Turnabout Is Fair Play-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett in Mind

Turnabout Is Fair Play-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett in Mind

By Zack James

Fred Sims’ tales of his life as a real live private investigator, P.I., gumshoe, shamus, private dick, or whatever you call it in your neighborhood depending on whether you had been in thrall to the old time black and white detective films like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep and picked the lingo there or just heard it on the streets, could only be taken in small doses. So said Alexander Slater, Alex, who for many years ran a print shop on the first floor of the Tappan Building in Carver where Fred had his office on the fifth floor. Many times the pair would run into one another at Dolly’s Diner across the street from the Tappan and they would sit and have their coffee and crullers together. Usually though the talk was on weather, of Alex’s children and grandchildren, Fred’s troubles with his latest girlfriend usually picked up from one of his cases since that was one of the few places where he would run into women who might be interested in him, or how the town of Carver, once the world famous hub of the cranberry industry, had gone to hell in a handbasket over the past few decades who with the place turning into a vanilla no problems need apply “bedroom community” for the young who had flowed to the high tech industry on Interstate 495 about fifteen miles away. If Alex wanted to hear some tale of Fred’s, maybe he had read some story in the Gazette or the Globe from Boston and wondered if Fred had run up against that kind of situation, he would go up to Fred’s office, plunk himself down in one of Fred’s drastically mismatched chairs (old-timer Fred did not believe in putting up a front and so his office did look like old Sam Slade’s cinematic one including the crooked coat rack), Fred would pull out a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, and Fred would answer his question with a story, or if he had no story that would match up with Alex’s inquiry then something from his files.                  

The story about the Malone brothers was just such a story, one that Fred told Alex even before he began to spin the thing was a prima facie case of turnabout is fair place, although he would admit that something about not being your brother’s keeper could have worked too. For this one Fred reached back into the 1950s when he was first starting out in the business, gotten himself the office in the Tappan Building and put up his sign, after he had gotten out of the Army where he had served as an MP in Germany during those Cold War days. Chester and Arthur Malone were financiers, or that is what they called themselves, guys who bought and sold stock for various clients’ accounts or for themselves if they saw a tidy profit in some hot stock. Strictly small potatoes around the Boston stock exchange and going nowhere fast until Chester hit upon the idea that he had read about that he, they could use one or more clients’ stock (or bonds although that was dicey) to buy high risk stock but which if it panned out would move them up the stock exchange food chain and into maybe some merger with a larger firm. Who knows what they would have finally wound up doing. This whole stock transfer idea aside from the questionable legal, moral and smart questions was essentially a Ponzi scheme, a scheme that has been around one way or another as long there have been suckers who have looked for high returns for little risk, so they think.

Well the long and short of it was that something went wrong, a few clients wanted their assets cashed in, something like that, and the Malone’s couldn’t cover fast enough. The clients squawked to the SEC and the boys went on the carpet, were going to jail for a nickel anyway. All the paper transfers though were in Arthur’s name and so they decided that since Arthur’s goose was cooked he wound take the fall, he would cop a plea saying that the whole operation had been his and Chester had nothing to do with his dealings. So he won the fiver, went down for the nickel. Arthur did his time, most of it anyway, but something happened in prison, who knows, maybe he became somebody’s “girl,” maybe he thought he had gotten a raw deal from his brother, maybe he didn’t like that his brother stole his wife away, stole her after she had divorced him when he went to prison. Whatever it was something had been eating at him by the time he got out.

Arthur though had his own game plan, kept his own consul, and when he got out he played the game so that Chester believed they were on good terms. Then Chester started getting threatening telephone calls, calls telling him that the party on the other line, a woman, but Chester though that was just a guy using a dame as a front that they knew he had been watering stock all the time that Arthur was in jail and that unless he forked up dough his life worthless. Chester was no fool though, had not been scamming for all those years to just fold up when some caller called. That’s when he called me, called me to his office saying that he had been getting threatening phone calls and wanted to know who was behind it.  I told him that would be a hard nut to crack but he insisted he needed help, wanted me to pursue the matter.

