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

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

DVD Review

By Associate Film Critic Alden Riley

Jailhouse Rock, starring Elvis Presley, Judy Tyler, 1957

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Told To Lance Lawrence by Frankie Devlin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Legendary Bank Robber Pretty James Preston Made The Bankers Squeal-And All The Women Sweat-With Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton And Cate Blanchett’s “Bandits” (2001) In Mind-A Special Guest Commentary

When Legendary Bank Robber Pretty James Preston Made The Bankers Squeal-And All The Women Sweat-With Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton And Cate Blanchett’s “Bandits” (2001) In Mind-A Special Guest Commentary   

By Special Guest Scott Allen, contributing editor North Adamsville Ledger

Bandits, starring Cate Blanchett, Billy Bob Thornton, Bruce Willis, 2001  

The legendary Pretty James Preston, bank robber, solo bank robber, would have had the so-called “Sleep-over bandits,” Terry and Joe, a couple of cons, a couple of holy goofs really, masquerading as bank robbers in the film Bandits, for lunch and had time for a nap. And I am just the guy who knows that hard fact for after all I was the guy who put together the legend, wrote up Pretty James’ exploits right up until the end. See I was nothing but a young cub reporter, a clog in the back- room police beat death march for the heralded North Adamsville Ledger in the 1970s when Pretty James was robbing, arms in hand, every bank and department store not entombed in concrete around Eastern Massachusetts when I saw my chance for a by-line in maybe the Boston Globe, maybe television. anything but that stinking police backroom that smelled of stale coffee and staler donuts. My “in” was that I knew Pretty James in high school and once I connected with him, once he knew he could trust me as far as he could trust anybody I became essentially his publicity flak, his press agent to make that legend that he always craved deep down inside. Don’t get me wrong Pretty James wanted the dough, and plenty of it fast and easy but that legend business was never far below the surface when we would meet in downtown Boston across from the JFK Federal Building which he insisted on to put a thumb in the government’s eye just for kicks, because he could do the deed.   

(By the way Pretty James’ mode of operation, modus operandi okay, was always to show plenty of firepower when on a job. One night over beers at Shacky’s he told me that was the only thing, other than surprise, that will keep everybody afraid to breathe, including bank guards and department store security. Somehow he got some M-16s, AR-15s which are semi-automatic assault rifles they used in Vietnam where they were not worth crap, would jam up in the mud, and would go into with one in every hand. Although people still don’t believe it thinking I made it up as part of the Pretty James legend on an early job he did actually fire the guns, in the air, after he left the building just to prove that he was willing to do what was necessary to get the dough-easy or hard. For a long time, almost ten years he never had to do any more shooting, so he probably was right to “show the colors” early on. All I did was verify with a witness on the street that he had fired the weapons when I did my report on the action, nothing more.)              

In lots of ways touting Pretty James was a piece of cake, easy once he started consulting me, always theoretically to be sure, about what actions would draw some attention to him, what the world wanted from a lone gunman essentially in the days when bank robbing still had some cache. Pretty James had plenty of advantages-one being that he was a stone-cold bank robber whose instincts until the end were unerring, knew what would draw and what would not. Big granite-etched banks which in those days of symbolic show were pictures of safe harbors for a depositor’s money were prime targets. As the banking industry went suburban, went to cheapjack trailers and small storefronts they were not although as Pretty, lets’ just call him Pretty from here on in to save space since you know who I am talking about, kept telling me even I could stick-up, his term, half of them. When he decided to vary up his game and hit department stores he avoided the ones that had kids’ clothes and toys as too dangerous while, as will become apparent in a minute a women’s clothing store was the cat’s meow. Hell, some women, and I still have my notes and still have my disbelief would go shopping just to see if Pretty was going to hit their shopping spree place that day. As already noted, better unlike Terry and Joe who were something out of the late Jimmy Breslin’s The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight worked alone, didn’t have to deal with informers who got caught, sharing plans that might go awry-or the dough. Even better, from a commercial legend point of view and a newspaper’s as well Pretty went into the bank or store in broad daylight with no ruse just plenty of nerve and firepower. He could lead off the late edition or the 6 o’clock news and jump ratings. Best of all he really was “pretty” a wiry good- looking guy in the mold of the bad-ass biker criminal that Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy chased in 48 Hours so all the women would sweat over him, and in the real contact cases cover him and hide him out. I remember in high school girls who were supposed to be social butterflies, who were on the top of the totem pole, who wouldn’t dream of even noticing a low-rent biker were known to show up at Pretty house and get taken whatever way they wanted. You didn’t go to Pretty’s at midnight for anything else but to curl his toes. Sweet.

