (which are contained in the liner notes of her various albums, read them, please). It is hard to type her style. Is it folk? Is it Country Pop? Is it semi-torch songstress? Well, whatever it may be that Arky angel is a listening treat, especially if you are in a sentimental mood.
Naturally when I find some talent that “speaks” to me I grab everything they sing, write, paint, or act I can find. In Iris’ case there is not a lot of recorded work, with the recent addition of Sing The Delta just four albums although she had done many back-ups or harmonies with other artists most notably John Prine. Still what has been recorded blew me away (and will blow you away), especially as an old Vietnam War era veteran her There is a Wall in Washington about the guys who found themselves on the Vietnam Memorial probably one of the best anti-war songs you will ever hear. That memorial containing names very close to me, to my heart and I shed a tear each time I even go near the memorial when I am in D.C. It is fairly easy to write a Give Peace a Chance or Where Have All the Flowers Gone? type of anti-war song. It is another to capture the pathos of what happened to too many families when we were unable to stop that war. The streets of my old-time growing up neighborhood are filled with memories of guys I knew, guys who didn’t make it back, guys who couldn’t adjust coming back to the “real world,” or could not get over no going into the service to experience the decisive event of our generation.
Other songs that have drawn my attention like When My Morning Comes hit home with all the baggage working class kids have about their inferiority when they screw up in this world. Walking Home Alone evokes all the humor, bathos, pathos and sheer exhilaration of saying one was able to survive, and not badly, after growing up poor, Arky poor amid the riches of America. (That may be the “connection” as I grew up through my father coal country Hazard, Kentucky poor.)
Frankly, and I admit this publicly in this space, I love Ms. Iris Dement. Not personally, of course, but through her voice, her lyrics and her musical presence. This “confession” may seem rather startling coming from a guy who in this space is as likely here to go on and on about Bolsheviks, ‘Che’, Leon Trotsky, high communist theory and the like. Especially, as well given Iris’ seemingly simple quasi- religious themes and commitment to paying homage to her rural background in song. All such discrepancies though go out the window here. Why?
Well, for one, this old radical got a lump in his throat the first time he heard her voice. Okay, that happens sometimes-once- but why did he have the same reaction on the fifth and twelfth hearings? Explain that. I can easily enough. If, on the very, very remotest chance, there is a heaven then I know one of the choir members. Enough said. By the way give a listen to Out Of The Fire and Mornin’ Glory. Then you too will be in love with Ms. Iris Dement.
Iris, here is my proposal, once again. If you get tired of fishing the U.P., or wherever, with Mr. Greg Brown, get bored with his endless twaddle about old Iowa farms or going on and on about Grandma's fruit cellar just whistle. Better yet just yodel like you did on Jimmie Rodgers Going Home on that Driftless CD.
Will The Circle Be Unbroken-The Music OF The Carter Family (First Generation)
By Sam Lowell
I am not enjoying my so-called retirement from the day to day operation of the film review section of this site. For many years I was at first film critic, small letters, and later when the then site manager Allan Jackson brought in some younger writers Senior Film Critic, capital letters, in the days when he got the bright notion that we needed a heriarchy here between the older writers and the younger writers and such designations did the trick. Well Allan found out to his later regret that such silly formal divisions and as well only permitting the younger writers to essentially have our leavings, leaving which included and oversized amount of material reflecting on the growing up times of the older writers, the 1960s, that frankly the younger writers could give a f- - k, pardon my English, about was part of his undoing. Brought a full-scale rebellion which eventually led to his downfall.
There are persistant rumors that Allan did not retire as is the formal reason given for his no longer running the show here but that he was purged, was unceremoniously driven into exile in Utah where he is hustling the Mormons for a by-line in some third-rate newspaper hard as that is to believe of guy who mocked the hell out of Mitt Romney when he was running for President in 2012 what with his five wives great-grardfather and white underwear. As a long time friend of Allan’s I had thought the former reason, that retirement stuff, rather suspicous since no way would Allan have retired on his own volition. This place was his baby. Of course as the one older writer who sided with what are now around the office called the “Young Turks” I am concerned that these victorious writers are not going to leave well enough alone and are ready according to another strong rumor to purge the lot of older writers.
I have no regrets, except the probable loss of a friend of fifty years standing if it proves that he is not out in hell-hole Utah but holed up somewhere near-by licking his wounds, about casting that decisive vote agaisnt him since the site really was turning into a lonely-hearts club for nostagic generation of ’68 veterans. Especially last year when Allan went crazy early on about the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, 1967 which formed a number of us from the old growing up neighborhood’s baptism of fire into that newer world we thought we were getting caught up in.