Here’s where everything got squirrelly though. Arthur, as part of his plan worked in the office after he got out, did his own hustling for accounts. While he had been away Chester had hired a secretary, what they now call administrative assistants but still are really secretaries with computer skills, Ms. Wyman, Bess, a looker about thirty. Arthur made a big play for her, which she tumbled too especially when he started dangling marriage in front of her. Of course, aside from the fact that after prison he could use a few off-hand tumbles which he considered a bonus, Arthur was using Bess to find out everything about Chester’s operations since he had been gone. It turned out that Chester had been up to his old tricks, another Ponzi scheme of sorts. So one day after he thought he had enough information on his brother he called some of Chester’s clients and made them, a few anyway, believe that their accounts would be in trouble if they didn’t pull out fast. They did and as you might expect Chester couldn’t cover fast enough before the clients complained to the SEC. And so in his turn Chester did his nickel since al the transfers had his signature on them. It turned out that he had been the one who had sold Arthur out to the SEC on the previous scheme to save his own neck. So turnabout was fair play. As for me well I got paid off once the accounts were settled for basically doing nothing except cover Chester from a fall which I couldn’t do. Oh yeah, I got paid off too with a few tumbles with that Bess once she gave Arthur the heave-ho when she figured out he was playing her for a patsy. People are strange, right.

The Set-Up-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett In Mind

The Set-Up-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett In Mind

By Zack James

Alexander Slater had always been ever since he was a kid, maybe ten or eleven if not before, been a big fan of hard-boiled detective novels and films based on those novels by guys like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Rich O’Connor, Sid Stein, and Lanny Drew. Had spent many a Riverdale hometown Saturday afternoon in the late 1950s in the faded run-down, gum-strewn on the floor, cobwebs in the balcony seats, toilet in the men’s room a relic of plumbing around the time of the original Cranes who made their fortunes providing such hard-wear to the growing population in need of indoor plumbing and whose castle overlooked Crane’s Beach up north of Riverdale about seventy-five miles away, old-fashioned popcorn cooker which always, always provided burnt kernels at the bottom of the box Majestic Theater on Mooney Street just off of the downtown shopping area watching re-runs  of the classics like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, The Lady In The Lake, The whole Thin Man series, The Last Kiss, Girl Hunt, and The Lost Ones. That downtown area also beginning to fade as the stores, Doc’s Drugstore, the 5&10, Morley’s Clothing store, Sam’s Furniture store and the like    that used to cater to the town’s needs moved out to the strip malls or all-purpose malls out on Route One a few miles from downtown.

Of course as a kid all Alexander cared about, along with his regular crew of Saturday matinee double-feature companions, Skip James, Jack Callahan, Johnny Rizzo, Five-Fingers Murphy, Frank Jackman and sometimes before his family moved out of town so his father could take a job in the emerging computer industry at Honeywell about forty miles away along Route 128, was that they had enough money to cover the admission (trying as boys universally would then, probably still do, to get the under twelve reduced admission price long after they had entered their teens), were being “grounded” for some silly home or school infraction , and, maybe, just maybe, that for once the popcorn although always with burnt offerings was not stale. So Alexander had through the marvels of cinematic technology and the printed page been able to form a very distinct idea about what a private detective should be like, what he looked like and how he handled himself in the rough spots.       

That ideal was probably epitomized by Sam Slade in The Maltese Falcon on the screen (the 1940s one that made Humphrey Bogart, Bogie, famous not the two earlier ones which he had never seen until a few years ago via Netflix he had ordered the pair online and was seriously disappointed in those efforts, as was his wife Mary who while not nearly as much a fan of the private detective did love the Bogie version of the Falcon) and in some short stories done by Hammett by scrambling through a few libraries and second-hand bookstores looking for compilations. In a word a guy and it was always guys then still was a lot now although he had read a few interesting female detective stories, working class guys, tough, tough enough to by sheer will and pluck to outsmart his well-organized criminal opponents, hard-boiled no question, no sap for anybody even women which every guys knows is easy enough to become when the skirts going swishing by, with a code, a beautiful code of honor that he follows as best he can, maybe not to the letter but as best he can in the spirit, hard-drinking which somehow focused the senses whenever the bottle in the lower desk draw came out, and a rough and ready sense of justice, of tilting after windmills for the good of the cause.

And there that image stayed for a fairly long time until Alexander went out into the world of work after high school. He had taken shop classes in school, printing shop and so immediately after high school he had taken a full-time job with Mister Calder, the best commercial printer in town, whom he worked for after school and on weekends in high school. In due course after a few years in the dreaded Army in Vietnam which took a certain toll on him when he came back to the “real” world, a few years “finding himself” through dope, rock and roll, and following the hitchhike road that many guys of his generation took for a while when Mister Calder retired he took over the shop located in the first floor of the Tappan Building on Lancaster Street right off of downtown (in the opposite direction from the now long gone old Majestic if you were familiar with Riverdale back in the 1970s or earlier).   