          

Sure, I will get to the two deadbeat amateur bank robbers Terry and Joe, along with their collective squeeze, their so-called hostage, Kate and how they took a page from the late George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle caper that Jimmy Skaggs started way back when grabbing the bank manager and holding his or her family hostage while they brought the manager to his little bank and grabbed the cash-no sweat. The only thing they did, a variation if you will, was grab the bank personnel the night before. Big deal. But first let me explain how I worked my Pretty legend magic once I got his go ahead.

Every reporter, hell, maybe everybody who can write more than a sentence or two knows that half, maybe more, of what you put out in print, in behalf of making a legend is pure bullshit, crap. Here is what most of those who can write don’t know though people, the great unwashed masses, lead such dull existences that they will believe almost all of what they read or heard about-if it makes them feel good, if they connect. Like I said I already had a running start with the women, young and old as it turned out because of Pretty’s looks to make the clincher though I needed the guys. I will say that Pretty, determined, single-minded Pretty, was hard on his women, those who protected him, and those who wanted to. I won’t say at this late date he was a “love them and leave them” guy but he surely was no hearts and flowers to the ladies guy, except that last gal, that Sally something and here I will be on safe ground not giving a last name because even a “simp” knows that once she blew town she changed that moniker more than once. Toward the end I would get letters from some disheartened women who tried to protect Pretty, hide him out and while none of them finked on him to the coppers they also didn’t think he was that great in the sack, seemed preoccupied with the next hit, the next target, what it would take to keep the trail hot. That is when I knew I would have to double-down on his reputation, advise him a little to get even more daring with his exploits.       

I played the old Robin Hood gag that writers have been using forever-taking from the rich and giving to the poor. What a laugh if you knew Pretty. Maybe he left a fifty- cent tip for some diner waitress he was looking to screw, looking to have play his flute as he called it, but the guy was nothing but a self-indulgent fool, would go through the dough living high off the hog at the Ritz for months at a time with a different woman, maybe two, every night, stuff like that. But giving dough away was not his thing, he told me so flat-out and I kind of knew from my own family that he hungered for a lot of things he didn’t have as kid. I made his giving a hundred here, two hundred there to his women like charity with a little twist of paying off the whole of Babylon thrown in. Pretty never paid for his women, never paid for sex and you can believe than, huh, take it to the bank. I had him giving dough to the families of those in “the projects” over in Adamsville where he grew up and also to the Sacred Heart Church where he went once, maybe twice as a kid. Pure gold, although don’t go to either location looking for examples of how much he gave to anybody. Zilch. Still an easy sell especially once he branched out into an occasional department store heist and people would be waiting in line, especially older women, older meaning then in their thirties, maybe with a couple of kids, a tired ass of a husband and a bleak future to see if he was going to show up and rob that place that day and maybe they would get some of his largesse.           

That is the public bullshit, the crap for public consumption but go back a bit to where I described Pretty as a stone-cold bank robber, a guy who robbed whatever he robbed in broad daylight, armed to the teeth and taking no prisoners as the saying goes. I don’t know if Pretty knew about Willie Sutton, an early famous bank robber who was credited with the observation when asked later about why he robbed banks-that is where the money is.  I never mentioned Willie or his observation you don’t crowd one legend with tales of another, especially if you are tasked with making the new guy’s up but Pretty went after the dough with something like that kind of concentration to get the dough. A few people, a few heroes who tried to stop him took the fall and early on I used the old gag that being a hero was for cops and professionals leave Pretty alone, get out alive. In the end though I couldn’t save him “rep” when on that last caper, the big Granite National Bank job over in Braintree he wasted four customers who tried to rush him after a silly bank guard who thought the bank’s money was his or something took a shot at him and Pretty unloaded. Ran into the streets, they say he was looking down the block, looking for that Sally who had his ride, or maybe that is the way I wrote it was gunned down in a hail of bullets. That Sally never did surface, never contacted me in any way to give her side of the story but I like to think for one fucking time in his too short life Pretty tried to protect somebody by taking those slugs without a murmur. Maybe that is why she never peeped to me. Never did get that Globe job though. Yeah, Pretty was a piece of work while he lasted.