Allan got in such a frenzy about the matter that say you wanted to submit an article about the 1940s classic private detective Dashiell Hammett novel-inspired movie The Maltese Falcon you had to connect the dots somehow so that that San Francisco era of the film somehow linked up to the Summer of Love which was also centered in Frisco town. He had a big red-pencil out eagle-eyed looking for anything which he could “edit” toward that goal. (By the way to give a graphic example of how tilted Allan’s mind had become about linkage none of the younegr writers who gave it a try could make a conenction between the two, none. It took wily Phil Larkin to do the deed. The link? Miles Archer, one of the detective on the case, was killed, was murdered on Post Street and that street is located not far from the Fillimore where plenty of ‘acid rock” was performed and also near the epicenter of the whole thing, the Haight-Ashbury section of town. He went on to speculate about whether Sam Spade would have gotten caught in the Summer of Love or would he have hired himself out to search for missing kids for their distraught parents. Allan was delighted.)
The younger writers could have given a f - - k about that distant time but he made it a litmus test. I assumed that the frenzy would only get worse as the various 50th anniversaries, good and bad, for 1968 in 2018 came up. He had to go.
It did not help personally, although I have kept pretty quiet about it and did not let it get used for ammunition in the fierce internal fight which raged throughout most of the latter part of 2017, that due to my persistant nagging about the erroneous direction the site was taking that I was “forced” to retire from the day to day operations once he brought Sandy Salmon over from the American Film Gazette (as he did with current site manager Greg Green later in the year). He gave me so-called emertitus status and told me that I could now write whatever I wanted and submit whenever I wanted. And then crabbed every time I wanted to write about something not Summer of Love-related or not film related. So the short reminscence piece below is something that I had done a draft on, got red-penciled to death by Allan and threw in a desk drawer until recently I asked Greg Green about resurrecting the damn thing. In a flick he sure go to it. Yeah, although I am worried about purge talk both for Allan’s sake and the rest of us older writers, the old bastard had to go.
**********
You know it took a long time for me to figure out why I was drawn, seemingly out of nowhere, to the mountain music most famously brought to public, Northern public, attention by the likes of the Carter Family, Jimmy Rodgers, and the folklorists the Seegers and the Lomaxes who brought a ton of this stuff to the waiting arms of 1960s kids who were looking for “roots” whatever that might mean to any particular kid. Kids who would pay serious college cheap date money to see some of the survivors like Buell Ezell or Hobart Smith go through their paces.
As a kid I could not abide it but later on I figured that was because I was so embroiled in the uprising jail-break music of my generation, rock and roll, that anything else faded, faded badly by comparison. Later in high school and after that in college when I too joined the cheap date night crowd in the days when I hung around Harvard Square and would pursue girls, young women, only if they were willing to but into my cheap date routine I would let something like Gold Watch And Chain register a bit, registering a bit. That then meaning that I would find myself occasionally idly humming such a tune. But again more urban, more protest-oriented folk music was what caught my attention more when the folk minute was at high tide in the early 1960s.
Then one day not all that many years ago as part of a final reconciliation with my family, going back to my own roots, making peace with my old growing up neighborhood, I started asking many questions of family, old school mates and old friends like Phil Larkin and Bart Webber who have written in this space as well about how things turned so sour back when I was young. More importantly asking questions that had stirred in my mind for a long time and formed part of the reason that I went for reconciliation. To find out what my roots were while somebody was around to explain the days before I could rightly remember the early days. And in that process I finally, finally figured out why the Carter Family and others began to “speak” to me.
The thing was simplicity itself. See my father hailed from Kentucky, Hazard, Kentucky long noted in song and legend as hard coal country. (The L&M Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, Going Back To Harlan)When World War II came along he left to join the Marines to get the hell out of there. During his tour of duty he was stationed for a short while at the Portsmouth Naval Base and during that stay attended a USO dance held in Portland where he met my mother. Needless to say he stayed in the North, for better or worse, working the mills in Olde Saco until they closed or headed south for cheaper labor and then worked at whatever jobs he could find. All during my childhood though along with that popular music that got many mothers and fathers through the war mountain music, although I would not have called it that then filtered in the background on the family living room record player.
But here is the real “discovery,” a discovery that could only be disclosed by my parents. Early on in their marriage they had tried to go back to Hazard to see if they could make a go of it there. This was after my older brother Prescott was born and while my mother was carrying me. Apparently they stayed for several months before they left to go back to Olde Saco before I was born since I was born in Portland General Hospital. So see that damn mountain was in my DNA, was just harking to me when I got the bug. Funny, isn’t it.