At one time, back in the 1940s, early 1950s, the eight story Tappan Building was what they would call today the anchor of the downtown business section. Was the pride of Riverdale what with prosperous small law firms, a few doctors’ offices when doctors had their own private practices more, a couple of dentists, a few reputable insurance companies, nothing big, no Fortune 500 firms but substantial, solid professional. As those firms and professionals drifted out to the strip malls or were eaten up by larger firms elsewhere the once glorious Tappan Building began a long decline into “seen better days.” The owners kind of gave up on the place, not keeping it up with leaking faucets in the restrooms, un-waxed public area floors, unreliable elevators, and the sanctified smell of decay that follows such downward spiraling enterprises. Alexander had taken over for Mister Calder well into the decline of the building but since the leasing arrangements with the owners provided for cheap terms and the fact that his printing business was not one in need of a “good front” he never felt the need to move, probably a wise move once the high tech moguls made self-printing for most occasions a worthwhile effort.

Alexander thus observed the decline of the Tappan Building first-hand as the type of businesses switched from prosperous professionals to shady characters. A couple of “repo” men, a few failed dentists whom you would not want within fifty feet of your mouth, maybe farther away, a couple of chiropractors, some no-name insurance firms, a notary public, a least a few guys who were running some kinds of scams out of their offices, and a detective agency. Fred Sims’ Detective Agency although all the years that he knew Fred he was the sole detective.      

Fred had been in the building since the mid-1960s but between Alexander’s military service and his wanderlust he did not meet Fred until he took over for Mister Calder. Once they met, met in Dolly’s Diner across the street from the Tappan, a place that is still there although Dolly’s granddaughter runs the place now and has changed it from a smoked-filled ham and eggs, coffee and crullers place to more healthful food and clean atmosphere for those who own the condos that had been created as a result of converting many of the old buildings, schools and churches in the area, they hit it off from the beginning although Fred was a good decade older than Alexander.

Fred, let’s be clear, was not, hear this, was not, and probably never would be Alexander image of a private detective build up from childhood (although in fairness to Fred he was the very first P.I. he had run into). Short, bald, with unkempt side hairs sticking out of the baseball cap that he wore indoors and out, and almost never took off, an old Robert Hall’s, if you remember that name in men’s clothing from another age, shaggy sport’s jacket, one of three he owned and alternated, threadbare socks, turned at the heel shoes, black, and many days, many no client days, a fair amount of stubble on his face. His office on the fifth floor reflected that persona, no real “front.”  A hand-printed cardboard sign advertising his name and business on the front door, a small waiting room (which made Alexander laugh for all the years that he knew Fred he never saw anybody in that room), dust in the corners, a well beyond its prime coatrack of uncertain steadiness, a couple of mismatched chairs, a small end table with magazines describing the first Apollo landing in 1969, an office area with a snarled desk, unmatched chair, and a few, too few file cabinets if Fred was prosperous which he was not. Later when they were easier to figure out he did purchase a computer but otherwise over the years the place had, and would continue to have, that beleaguered downward spiral look.    

Alexander one time early on remarked, no, made the mistake and remarked, that Fred was no Bogie while they were sitting at the counter of Dolly’s having their coffee and. Apparently this kind of remark was Fred’s pet peeve because he commenced to rail against the popular notion of what a private detective looks like, what his office looks like, and the real cases that he handles. They are not the murder cases of cinematic and book renown, the public cops, detectives handle that, well or poorly, but in some then twenty years in the business he had never seen any private detective brought in to solve a murder and only once had heard that a very rich guy who had the dough to do so and was frustrated with the public coppers and their inability to solve the kidnapping/murder of his young daughter actually had a private detective savvy enough to solve the crime, after two years on the trail.                   

 No the real work was bullshit stuff. Some barber from Gloversville whose wife ran off with a salesman and he wanted her back her, fast, maybe three days, and not too many expenses. Some “repo” work the average repo guys wouldn’t handle or wouldn’t be allowed by the insurance companies to handle. Back in the day a few Peeping Tom snooping around motels cases looking for adultery when the grounds for a civil divorce were harder to find. A lost dog or other pet once in a while if somebody was attached to the animal, although they usually found their ways home on their own or were never seen again. Looking for long last relatives, usually fruitless since those relatives wanted to be lost from view. Maybe checking out a scam or two, flimflam stuff. Definitely not looking for lost falcons filled with riches and history with dead bodies and greedy people hovering around. Definitely not taking on some high-powered criminal gang when an old general with wild daughters one of whose husband is missing. Definitely not being employed by some man-mountain to find his long lost and wants to stay lost Velma. Definitely not trying to find some eccentric rich inventor guy whose thin shadow had disappeared in the mist and somebody liked that idea.                                 