Now to the holy goofs, the Sleepy Hollow Bandits or whatever they called themselves who have given me something to whale on courtesy of site manager Greg Green who took Seth Garth’s advice and hired me to do this one-shot special guest reviewer job. I didn’t know Seth then back when Pretty was tearing up the place but met him later when he mentioned that he had read everything I had written about Pretty being a hometown North Adamsville boy. He is the one who encouraged me to tell the tale about a real bank robber not some misplaced schoolboy antics which went out with Bonnie and Clyde. And I have but part of the deal was to tell what was seriously wrong with the legend these dopes Terry and Joe were trying to put together.

You already know about their stealing Jimmy Skaggs’ playbook move to ease the way on getting into the bank. That though was old even back in the 1970s because the coppers through an informer, the guy who sold Jimmy’s guys the guns, were able to wrap that caper up without a muss or fuss. The worst thing though was maybe the guys had heard of Willie Sutton, its hard to say because their first freaking bank robbery was done without plan, without thinking things through and Pretty would tell you, Willie too, you need a plan, plan, plan plan, especially if you are going to last for ten years like Pretty did without catching day one of jailtime. I won’t even go into the double-dipping, actually triple-dipping since they had a third guy as a driver to split the dough with. Pretty would have freaked big time on that shares stuff. He told me once he actually took a cab from a bank robbery scene in Stoughton, the car was across from the bank, he got in, where to and that was it. Gave the cabbie ten bucks and thought he was a great guy for doing so. His haul one hundred thou not bad for a day’s work minus that ten bucks. (I was always careful about how much the bank takes were since it was in the coppers and banks’ interest to jack up the take to make the “perp” look harder than he was and for the bank to grab some easy fed insurance money. I also took a skeptical eye to whatever Pretty said his haul was since in the interest of his legend he might jack up the heist price. On the Stoughton caper, for example, the take was fifty thou not one hundred so maybe that ten bucks to the cabbie really was big to Pretty)       

You know how hard Pretty was on his women, except maybe that last one, mainly us them to hide him out, fuck them and then move on, no strings around him, no revealing plans or ideas. The cardinal sin of these holy goofs, this Terry and Joe comedy act if you think about it was grabbing that weirdo Kate, not because she wasn’t a good-looking little redhead but because when you throw a woman in the mix you get nothing but trouble with a capital “T.” You know this Kate stirred both men, and she played them on that seesaw. Got them crazy for no good reason. Let me tell you what Pretty told me about the one time he thought about taking a woman along, some twist he met at a gin mill in New York while he was on “vacation.” She was maybe nineteen and build for trouble, big trouble if a guy let himself get involved with her. Well Pretty did for a while. Got hot as nails for her. Decided that he needed a look-out (probably what he expected Sally to do on that last doomed caper I don’t know since the last time I saw him was in a morgue) and so he brought the twist along. When showtime came she vanished, went long gone and the caper depended on that look-out job she was supposed to perform since this bank was across from a police station. He barely got out alive with twenty-five thou (actually ten and some change) and never went that route again. You know I could go on and on about these goofs, about Pretty but you can see by now that Pretty would have had them for lunch. Maybe dinner too.     