Down And Dirty In Intel World-Jeremy Renner’s “The Bourne Legacy” (2012)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Seth Garth
The Bourne Legacy, starring Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, 2012
Funny how changes of regime as has happened here at this site (and at the on-line American Film Gazette) recently with the departure of Allan Jackson as site manager to parts unknown, although rumor has it that he is either in retirement or exile out in Utah, after a fierce internal fight and the installation of Greg Green, formerly of American Film Gazette, in that position. Since Greg’s takeover of the day to day operations he has assigned various writers, young the ones who brought him to power and old who for the most part stood by Allan, including me, many more movie reviews than Allan who was partial to music and book reviews ever did. Everybody was amazed when we found out that the AFG had in its long existence in hard copy and on-line published reviews of over forty thousand films as against the roughly fifteen hundred that had been posted under the deposed Jackson regime.
But that is not the main point since one would expect AFG as a specialty publication to have many more film reviews as here under Allan, who whatever our old-time friendship, really limited the types of films that he would assign or people would suggest. I think in Allan’s heart of hearts he would have been happy if all the films assigned or suggested were straight-documentaries. Since the purge he has been in secluded exile out in Utah so I don’t know that preference for sure but that is my take. Whatever his wish Allan most certainly would not as Greg Green has done assign zombie films, those super-hero flicks like Superman and Batman from some ill-spent childhoods that kids these days flock to in droves. Allan did not particularly like reviews of films after about 1952 (or music after about 1970) which was one of the reasons for the revolt of the “Young Turks” who were stymied in their efforts to write stuff they knew or cared about and not the leavings of guys like me from the old days (old in time and age here and in our interests mostly centered on the 1960s and the immediate aftermath).
Allan would have hollered bloody murder if he knew that Greg had assigned writers, young and old, to do such things as spy thrillers like the James Bond series now getting a hard work-out at this site. Would have flipped out and maybe needed hospitalization if he knew that Greg was passing out assignments like the film under review The Bourne Legacy. Although he would have given the Robert Ludlum Bourne novel series that this film is based on although not written by him a go ahead no problem. Alan’s main idea, main political idea was not to encourage belief in the omnipresent spy agencies from MI5-MI6 to CIA and NSA and whatever else the governments of the world have established to decrease enormously our privacy, our “right” to be left alone. That was why he always highlighted and profiled whistle-blower cases like those of the heroic and now released from jail Chelsea Manning and as of early 2018 the still Russia-exiled Edward Snowden.
Initially before he became site manager and was just in charge or the day to day operation Greg had assigned young writer Lance Lawrence to do the trilogy of Bourne movies starring Matt Damon who created the role and made the most of it. Lance, however, was among the leaders of the now emergent “Young Turks” who gutted Allan and sent him into something like a no-name non-person land showing that even young people who can retrace history a bit resembles nothing so much as Uncle Joe Stalin trying to wipe out the name Leon Trotsky from the annals of the Russian Revolution when he won the internal battle inside the Bolshevik Party. So Lance’s series took a back seat. Meanwhile Greg had assigned me to this film. Since it does not depend either on the Jason Bourne character or Matt Damon as actor Greg decided that I should post this now.
Although this version of the Bourne saga starts a bit slowly by the time it moves into gear about a third of the way through the movie it is another classic spy-thriller. Spy-thriller of the Bourne type meaning that the CIA (and its’ even more secretive sub-divisions in that murky shadow world) had no problem working very close to the Nuremburg Nazi –trial conviction standards in attempting to create genetically-enhanced humans who were nothing, literally nothing, but effective killing machines to be placed wherever the CIA chieftains and their minions deem necessary. Scary thought. As long as the drug regime held out. Certainly their creature Arron Cross, played by Jeremy Renner, was built for that task. That, what do they call such actions now down in Washington-deep state, yes, deep state work which all the conspiracy theorists, pro and amateur, live to chatter in cyberspace about while trolling along in their lives.
But what if things go wrong. No, not wrong with the high tech experiments that is easy enough just waste your no-name agents, but when such programs see the light of day, get known about outside the inner circle. That is Arron Cross’ problem from about minute one once the spook bureaucrats decided to pull the plug on all the nefarious operations so they could, something out of the Vietnam War terminology, have plausible deniability (which in the end they rammed down some Senate sub-committee’s throat.) So the chase is on, the elusive and apparently too well trained killer, Aaron, becomes the subject of a massive manhunt to kill him and ask questions later. That is the plan of chief liquidator ex Col. Byer, played by Edward Norton, in any case and while as we know he will not be successful against the free spirit Cross (after his cold turkey from his jones on those green and blue pills) he is as determined as any real CIA/NSA bureaucrat to make the problem go away.