 So that day Alexander got his comeuppance, got a first-hand real world view of what private investigation was all about. Thereafter Fred, when the met for their coffee and at Dolly’s or sometimes when Alexander after work would go up to Fred’s office for a shot of whiskey from that bottle he kept in the bottom drawer of that snarled desk (and one of the few commonalities between real and film detectives) Fred would tell him stories about his previous cases, or cases that he had heard about from other P.I. around the area when they ran into each other at some meeting or on a spree. Except the one time when Alexander became a moving part in a case that Fred would wind up getting involved in before the coppers stepped in. 

One day a guy, an ordinary looking guy, about thirty, fairly well-dressed, a sports coat and tie, trimmed hair and short beard, not from around Riverdale but with a New England accent, probably Maine, came in Alexander’s print shop looking for a customized job, a small job but in those days as people were self-printing more extensively the small jobs were drying up (fortunately the big commercial orders were still coming in at their normal pace). He wanted fifty copies of what he called a missing person’s poster, you know with photo of the person and description of last known place, who to contact and so on, done on the press and not the copy machine. No problem. Alexander handled the order while this young guy waited. 

A few weeks later the person who had come in with missing person photograph turned up dead, very dead along the bank of the Waban River. Not only very dead but very murdered from the bullet holes through his mangled soggy shirt. Chief Powers of the Riverdale Police came into Alexander’s print shop to find out what he knew about the situation since in the dead man’s back pocket there was a water-logged copy of the missing person poster that had print shop mark on the right corner. Alexander told the Chief what he knew, said he wanted to help any way he could but the young guy was just a young guy and his description and demeanor would have fit a million young guys. As had the guy he was looking for. That pretty much ended Alexander’s involvement in the case, probably the case would go into those cold files that most murder cases go into if somebody doesn’t jump and confess with all hands open.

Or so he thought. A few weeks later a young woman, Lara Barstow was the name she gave him, came into Alexander’s printing shop with a shopworn copy of the poster he had created for the murdered young man, and asked to see the proprietor. Since he was that person he introduced himself and asked how he could help her (although he was a little suspicious that an average young good-looking woman like Lara would have any connection with the crime, or crimes associated with the young man for whom he had done the work or the young man on the poster. Lara soon cleared things up, “I have been to the police and they told me what happened to my brother Emmet, how he was found murdered out on the riverbank. They said that as far as they were concerned the case was still open but that they had no further leads to work on so that unless they got something that is probably where the case would stand.” [The police did not mention “cold case” file by Lara said she knew what they meant]. Lara then started to cry a bit and Alexander not knowing what to do offered his handkerchief and asked if he should call his wife to assist her in her time of troubles. Lara stiffened at that and told Alexander that she did not need that kind of help but that she was determined to find out who had killed her brother and asked if he had any ideas. Then Alexander, secretly thrilled as the prospect told her that on the fifth floor of the building that they were standing in his friend, Fred, a private detective, had his office and that maybe he could look into the matter. Lara said that she did not have any serious resources (her word), meaning money but that if Fred as able to do something to find the murderer and clear up a legal situation then she would be coming into some funds. Alexander thinking to himself that this was starting to be something out of the movies let that statement only saying, “Let’s see what Fred says,” and led her to the elevator and the fifth floor office. (On the way she did not comment on the urine smell in the foyer, the seedy dilapidated aspect of the elevator and its slowness, or the condition of the outside building windows, broken panes letting the weathers in, on the fifth floor as they left the elevator which made him a little wary since her whole demeanor was of some old-fashioned gentile upbringing but he figured she was desperate, concentrated on her task, or indifferent to such matter.

Fred, despite the seedy condition of his office, already commented on by Alexander and nothing had changed since the last time he had been up in the office for a few drinks so no further comment is necessary, was smooth affable charm itself when greeting and listening to Lara’s story. And listen he, they did for the story really did have a Hollywood feel to it.