The Answer My Friend Id Blowing (No Clipped “G”) In The Wind-The Influence Of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” On The “Generation of’68”-The Best Part Of That Cohort

The Answer My Friend Id Blowing (No Clipped “G”) In The Wind-The Influence Of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” On The “Generation of’68”-The Best Part Of That Cohort

[An encore of two pieces on this subject and like the Summer of Love, 1967 frenzy at this publication, time to move on and let others give their choices without further prompting. S.G. ]

By Seth Garth

No question this publication both in its former hard copy editions and now more so in the on-line editions as the, ouch, 50^th anniversary of many signature events for the “Generation of ‘68” have come and gone that the whole period of the 1950s and 1960s had gotten a full airing. Has been dissected, deflected, inspected, reflected and even rejected beyond compare. That is not to say that this trend won’t continue if for no other reason that the demographics and actual readership response indicate that people still have a desire to not forget their pasts, their youth.

(Under the new site manager Greg Green, despite what I consider all good sense having worked under taskmaster Allan Jackson, we are encouraged to give this blessed readership some inside dope, no, no that kind, about how things are run these days in an on-line publication. With that okay in mind there was a huge controversy that put the last sentence in the above paragraph in some perspective recently when Greg for whatever ill-begotten reason thought that he would try to draw in younger audiences by catering to their predilections-for comic book character movies, video games, graphic novels and trendy music and got nothing but serious blow-back from those who have supported this publication financially and otherwise both in hard copy times and now on-line. What that means as the target demographic fades is another question and maybe one for a future generation who might take over the operation. Or perhaps like many operations this one will not outlast its creators- and their purposes.)    

Today’s 1960s question, a question that I have asked over the years and so I drew the assignment to address the issue-who was the voice of the 1960s. Who or what. Was it the lunchroom sit-inners and Freedom Riders, what about the hippies (which I counted myself as one for a time), was it SDS, the various Weather configurations, acid, rock, folk rock, folk, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Abbie Hoffman, Grace Slick, hell the Three Js-Joplin, Jimi, Jim as in Morrison and the like. Or maybe it was a mood, a mood of disenchantment about a world that seemed out of our control, which seemed to be running without any input from us, without us even being asked. My candidate, and not my only candidate but a recent NPR Morning Edition segment brought the question to mind (see above link), is a song, a song created by Bob Dylan in the early 1960s which was really a clarion call to action on our part, or the best part of our generation-The Times They Are A-Changin’.    

I am not sure if Bob Dylan started out with some oversized desire to be the “voice” of his generation. He certainly blew the whole thing off later after his motorcycle accident and still later when he became a recluse even if he did 200 shows a year, maybe sullen introvert is better, actually maybe his own press agent giving out dribbles is even better but that song, that “anthem” sticks in memory as a decisive summing up of what I was feeling at the time. (And apparently has found resonance with a new generation of activists via the March for Our Lives movement and other youth-driven movements.) As a kid I was antsy to do something, especially once I saw graphic footage on commercial television of young black kids being water-hosed, beaten with police clubs  and bitten by dogs down in the South simply for looking for some rough justice in this wicked old world. Those images, and those of the brave lunch-room sitters and Freedom bus riders were stark and compelling. They and my disquiet over nuclear bombs which were a lot scarier then when there were serious confrontations which put them in play and concern that what bothered me about having no say, about things not being addressed galvanized me.

The song “spoke to me” as it might not have earlier or later. It had the hopeful ring of a promise of a newer world. That didn’t happen or happen in ways that would have helped the mass of humanity but for that moment I flipped out every time I heard it played on the radio or on my old vinyl records record-player. Other songs, events, moods, later would overtake this song’s sentiment but I was there at the creation. Remember that, please.   

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

By Seth Garth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fast Cars and Fast Women, Okay A “Fast” Young Woman- With Josh Breslin’s Film Review Of Nicolas Cage’s “Gone in Sixty Seconds” (2002) In Mind

Fast Cars and Fast Women, Okay A “Fast” Young Woman- With Josh Breslin’s Film Review Of Nicolas Cage’s “Gone in Sixty Seconds” (2002) In Mind 