Cross is up to the task, more than up to the task but as a rogue, as a renegade he has lost access to the genetic pills which give him his strength and intelligence. In desperation he seeks out one of his handlers, a doctor, Doctor Shearing, who may have some pills. This Doctor Shearing though is a pure researcher so no drugs. Moreover dear Mister Byer is intent on covering all tracks from agents to researchers and so she must be eliminated. Once Cross makes contact with the good doctor, played by fetching Rachel Weisz who almost anybody would go to great efforts protect so he is no fool moving mountains to aid her escape the rest of the film centers on getting him those damn drugs (creating an international chase to Manila) and avoiding almost every minute all the bad guys, crooks, agents and cops that Byer and company can throw at him and her.
Kicking, jumping, hard-riding you name it to get out of the bullseye on his back. After the murder, mayhem and frenzy settle down in their favor Cross and the Doc “disappear.” End of story-maybe.
You Got That Right Brother-The Blues Ain’t Nothing But A Good Woman On Your Mind -With Arthur Alexander's Anna In Mind
By Seth Garth
[I will have more to say about the matter presently once I get
more details about what is a very disturbing situation if it pans out to be true. I had heard rumors that some of the "Young Turks" who were instumental in what was supposed to be, and was advertised as, the well-desered retiremment of the long time site manager here Allan Jackson (who for those not in the know went under the moniker Peter Paul Markin in the blogosphere) once a vote of no confidence did not go his way have been letting it out that what really happened was a full-fledged purge in the old-fashioned political sense. That would acount for the rumored whereabouts of Allan being in self-imposed exile out in Utah trying to hustle up copy from the Mormon newspapers. Strange, very strange since Allan is the most irrelgious man I know and that word is exactly appropriate. More later when I actually can find time to contact my old friend and doping and drinking partner to get at the truth. WTF Seth Garth]
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A YouTube film clip of Arthur Alexander performing his classic Anna later coveted on a cover by the Beatles.
Johnny Prescott daydreamed his way through the music that he was listening to just then on the little transistor radio that Ma Prescott, Martha to adults, and Pa too, Paul to adults, but the main battles over the gift had been with Ma, had given him for Christmas. In those days we are talking about, the post-World War II red scare Cold War 1950s in America, the days of the dreamy man in the family being the sole provider fathers didn’t get embroiled in the day to day household kids wars and remained a distant and at times foreboding presence called in only when the dust-up had gotten out of hand. And then Papa pulled the hammer down via a classic united front with Ma. Johnny had taken a fit around the first week in December in 1960 when Ma quite reasonable suggested that a new set of ties to go with his white long-sleeved shirts might be a better gift, a better Christmas gift and more practical too, for a sixteen year old boy. Reasonable since alongside Pa being that sole provider, being a distant presence, and being called in only when World War III was about to erupt in the household he also worked like a slave for low wages at the Boston Gear Works, worked for low wages since he was an unskilled laborer in a world where skills paid money (and even the skills that he did have, farm hand skills, were not very useful in the Boston labor market). So yes ties, an item that at Christmas time usually would be the product of glad-handing grandmothers or maiden aunts would in the Prescott household be relegated to the immediate family. And that holiday along with Easter was a time when the Prescott boys had in previous years had gotten their semi-annual wardrobe additions, additions provided via the Bargain Center, a low-cost, low rent forerunner of the merchandise provided at Wal-Mart.
This year, this sixteen year old year, Johnny said no to being pieced off with thick plaid ties, or worse, wide striped ties in color combinations like gold and black or some other uncool combination, uncool that year although maybe not in say 1952 when he did not know better, uncool in any case against those thin solid colored ties all the cool guys were wearing to the weekly Friday night school dances or the twice monthly Sacred Heart Parish dances the latter held in order to keep sixteen year old boys, girls too, in check against the worst excesses of what the parish priests (and thankful parents) thought was happening among the heathen young.