“Emmet Barstow is, ah, was, my older brother, who had gotten into a lot of trouble when he was in prep school at Exeter Academy several years ago. I don’t know if I should tell you the nature of the trouble since it was a rather delicate matter.” Fred stopped her right there and said he needed to know everything, everything in this weak fact case, or he would not be able to help her. She continued, “Well, ah, see there was this other boy, this Prescott Devine, a pervert, young know, a homosexual, who tricked Emmet into having sex with him, having sex and taking photographs as it turned out.” [Fred and Alexander gave each other knowing eyes about what was to follow.] You know what happened next, Prescott forced my brother to continue with his wicked designs while in school and later asked for money to avoid a public scandal in our household. So Emmett paid, or rather my father paid before he died and after that Mr. Sidney, the lawyer who has handled our estate until we come of age paid. They Prescott fade from view for a couple of years until several months ago after my father died he showed up at our door looking for more money. Emmett gave him what he could but somehow he got wind of my father dying and remembered that Emmett was to inherit a large sum of money upon his death, something he had told Prescott when he was in the throes of love at the beginning [said bitterly]. The terms of the will were that Emmett would inherit almost everything when he turned twenty-five as long as he was alive, and if he were not then I would inherit. But only inherit if there was no cloud over his death. That part had been added only a few months before my father’s death so he must have had a premonition of something happening.” She paused, then continued, “Emmett had been trying to find Prescott for a while after he had come to our house in order to tell him that he was no longer afraid of any scandal, that he would take his chances with society, our society which might be able to overlook what could be a youthful indiscretion, and maybe just a bout of loneliness. Somebody whom they went to school with told Emmett that Prescott was in this area living in Gloversville and that was why he had the posters made. He was going to distribute them around and the thousand dollars for information figured to draw somebody out who might know his whereabouts. That’s all I know until the police called to have me come and identify the body. The police have kind of let it go to hell and I need your help.

Fred wise to the ways of the world although not used to dealing with upper middle class young women, as clients anyway except once he had a girlfriend from the leafy suburbs but the parents practically imprisoned her when they found out he did not have three names in his moniker, you know Ward Stewart Lawrence, stuff like that the Brahmins go for, told Lara he needed a one hundred dollar cash retainer before he could represent her in her time of sorrows. She opened her pocketbook, pulled out five Jacksons and they were in business.   

Fred said later that he sensed something was wrong from that moment, the moment she gave him the cash like she expected him to ask for cash rather than haggle over a check or something but Alexander said that was just Fred’s wishful thinking after the fact when the whole thing blew up in his face and the cops had to pull him out of the line of fire. To leave the reader in no suspense at this point Fred went out and did several days of investigation trying to locate the guy who told her brother that Prescott was in the area. He did locate him finally but the lad, a young man whom Fred using the old time expression was “light on his feet,” and fearful to say anything at all. Fred pressed the issue though and the kid (Fred did not use that word) folded. It seems the kid, Fred said he would not use his name in order to get the information he wanted, also fell under the spell of Prescott, had his pants down more than once over the “crush” he called, and had done Prescott’s bidding telling Emmett that Prescott was in Gloversville. A couple of days late Fred traced Prescott to a bed and breakfast place outside Gloversville. He figured that he would just go in and talk to Prescott but before he could enter the door to Prescott’s room there was a volley of gunfire aimed his way through the door. He got on the ground first and worked his way back to the kitchen where he called the cops, called the sheriff’s office because he was not sure Gloversville had its own police department. The sheriff came with a few deputies, and a few sharpshooters from the State Police SWAT team. After a couple of futile attempts at coaxing Prescott out they went in full blazes (Alexander said if anybody wanted to know the details of the firefight check with the Norfolk County Sheriff’s Office they would have all the details. After a few minutes the firing from Prescott’s room stopped. The cops went into room and recovered the body, recovered two bodies really, for the other body belonged to one Lara Barstow.

The way things figured out later piecing together everything found in Prescott’s room and later at Lara’ house what happened is when Prescott came to confront Emmett for dough at his house he somehow caught Lara’s eyes, gave her a tumble or two, maybe more. Whether he was just working the scam of a lifetime for a lowlife like him or he had some affection for Lara who knows. What is known from some legal papers found at Lara’s house is they formed a scheme to kill Emmett and have her inherit the family money (when she turned twenty-five as well a lawyer handling the trust before that time). Prescott must have known from that Exeter kid that Emmett was on his trail. They probably met somewhere and Prescott put a couple of nasty slugs in him and shipped him off down the Waban River and easy street. What fouled the whole thing up was the part about having to know the cause of Emmett’s death before the trust could even be touched in the future. The whole Lara tall tale story in Fred’s office was to see if they could find a fall guy, maybe some hobo or something. Not every criminal, smart or stupid always figures things out right but that what it looked like. Maybe Lara thought just hiring Fred would satisfy the terms of the trust. Who knows. But when Fred was able to find Prescott he, they panicked. And that was that. So Alexander forever after will be able to say he way part of solving a private detective-type crime. He was just glad, glad as hell that he had not accompanied Fred when he had asked him to go to Prescott’s room. He thought save that part for the movies.                       