By Laura Perkins

I loved fast cars as a young girl, young woman, still do. I will give details in a moment about why and what happened but let me tell you how that youthful excitement came on the radar of late. You never know what kind of conversation you will get into around the water cooler at this publication except maybe if you are there when my fellow older writers are sipping it will center on some youthful adventure back in the prehistoric 1950s and 1960s. That time frame important since that era was something like the golden age of the automobile and certain rites of passage around cars went with it for young men and women. Today’s generation apparently in the age of the lime bicycle, Uber and Lyft don’t have anything like the same experiences we had when car was king and to be a queen, to be seen in some cowboy’s “boss” care (a lost term of art which every other older writer I mentioned the term to immediately recognized as such) you had to have some respect for the vehicles. Otherwise you would find yourself, especially as a young woman sitting frantically by the midnight phone while others were cavorting in the night. That cavorting can best be left to the reader’s imagination not because of any prudery on my part but because the demographics of the sustaining readership tells you we all know what that meant whether it was out on some back country lovers’ lane road, up on Eagle’s Pass far from prying eyes and the snooping authorities or down by the shore shifting sand watching as Sam Lowell put it ‘watching the submarine races” the local term for the why of those fogged up cars along the boulevard. Of course, Sam my long-time companion and fellow writer have spent many hours regaling each other with our kid’s stories but I still say that down by the seashore for a farm brought up girl sounded very interesting, very interesting.     

(By the way, speaking of today’s generation, the so-called millennials, a couple of my grandchildren don’t even have driver’s licenses and they are in their mid-twenties. Damn, we were out learning how to drive even before we could legally do so and thought nothing of it, especially in my growing up farm country where maybe you learned to drive a tractor or truck at fourteen before you ever got behind the wheel of a car, boss or otherwise.)

But getting back to the water cooler talk after my little intergenerational pithy social analysis one day Josh Breslin was talking about his latest assignment, his latest film assignment Nicolas Cage’s 2000 car boost classic Gone In Sixty Seconds where the legendary car thief Memphis Raines, whose photograph was up on my bedroom wall when I was a kid because a boyfriend had given it to be as a present, as a sign of his affections, such things meant a lot to an isolated girl, me,  had to steal something like fifty cars in a short period or else his brainless brother would be toast on the say so of the villainous enemy gangster character in the film, some nefarious Brit. Josh mentioned he was not sure why site manager Greg Green had assigned him the film since he had not been all that much of a car freak when he was young.

Josh did mention that he knew that his boyhood friend Peter Paul Markin had been, against all form, against his nerdish absent-minded professor appearance the greatest “hot wire” guy he had every known. After viewing the film and in his review Josh declared that Markin, always reverently called Scribe by the clot of older writers who work here and who knew him before he fell down at a too early age back in the 1970s over some busted drug deal that nobody to this day knows why went awry down in Mexico, could show old Memphis a thing or two. He mentioned a time when he first met Scribe out in San Francisco in the Summer of Love, 1967 and he went up to him to ask for some dope, and got it, starting a too short lifelong friendship while Scribe was sitting in a boss Camaro. It was not until much later that Josh found out that car turned out to belong to the mayor’s son and he had boosted it right in front of City Hall Plaza with a half dozen cops looking on. (By the way for the stray Generation X and millennials who might have found this publication the “boost” was a term of art for stealing cars and “hot wire” was the way it was done without keys and without muss or fuss by grandees like Scribe.)

Back at that cooler I startled Josh, and maybe Leslie Dumont (an old flame of his, and maybe they have rekindled from what I have also heard at another water cooler conversation and by my keen powers of observation when they seem to be constantly smiling at one another for no apparent reason a sure sign known since childhood on my part) who has just retired from her big by-line at Women Today and is once again a contributor here now and young Will Bradley, fresh from his “wars” with Seth Garth over who is who in the film noir detective world, who were also privy to the conversation when I mentioned that I loved cars growing up, or rather loved to be seen in cars, or better sitting beside some guy in a “boss” car ready to do battle for me, for my “favors” in a “chicken run” (another “term of art” to be explained below).

They were astonished given what they have long known of my personally quiet adult demeanor and all that they know about me and about my very sedate lifestyle of late. Here’s where looks and style are deceiving. Where an ex-professor’s look hides more than one would think. I was raised in farm country in upstate New York outside of Albany in Mechanicsville, Dutch country, Dutch country as they came up the Hudson from New York City, then New Amsterdam, and populated the area once the wonder of the first load of sailors who saw that Fitzgerald “fresh green breast of land” got themselves land-locked and moved up river. (That Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby final paragraph courtesy of Sam Lowell who is crazy for the guy’s works and who smiles at me for no apparent and me back too.)        