No, that is not quite right, that “Johnny said no” part, no, he screamed that he wanted a radio, a transistor radio, batteries included, of his own so that he could listen to whatever he liked up in his room, or wherever he was. Could listen to what he liked against errant younger brothers who were clueless, clueless about rock and roll, clueless about what was what coming through the radio heralding a new breeze in the land, a breeze Johnny was not sure what it meant but all he knew was that he, and his buddies, knew some jail-break movement was coming to unglue all the square-ness in the over- heated night. Could listen in privacy, and didn’t have to, understand, didn’t have to listen to some Vaughn Monroe or Harry James 1940s war drum thing on the huge immobile RCA radio monster downstairs in the Prescott living room. Didn’t have to listen to, endlessly Saturday night listen, captive nation-like listen to WJDA and the smooth music, you know, Frank Sinatra, Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, and so on listen to the music of Ma and Pa Prescott’s youth, the music that got them through the Depression and the war. Strictly squaresville, cubed.
Something was out of joint though, something had changed since he had begun his campaign the year before to get that transistor radio, something or someone had played false with the music that he had heard when somebody played the jukebox at Freddy’s Hamburger House where he heard Elvis, Buddy, Chuck, Wanda (who was hot, hot for a girl rocker, all flowing black hair and ruby red lips from what he had seen at Big Max’s Record Shop when her Let’s Have A Party was released), the Big Bopper, Jerry Lee, Bo, and a million others who made the whole world jump to a different tune, to something he could call his own. But as he listened to this Shangra-la by The Four Coins that had just finished up a few seconds ago and as this Banana Boat song by The Tarriers was starting its dreary trip through his brain he was not sure that those ties, thick or uncool as they would be, wouldn’t have been a better Christmas deal, and more practical too.
Yeah, this so-called rock station, WAPX, that he and his friends had been devoted to since 1957, had listened to avidly every night when Johnny Peeper, the Midnight Creeper and Leaping Lenny Penny held forth in their respective DJ slots, had sold out to, well, sold out to somebody, because except for late at night, midnight late at night, one could not hear the likes of Jerry Lee, Carl, Little Richard, Fats, and the new rocker blasts, now that Elvis had gone who knows where. Killer rocker Chuck Berry had said it best, had touched a youth nation nerve, had proclaimed the new dispensation when he had proclaimed loud and clear that Mr. Beethoven had better move alone, and said Mr. Beethoven best tell one and all of his confederates, including Mr. Tchaikovsky, that rock ‘n’ roll was the new sheriff in town. But where was Chuck, where was that rock blaster all sexed up talk and riffs to match now that everybody was reduced to Bobby Darin, Bobby Rydell, and Bobby, hell, they were all Bobbys and Jimmys and Eddies and every other vanilla name under the sun now not a righteous name in the house. As Johnny turned the volume down a little lower (that tells the tale right there, friends) as Rainbow (where the hell do they get these creepy songs from) by Russ Hamilton he was ready to throw in the towel though. Ready to face the fact that maybe, just maybe the jail-break that he desperately had been looking forward to might have been just a blip, might have been an illusion and that the world after all belonged to Bing, Frank, Tommy and Jimmy and that he better get used to that hard reality.
Desperate, Johnny fingered the dial looking for some other station when he heard this crazy piano riff starting to breeze through the night air, the heated night air, and all of a sudden Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 blasted the airwaves. Ike whose Rocket 88 had been the champion choice of Jimmy Jenkins, one of his friends from after school, when they would sit endlessly in Freddy’s and seriously try to figure out whose song started the road to rock and roll. Johnny had latched onto Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle and Roll which Elvis did a smash cover of but who in Joe’s version you can definitely heart that dah-da-dah beat that was the calling card of his break-out generation, as well as the serious sexual innuendo which Frankie Riley explained to one and all one girl-less Friday night at the high school hop. Billy Bradley, a high school friend who had put an assortment of bands together and so knew more than the rest of them combined, had posited Elmore James’ Look Yonder Wall as his selection but nobody had ever heard the song then, or of James. Johnny later did give it some consideration after he had had heard the song when Billy’s band covered it and broke the place up.
But funny as Johnny listened that night it didn’t sound like the whinny Ike’s voice on Rocket 88 so he listened for a little longer, and as he later found out from the DJ, it had actually been a James Cotton Blues Band cover. After that band’s performance was finished fish-tailing right after that one was a huge harmonica intro and what could only be mad-hatter Junior Wells doing When My Baby Left Me splashed through. No need to turn the dial further now because what Johnny Prescott had found in the crazy night air, radio beams bouncing every which way, was direct from Chicago, and maybe right off those hard-hearted Maxwell streets was Be-Bop Benny’s Chicago Blues Radio Hour. Be-Bop Benny who everybody who read the rock and roll magazines found easier at Doc’s Drugstore over on Hancock Street knew, had started Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino on their careers, or helped.