Hollywood Bingo-With Primo Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett In Mind

Hollywood Bingo-With Primo Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett In Mind

By Zack James

Matt Dolan was a “fixer” man. No, not the drug-dealer fixer man famous, or infamous, in mean streets lore or in the hard-edged short stories of addiction, mostly heroin (horse, H, boy) by the crusty writer Nelson Algren who had that scene down in an earlier age, an age when such addictions were sidebars and not front page headlines like today. Matt Dolan, Mack for some reason buried so far back in childhood that nobody, including Matt knows how he came by that moniker, was a writer, is a writer who comes in an fixes up some film, some “picture” as they say in the trade when it is going off the wheels for any number of a hundred reasons that a script, even if the scriptwriter is the guy or gal who wrote the thing that the studio paid all that money for but was getting dragged down because somewhere after production had started the thing started turning in on itself and the studio, or more likely the producer of the particular film would call Mack in to bail the film out, bail the director and everybody who worked the sets who saw their wages ending if the damn thing was “fixed” by guys and gals like Mack.

Sure there are a million writers, some good, some bad who write anything from multi-week best sellers on some publications lists to stinkpots (pardon the old-fashioned word but it applies to some of the thousands of writings Mack had run through in his time). Sure there are a million screenwriters, or it seems like it when they roll the credits, mostly good or were at one time good and were either protected by the Guild or by somebody in management who owed them something. But there were, are surprisingly few “fixers” in the whole of the film industry and so they command high wages (really these days some fixed amount usually in the six figures agreed to in advance and signed on the dotted line as per Guild agreement which covers fixers as well as all the other categories of writers and musicians). Mack was, is among the best and has been since the 1950s when he broke into the industry and after a few false starts, and disappointments, got his reputation cemented when he saved the “stinker” High School Confidential.  Mack came up with the very bright idea that that worthless cautionary tale about high school kids succumbing to the lure of heroin provided by evil nightclub owners and other denizens of the back alleys. The way Mack saw it no kid in his or her right mind was going to sit through their precious Saturday afternoon double-feature at the local Majestic Theater to be told stuff they got at home every day for free, and endlessly too. So Mack, a little younger then than the average screenwriter on the Hollywood scene and savvy to the role that music, specifically rock and roll music after Elvis and others broke the ground, came up with the idea of putting the then “hot” rock and roll mad monk saint Jerry Lee Lewis on the back of a flatbed truck with his piano and his sidemen and have the truck tooling toward the high school as he played his flame-throwing song High School Confidential. The film grossed a ton of money off of a shoestring budget because all the kids cared about was that scene and then they could go back to whatever boy-girl thing they were doing the in the dark upstairs balconies. Mack could name his price after that, usually. All the studios wanted him after that.          

But the supply and demand stresses of being a fixer put a lot of pressure on Mack, especially when he was working on some play or screenplay of his own which he was looking to have produced. One night Mack, who besides being a fixer man loved the ladies, loved the young ones especially even as he got older, said they kept him young, or whatever reason older guys give these days for chasing young skirts (or for older gay guys and lesbian women these days when the great secret of Hollywood same sex lives had become passe what the object of their affections might be wearing), was telling Jack Callahan, an executive at Excelsior Films, the company that he had the closest ties to over the previous  twenty years or over drinks at his favorite watering hole, The Dirty Duck, off of Vine Street, about how he got his first contract to fix a “stinker” at Excelsior.

At that time maybe the summer of 1972 Max Stein called him up when he was up in Big Sur trying to work out some kinks in a screenplay that would later be produced under the title Love In The Park (and which made that studio, the now defunct Blue Blaze Films, a ton of money but not enough to keep the wolves away when they produced a big series of flops, real stinkers, none of which they saw the wisdom of bringing him or any fixer in on) and told him that the latest film he was producing, Hurry, My Sweet, was losing steam, needed a fixer man and he had heard through Harry Swann at Delta Films that Mack was the man he needed. Mack pleaded prior commitment but Max threw up a number that Mack couldn’t refuse and so he committed to a two week stint back down at La Jolla where the film was shot to try to work something out of the air once again. Max sent him along with the contract a copy of the screenplay as it was then being worked on.