Yes, so I knew how to drive a pick-up truck before I ever knew how to drive a manually- clutched automobile. Knew how nice it was to be mobile like that. Of course, that all had nothing at all to do with the social scene among the young in that country atmosphere in the 1960s when all hell was breaking loose elsewhere. What it had plenty to do with was getting out of the farmhouse, getting out on weekends. See every guy who was anything also knew how to drive, how to “soup-up” a car and how to have some young thing sitting next to him come that Friday or Saturday night. That was how I started to be seen with Indian Jack, the “king” of the chicken run night out our way in the back roads of roads leading out of Albany. (Indian Jack was for real an Indian, or part Indian, now Native American or a member of an indigenous tribe, in his case the Mohawk tribe which had been in the area long before those land-locked Dutch sailors ever saw the place.)

Indian Jack prided himself on two things, always having the fastest car in the county and always having a pretty girl sitting next to him in that fast car. Not that I was the prettiest girl Indian Jack ever had although I was “Queen” of my Senior Prom at Half Moon High but that was as much my sociable personality and intelligence as beauty but I did keep up my appearances since that counted and I wanted to be counted in. Thelma McGraw was the prettiest girl Indian Jack ever had sitting next to him but she was an “ice queen” and kind of stuck up so nobody missed her when I took over her seat. You should also know that the average “chicken run” won girl was not like me, not like me at all. They ran to buxom big breasts, tight cashmere sweaters, short revealing tight skirts, heavy mascara, chewing gum and serious reputation for sexual activism to put the matter politely. I was something of an outlier, was not liked by that part of the tribe, although I was by the regular country girls who just wanted to get off the farm, get out of the house and breathe whether they liked fast cars or not. They as it turned out were happy that I was Indian Jack’s girl (although that did not stop them from trying to beat my time with Jack, trying to get their young asses in that passenger seat).        

I might as well stop and tell how I got to be Indian Jack’s girl since I mentioned how he “won” me which will tell a lot about the social milieu among the fast car set (the fast women aspect can be left to your imagination although I was pretty naïve about sex both before Indian Jack and afterwards too). See I had started out as Moon Mooney’s girl, a guy in my class in high school who was also a farm boy from the next farm over whom I had known since kindergarten, and who had a great 1956 Chevy Impala if I recall correctly, two-toned white and green with those aerodynamic wings and very comfortable cushy seats (not the bucket seats of today but a one piece operation which allowed a girl to sit right next to her guy, maybe head on his shoulder or to have three across but who cared about that on date night when it was one on one).

Moon, real name Jeffrey, was crazy for cars, was crazy to race too although the few times I had seen him do so did not seem like he was built for heavy running the roads. But that is where the “culture” comes in. Guys were always egging each other and themselves on about who had not only the “boss” car which might only be the best-looking car like the vaunted 1957 Chevy when that was king of the schoolboy night but the fastest.        

Moon was no exception to that draw. Thought he could take on anybody after beating “Wreck” Phillips and “Dink’” Monroe on the “chicken run.” Strictly amateur stuff as it turned out but the stuff that dreams are made of as Humphrey Bogart said in some movie which I don’t remember the name of. This chicken run business is just what it sounds like and whether they are still doing it in the back- country roads it is still the same. Pick some Two AM weekend morning back road like New York 146 in my youth or after U.S. 87 took a ton of traffic away U.S. 9 near my house and let two guys start from zero and beat the other guy no matter what was in the road ahead, especially what might be on the road ahead. That was what we spent our late-night times as much as working the lovers’ lane wrestling matches we found ourselves in.