Now Johnny, like every young high-schooler, every "with it" high schooler in the USA, had heard of this show, because even though everybody was crazy for rock and roll, just now the airwaves sounded like, well, sounded like music your parents would dance to, no, sit to at a dance, some kids still craved high rock. So this show was known mainly through the teenage grapevine but Johnny had never heard it before because, no way, no way in hell was his punk little Radio Shack transistor radio with two dinky batteries going to ever have enough strength to pick Be-Bop Benny’s show out in Chicago. So Johnny, and maybe rightly so, took this turn of events for a sign. When Johnny heard that distinctive tinkle of the Otis Spann piano warming up to Spann’s Stomp and jumped up with his Someday added in he was hooked. You know he started to see what Billy, Billy Bradley who had championed Elmore James way before anybody knew who he was, meant when at a school dance where he had been performing with his band, Billie and the Jets, he mentioned from the stage before introducing a song that if you wanted to get rock and roll back from the vanilla guys who had hijacked it while Jerry Lee, Chuck and Elvis had turned their backs then you had better listen to the blues. And if you wanted to listen to blues, blues that rocked then you had very definitely had better get in touch with the Chicago blues as they came north from Mississippi and places like that.
And Johnny thought, Johnny who have never been too much south of Gloversville, or west of Albany, and didn’t know too many people who had, couldn’t understand why that beat, that dah, da, dah, Chicago beat sounded like something out of the womb in his head. But when he heard Big Walter Horton wailing on that harmonica on Rockin’ My Boogie he knew it had to be in his genes.
Here’s the funniest part of all though later, later in the 1960s after everybody had become a serious aficionado of the blues either through exposure like Johnny to the country blues that got revived during the folk minute that flashed through the urban areas of the country and got big play at places like the Newport Folk Festival or like Jimmy Jenkins through the British rock invasion the blues became the dues. It was especially ironic that a bunch of guys from England like the Stones and Beatles were grabbing every freaking 45 RPM record they could get their mitts on. So if you listened to the early work of those groups you would find thing covered like Shake, Rattle and Roll (Big Joe’s version), Arthur Alexander’s Anna, Howlin’ Wolf’s Little Red Rooster and a ton of stuff by Muddy Waters. Yeah, the drought was over.
Once Again- The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind
By Bart Webber
[Some stories and the one concerning the 1960s trend by folkie-influenced young women to no matter their hair-string, short, curly, kinky wanted to look like the queens of the folk scene much as every self-respecting guy a half decade or so before (although it probably seemed like a half century before things were moving just that fast in those times) had to have longish sideburns whether that condition could prevail or not in order to get anywhere with the young girls who would not look twice at you much less dance with you unless you lived in the image of Elvis. Some guys never got over that make-over other moved on to long hair and beards when the sea-change occurred about 1964. I know since I had both sideburns, flinty ones and later ling stringy hair and a whispy beard since I did't start shaving for real until I was about twenty. Bartlett Webber[
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Funny how trends get started, how one person, or a few start something and it seems like the whole world follows, or the part of the world that hears about the new dispensation anyway, the part you want to connect with. That new dispensation for my generation began back in the late 1950s, early 1960s so maybe it was when older guys started to lock-step in gray flannel suits (Mad Men, retro-cool today, okay) and before Jack and Bobby Kennedy put the whammy on the fashion and broke many a haberdasher’s heart topped off by a soft felt hat. It would be deep into the 1960s before open-necks and colors other than white for shirts worked in but by then a lot of us were strictly denims and flannel shirts or some such non-suit combination. Maybe it was when one kid goofing off threw a hard plastic circle thing around his or her waist and every kid from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon had to have one, to be tossed aside in some dank corner of the garage after a few weeks when everybody got into yo-yos or Davey Crockett coonskin caps. Or maybe, and this might be closer to the herd instinct truth, it was after Elvis exploded onto the scene and every guy from twelve to two hundred in the world had to, whether they looked right with it or not, wear their sideburns just a little longer, even if they were kind of wispy and girls laughed at you for trying to out-king the “king” who they were waiting for not you.
But maybe it was, and this is a truth which I can testify to, noting the photograph above, when some girls, probably college girls (now called young women but then still girls no matter how old except mothers or grandmothers, go figure) having seen Joan Baez on the cover of Time (or perhaps her sister Mimi on some Mimi and Richard Farina folk album cover)got out the ironing board at home or in her dorm and tried to iron their own hair whatever condition it was in, curly, twisty, flippy, whatever don’t hold me to hairstyles to long and straight strands. (Surely as strong as the folk minute was just then say 1962, 63, 64, they did not see the photo of Joan on some grainy Arise and Sing folk magazine cover the folk scene was too young and small then to cause such a sea-change).