What the script was about was an old-time kind of detective story, a genre that was making a comeback on the screen, after a long absence since the time of the great black and white film noirs of the 1940s and 1950s. The plotline involved as those type films always did some nefarious murder (or murders depending on how grizzly the producer and director though they could take the thing and not have irate parents banning their kids from spending their dough to see it) to be solved by a resourceful detective. One hook here was that the hard-boiled female detective, they always had to be hard-boiled whatever their gender since the days of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler switch things up back in the 1920s and 1930s, Patty Lane, being played by veteran screen actress Mara Whiting. Another hook was that the bad guy was a bad gal, Laura Devine, played by the beautiful Gina Saint-Germain, who had wasted her drug-dealing lover, Gary Lawlor, played by rising star Sam Lawrence, after he had turned Laura’s sister, Sarah, played by new comer Sissy Moore, on to drugs and to the streets doing tricks for short money to feed her habit. The big hook though is that Sarah, after Laura wasted Gary, was holding five kilos of pure high grade Columbian cocaine which she intended to sell to the highest bidder, Laura or anybody else, so she could get off the streets and feed her own habit. Laura putting pure greed over sisterly love sent some of her boys (and a girl sharpshooter as well) out to find the sister, find the dope really. Hard-pressed Sarah looks up in the Los Angeles telephone directory for a detective to help her out, for protection really, and to broker a deal if necessary and comes up with Patty who she thinks is a guy because the listing of the agency was Pat Lane and Associates. Pretty standard stuff but Mack could see where Max was a little panicky because if the theme reflected more contemporary times and concerns it was a “stinker” as far as he was concerned.                         

When Mack got to the set down in La Jolla not far from the university and close to the rock-strewn ocean that was playing a nice visual backdrop to the action he told the director, Josh Lannon well-known for working B films on short money, and short storyline filling out the meek dialogue with plenty of action, the thing was a stinker, no question and no amount of action was going to cover-up a beaten down storyline. Of course Josh took umbrage at that statement saying that he was given the thing for short money by Max and if Mack could bring it around well fine, if not then that was that. Mack was used to that kind of reaction and knowing he had money-man Max’s backing let it ride, let the ill-tempered director blow off steam.  

Of course Mack also knew that once production was started, once the actors had committed to their parts as best they could that all the interpersonal problems that face any collective effort, egos, bruised feelings, hostility, make-shift love, and desire for bigger roles in the film-and in future films if an actor showed promise, especially in a stinker came into play. That is where Mack’s fixer skills and love of younger women got a serious work-out.

About an hour and a half after Mack got on the set while sitting in an off-stage cubicle trying to figure out a new hook to make the audience interested enough in any character to take a chance and see the movie Sissy Moore came into his space. No question she was a good-looking young woman and as soon as she entered he had ideas, knowing she had ideas. Tall, slender, red-hair, long legs, not beautiful, not Gina Saint-Germaine beautiful for even a Hollywood novice knew, knows that you cannot have two beautiful women on one screen because they will not stand for it, and the audience won’t either even the women, but the kind of woman that once the film is over you think about, think about to the exclusion of the serious beauty.          

Sissy had heard that morning that the famous Mack Dolan was coming to fix the script and while she was only a new-comer people around the set and around Hollywood said with some proper training and proper roles she could be somebody. That was all she needed to know to get her small-town girl (Lima, Ohio) wanting habits on. She took dead aim at Mack, despite the fact that at the time she was maybe twenty years younger than him, and he had not due to that huge alcohol and lately drug consumption not aged gracefully, and coming right up to him so he could smell that gardenia perfume she was wearing mixed with thoughts of hard sex ahead she laid it on the line (she, as she told Mack after they had hit the satin sheets over at the Biltmore a few times, knew through the usually very reliable starlet grapevine that he had a thing for younger women, with or without the gardenia perfume). She wanted her part built up, thought bad ass bad girl Laura in the story, meaning really Gina, after she wasted Gary was nothing to the whole plot, that she should be seen more, have more lines around her ability to evade the bad boys Laura sent after her, played more of a role helping Patty take the heat off of her. In return Mack could have, as she rather coyly put it, given what she was offering, he could have anything he wanted from her, anything she had to give.