Sometimes this was for money, sometimes for the other guy’s car (a trade-off) and sometimes for a guy’s girl. That latter was the way Indian Jack swept me off my feet. He had heard that Moon was looking to race him and had heard that I was pretty so one Saturday afternoon when Moon and I were at the A&W for hamburgers Indian Jack came up in back of us in his souped up 1949 Hudson. Moon made the mistake of sort of, only sort of, guffawing when he saw Indian’s auto and that was enough for Indian to make the wager the winner takes the girl (in those days the girl was strictly window dressing in the decision department but truth be told I was very interested in big handsome Indian and got some funny feeling when the whole idea of being the prize swept over me-like I say truth to tell). Needless to say that Thelma was not happy about the matter but like I said no girl was asked about the matter and I never heard any girl refusing to be the bet, or not walking away with the winner if it was not her current guy. And needless to say Indian Jack blew Moon’s crate off the road (literally with me in the passenger seat).

When the dust settled and Indian Jack came back to claim his “prize” I got out of Moon’s busted up car, Thelma got out of Indian’s and I slid nice as could be beside him. I am not sure how Thelma got home or how Moon got his jalopy back home but I did see him several days later after school at the Dairy Queen talking to some freshman girl.  As for Indian Jack he was my first guy, my first serious sexual experience, and while he could be rough-handed he also could be gentle. It was only by way of an armed robbery of the Midnight Diner that broke us up since he was going up for two to five and my parents practically kept me locked up in the house until Senior Prom night when Wayne Sellars escorted me to my throne. I can still feel the wind in my hair when those cars were going full out, still turn my head when I see a classic car on the road or at a show.          

Tramps Like Us We Were Born To Run-Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey In The Film Adaptation Of John O’Hara’s “Butterfield 8” (1960)-A Film Review-Of Sorts

Tramps Like Us We Were Born To Run-Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey In The Film Adaptation Of John O’Hara’s “Butterfield 8” (1960)-A Film Review-Of Sorts

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

Butterfield 8, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey, Eddie Fisher, from the novel by John O’Hara, 1960 

Bang- I might as well get my “hook” in right now. Talking explicitly about sex, as opposed to channeling explicit sex in its various guises is still a hard sell in many precincts. That seems counter-intuitive given the amount of time and energy media, social media, hell, people in cozy individual conversations spent on it. Maybe I should step back and explain what the heck this statement has to do with reviewing a film from the early 1950s before the full swing of the sexual revolution hit, before the blessed “the pill” which needs no further explanation, Butterfield 8, updated from a John O’Hara 1930s novel, he the Pottsville, Pa plot-liner famous at the time for his ground-breaking Appointment at Samarra.  Explain too why this is a film review “of sorts” and why I used a line from a Bruce Springsteen song in the headline to this piece.  

When I essentially retired from the day to day grind of writing a by-line for Women Today I didn’t fully want to give up writing and still wanted to do an occasional piece, what I call a “think piece” as the spirit moved me. So I got in touch with my old flame Josh Breslin who has worked at this publication for many years and whom I met here when I was a young just out of graduate school stringer working for Sam Lowell, the film editor, when Allan Jackson was running the show. (In the interest of transparency which is a big thing with current site manager Greg Green Josh and I are “rekindling” our old flame if you can believe that after his three marriages and my two and Josh was instrumental back in the day in helping me get that by-line when it was apparent that I would never be more than a stringer as long as his old friend Allan was in charge.) He checked with Allan and Allan was now quite pleased to have me contribute whatever I wanted to as that spirit mentioned above moved me.

That is the rub though. Since my arrival there has been a change of leadership from Allan to Greg the reasons for which do not need to be gotten into here since that happened a while back. Originally the assignment on this film was given to Si Lannon who was crazy for, had read I think every John O’Hara novel although his writings in my eyes were uneven enough that I would not have read everything the man wrote. This was a couple of years ago just before the #MeToo movement came to the public gaze and Greg felt that the subject matter was best handled under the current circumstances by a woman given that the lead female character, Gloria, the role Elizabeth Taylor won an Oscar for, was what in the old days, my youth days a tramp, “every man’s darling” we used to cynically call such women in the girls’ locker room. Men would have used the word “whore” or some such vile designation.  I had argued at the time that Si was still the better choice since having read the novel and thinking it was so much pulp I was not that enthusiastic about reviewing the film adaptation. Greg shelved the project for a while and I had other assignments in the meantime and didn’t get to view this film until recently.