Looking at that photograph now, culled from a calendar put out by the New England Folk Archive Society, made me think back to the time when I believe that I would not go out with a girl (young woman, okay) if she did not have the appropriate “hair,” in other words no bee-hive or flip thing that was the high school rage among the not folk set, actually the social butterfly, cheerleader, motorcycle mama cliques. Which may now explain why I had so few dates in high school and none from Carver High (located about thirty miles south of Boston). But no question you could almost smell the singed hair at times, and every guy I knew liked the style, liked the style if they liked Joan Baez, maybe had some dreamy desire, and that was that.
As for the long-ironed haired women in the photograph their work in that folk minute and later speaks for itself. Joan Baez worked the Bob Dylan anointed “king and queen” of the folkies routine for a while for the time the folk minute lasted. Mimi (now passed on) teamed up with her husband, Richard Farina, who was tragically killed in a motorcycle crash in the mid-1960s, to write and sing some of the most haunting ballads of those new folk time (think Birmingham Sunday). Julie Collins, now coiffured like that mother Julie was beauty parlor running away from and that is okay, still produces beautiful sounds on her concert tours. But everyone should remember, every woman from that time anyway, should remember that burnt hair, and other sorrows, and know exactly who to blame. Yeah, we have the photo.
Yet Again Into The Lion’s Den- Not Fit For Hallmark Channel Prime-time, Maybe -Cary Grant And Irene Dunne’s “The Awful Truth (1937)- A Short Film Review-Of Sorts
[In a recent introduction to this new series, a series based on short film reviews for films that deserve short reviews if not just a thumb’s up or down I noted that Allan Jackson, the deposed previous site manager, required his film reviewers to write endlessly about the film giving the material an almost cinema studies academic journal take on it. That caused a serious decline in the number of reviews over the years which I hope to make up with a flurry of snap reviews for busy people. To see in full why check the archives for November 28, 2018- Not Ready For Prime Time But Ready For Some Freaking Kind Of Review Film Reviews To Keep The Writers Busy And Not Plotting Cabals Against The Site Manager-Introduction To The New Series. Greg Green]
DVD Review
By Sam Lowell
The Awful Truth, starring Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, 1937
I am inured to the trolls who have been haunting and harassing me ever since I casually mentioned that a couple of films dealing with romance and thwarted romance especially would find no airspace on the vanilla-flavored one plot fits all Hallmark Channel that during the Christmas has distracted a good portion of the population from anything more controversial than what to wear to the festivities in small town home town America where almost all the action takes place. One reader of those reviews in a deliberate slap in the face called me either asexual or a hermaphrodite, heartless, lacking in manly virility even in comparison to the guys the lead female character had dumped, lacking human warmth or even a pulse, and needing a brain transplant. That series of bromides from my long-time companion Laura Perkins, a devoted, should I say fanatical adherent to the Hallmark Channel at Christmastime. So you can imagine what the unformed, ill-advised trolls who apparently between 24/7/365 devotion to the channel have plenty of time to commit to no holds barred defenses of this mush.
Like I said I have become inured, had in any case expected some blow back from my comments since Laura was first on the warpath and she is generally a very civilized person, except on the question of the fake love and romance stories churned out on that network. Subsequently I have been called queer, not queer in the LGBTQ sense but as some kind of withered human being. Been called various reptilian names and been charged with crimes ranging from causing the fall of Eden way back when to aggravated assault on the senses for making unkind remarks about the silliness that dare not speak its name-although I will. And have.
I have been doing film reviews of one kind or another for many publications of one kind or another, some with generous payment and some for a penny a word or so it seemed with the time spent and I would be hard-pressed to see plots, and I have seen some horrible ones, so mundane as those on Hallmark. Therefore I have begun a little campaign, probably hopeless and thankless, of reviewing films with a slant toward whether they would make the networks’ programming format. Or that they were too real for the mud thrown at the audience on Hallmark.
My latest presentation, a 1930s film to boot which given the Hollywood codes of the day should easily allow it to qualify for Hallmark consideration, is a Cary Grant-Irene Dunne vehicle entitled The Awful Truth which is a pretty good if not great romantic comedy which nevertheless deals with the question of trust between married people, or any couple whatever their marital status or these days gender. The plotline is not spectacular but the play by play of a marriage gone down the tubes, and then resurrected, is worth a peek.
Cary, playing the gallant don’t take living on the high side of life too seriously that he made into an art form when he did comedic Mayfair swell characters, American version, is miffed at his ever-loving wife, Irene, because she seemingly has been having a flirtation, an affair although do look for that word in the script, with a French guy who she claims is her music teacher. Cary, manly, virile Cary does not believe the innocent story she had to tell about why they, she and that French guy, had been out all night. So to the courts, the chancery courts in those days for the decree nisi, including giving custody of the inevitable cute family dog to Irene. A decree which will become final in ninety days unless something happens.
During that crucial ninety days she, Irene, gets herself engaged, reluctantly engaged, to some cowboy angel drifter from Oklahoma and he, Cary, cavorts, nice word, with some society dame with plenty of dough and status. But rather than go their separate ways this pair find about sixteen ways to cross each other’s path and either make trouble or surprise for the other. Of course, we are going for the big ending, an ending Hallmark would appreciate-the kiss and make-up at the end. And as if on cue just minutes short of the ninety- day cutoff they walk into that good night-together. But Hallmark in 2018 might object that Cary was down on his knees playing with the dog, might object that they shared an open door between bedrooms, that Irene was drunk as a skunk in one scene, that some of the songs as performed were too suggestive and showy. The list goes on. No, once again this is not fare for Hallmark eyes and ears. Let’s see what remarks Laura will make, all others I am inured to so fire away.
On The 80th Anniversary- On The Great White Way-Broadway-Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers’ “Stage Door” (1937)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Leslie Dumont
[This review was in the pipeline in 2017 but due to some internal problems kind of got lost in shuffle so 80th anniversary is still appropriate. Greg Green]
Sometimes we of the later feminist-friendly generations are clueless by means or happenstance about the efforts of earlier generations of women to get ahead in this man’s world (less so that before but as the recent sexual harassment scandals of 2016 point out this bad ass stuff runs deep among important segments of the male population). Still it was nice to have Greg Green the new site manager call me up to do this review since the previous site manager, Allan Jackson, who I had known for years refused to do so. Even when one of his best friends, Josh Breslin, from back in the 1960s in California was my companion for many years (and we still talk now more frequently since we are both working at this site). Refreshing too to do basically an all women film like Stage Door at a time when such efforts were rare, certainly rare than today and where for the most part men take the background although always have a lingering presence.
The beauty of this one is that a number of then well-known women actresses like Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers work the crowd with up and coming types like Lucille Ball and Eve Arden. Of course the story-line is important here as well since well know Algonquin Roundtable writers Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman provided the original premise if not the bulk of the screenplay dialogue. Moreover it is very good that this ensemble do their thing not in glamour puss Hollywood but in the Great White Way, Broadway, which used to be called, and maybe still is by some, the legitimate theater. Of course the backdrop of stuck on stardom and its pitfalls is the same in both locations with the same failure rates and broken dreams of the thousands who headed either East or West to get themselves noticed.
The set-up, a great idea used many times to good effect in ensemble efforts, of this one is that all the main female actors reside in one lunatic asylum of a women’s hotel, famous lodgings near good old Broadway. The banter thus is close in and sharp. In the old days some would say catty particularly when Katharine Hepburn’s haughty character charges through the door. You have the whole range of experiences from last year’s up and coming star who is now on the road to bust to a bright-eyed novice dilettante who wants to make the big show on her own terms. The central action though is between Terry, played by poor little rich girl out slumming (at some level) and Jean, played by Ginger Rogers who will take whatever she can get from some two-bit dance routine to the boss’ bed if necessary. Those are the poles and all the others from that last year’s fallen wonder to truly second-rate talents who should think about a career change (fat chance) run the string out.
We see it all, all the back story of the uphill battle the average woman faced to get her foot in the door, from the cancelled appointments to don’t call us, we’ll call you to the infamous, and in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein line of sexual harassment and other sexual crimes, insidious casting couch which beckoned to Jean by the main male figure, Anthony Powell, played by Adolphe Menjou whose way of operating seemed eerily portentous. Not to worry though Terry, after a traumatic experience, finds her voice-she despite, or because of, that good breeding has star quality-that certain “it.” (Of course figuring that out was a no-brainer since almost all these actresses had that star quality). The only discordant note, a note which I am not sure rung true and certainly broke away from the wit and sarcasm that drove the film was the suicide of that last years’ star when she was on the way to down and out. How many wannabe actors wind up in that extreme situation I am not sure of but it did throw me off a bit as the key event to get Terry to emote like crazy in the play she was starring in and show that “it.”
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