That is one part of the back story. The other after viewing the film was a feeling that I wasn’t sure how to approach the subject matter until I remembered Sam Lowell’s “cure”-when you don’t have a “hook” for your piece (and he reminded me of that as well after he read the first draft of this review). On viewing older films, this from 1960s and so even before my time although not my sensibilities, when stuck use the old tried and true “slice of life” approach. And that along with some personal material which is the “sort of” part of the review is where I am heading with this-and with my initial comment about the vagaries of talking candidly about sex.

As I mentioned above the lead female character, Gloria, was a tramp, a slut by her own definition, although being beautiful, being intelligent and fronting her sexual appetites working as  a pay my own way “fashion model” she didn’t want for male companionship-on her terms. No dough involved, at least formally.  More on that later when I do a short summary of the story. Although couched in 1950s implicit language where much was left to indirection to pass the Hollywood censors and arbiters of what could be expressed and how vividly to do so the girls in my Monday morning before school locker room conversations would have known girls just like Gloria, as did I.

Girls who in our suburban New Jersey neighborhood were known to go “all the way” meaning for anybody now who is clueless having full sexual intercourse (then meaning essentially the “missionary position” and not of other types of sexual experience learned about later and not just from the Karma Sutra either although that is a an excellent source-for the young and agile not fragile). Known to be “easy.” Some of them were motorcycle mamas in training, others were just seen as promiscuous, being seen with a variety of guys on a variety of occasions and others whom we never heard about were those who had been “soiled” by some unwilling bad encounter with a man, maybe even a relative, which did something to her soul. Like I said we would have been clueless and horrified at that latter although today a too frequent story from hell. That was the obvious “bad girl” aura of the times. More than a few of whom would wind up what Josh called in his growing up neighborhood in Maine “going to see Aunt Emma.” Meaning the girl was “in the family way,” pregnant and unmarried and rather than bring shame on the family would leave town for some relative’s home to have her baby maybe never to return.

What the reader may not know and here is my “of sorts” contribution not all the so-called virtuous girls, meaning flat-ass virgins who were allegedly clueless about sex were that innocent. Not according to that ubiquitous Monday morning locker room talk, although we all found out much latter after high school usually that girls who said that had “gone all the way” with some Johnny hadn’t and girls, confession, girls like me who had said they were still virginal who had. That last part important and I think that is where I could stand in some solidarity with that Gloria of the film. I was known publicly to be very proper, something of what today would be called a nerd, always nose in a book and in the advanced classes in school. But I was very curious about sex, about “doing it” and one summer night when I was fourteen I let a guy I said I loved have his way with me (funny all the implicit sexual expressions we used rather than some maybe rawer terms).

And I will not lie, will not kid the reader, I liked it maybe not that first night since it hurt a little but after that.  And nobody, nobody at all knew what I was up to including close girl friends who would have freaked. Maybe told their parents or worse mine. See from the very first I never dated any guys from in town, in that death trap Sunnyvale town but would go to say the Village in New York City and get picked up with no real problem. I was so naïve though I never seriously thought about the possible consequences if say “the rubber” failed, about becoming an “Aunt Emma” girl. This I know, this in the heart of the sexual revolution 1960s and later with Josh, we used to laugh about all the secret stuff, all the shameless shameful stuff we did and which today probably seems pretty old-fashioned and it was except you had to know the milieu then, had to know that “slice of life.”

That, finally, is what did Gloria in, that difference between being a party girl, being any man’s girl, being a tramp. I would have been horrified if anybody called me that-ever but it was the way I felt some times, sometimes when I was plotting my next adventure. That struggle to gather in some self-respect, to have her man Liggett, played by coldly sexy Laurence Harvey, love her for what she was -a good woman-and not a tramp no matter how many men she had is what would be her downfall when she decided she had to start a new life, start a life without the burden of what Liggett knew about her and in the back of his mind would always wonder about her. While her death via an automobile accident as the scorned Liggett was pursuing her in another automobile seemed too over-the-top as a story line it kind of says a lot about who was a winner and who was a loser then. She died, while when he went home to wifey, he could just try to go “find himself.” Damn.