Now, as Mack told Jack that night the Dirty Duck, there are more urban legends about how famous stars, male and female, yes, males in the then male-dominated management end, worked their way up the cinematic food chain by “offering anything somebody in power wanted, anything they had to give” and a fair about was just that-urban legend. But even then back in 1972 there was plenty of sex being traded for stardom, or hopes of stardom, or better somebody in power taking advantage of some youngster’s hopes of stardom before being shunted back to Topeka, Toledo, or Boise. So Mack made his pact with Sissy, made it tight, and for the length of his time on the set he got his ashes and whatever else he wanted hauled by her. This time, unlike a few times before when he was a guy in power himself playing on some young thing’s hope for stardom, his agreement to get Sissy more screen time, more to say, was based on what he had seen in the rushes, had seen that star quality, maybe not the top but she would not have to sit by the midnight phone hoping for work.    

Naturally the increase of one actor’s role at the expense of another, here Gina, caused an uproar on the set, caused Gina to say she would not perform at her usual high level. Mack knew he had Max’s okay, since he had called him after the pact with Sissy was consummated the first time so he was able to ride it out. Here’s how: Mack determined that what the film needed with so many good-looking females was more sex, or in those days when it was still dicey to get too graphic in sex scenes, was the allure of sex. Now it wasn’t going to be Patty as the crusading detective ready to save an errant young woman and Gina flat out refused to do any sex scenes but Sissy, well, Sissy really was up for anything that would get her up the food chain, especially after Mack put the bug in her ear that such efforts would enhance her career opportunities. There wasn’t much that Mack could do with the script with what was already in the can but that is when he came up with the idea that would save the damn thing. Sissy early on as she got more addicted to the drugs Gary was feeding her and was out doing tricks on the streets got into a situation where some guys Gary knew propositioned her to come to a poker party with them. She agreed once Gary said he would “make her well.” So the scene got set up in a smoky hotel room, cards out, chips out, cigarettes out, drinks out on the table and then Sissy dressed scantily like a Playboy bunny, popular at the time, without saying a word starts going provocatively under the table. Nothing showing what is happening but obviously Sissy is going down to “play the flute” as Mack put it euphemistically in his stage directions. That B film made a ton of money for Excelsior because all the kids cared about was that scene once they heard about it and then they could go back to whatever boy-girl thing they were doing the in the dark upstairs balconies, go back with a vengeance. Made Sissy a “hot” property (and forced Gina in a later film to do a “play the flute” scene more graphically shown than anything Sissy had done although among the gossips of the town your average red-blooded males out in the hinterlands Sissy was almost always thereafter called “the flutist” and nobody had to ask twice who that was or what it meant). Brilliance, pure brilliance.

Traipsing Through The Arts-All Serious 20th Century Art Is About Sex-Forget That Stuff You Learned In Art Class About The Search For The Sublime-Looking For Sex In All The Wrong Places-With Edgar Degas’s “Four Ballerinas” In Mind

Traipsing Through The Arts-All Serious 20^th Century Art Is About Sex-Forget That Stuff You Learned In Art Class About The Search For The Sublime-Looking For Sex In All The Wrong Places-With Edgar Degas’s “Four Ballerinas” In Mind 

 

By Laura Perkins

I am feeling a sense of liberation and also of frustration as I take on the extremely horrifying and alarming case of the famous French painter Edgar Degas and his misused and defiled ballerinas whose presence in his paintings everybody at one point thought was so “cute.”  (The same for the ubiquitous sculptured versions of that poor fourteen- year old neophyte compete with now seriously fraying tutu that it seems every museum of any size has at least one of in the galleries on Impressionism.)

Let’s take the liberation part first. Recently I took on an added art-related task in reviewing the late novelist, essayist and amateur artist John Updike’s three volumes (1989, 2005 and posthumously 2012) of musing art reviews for various publications. As part of my review I added in where possible and where necessary my (and my “ghost” adviser Sam Lowell’s) general theory on the central role of sex and eroticism in serious 20^th century art. That led me into a strange place where I felt I had to take on all the cases where it applied in his volumes. In short, making me stretch a bit on all art in the 20^th century falling under that umbrella but more importantly going a bit too light on analysis of individual works. I received enough complains and comments to rethink the idea of going after every possible scrap that might glue my theory. With the last pieces I did on colorist Grady Lamont and his famous Pinetops and Eduovard Vuillard’s Woman In Striped Dress I have changed course and have more satisfyingly looked at individual works.

The frustration part comes from the continuing sniping, a very useful word in this case, of the professional art cabal since I have trifled with their holy of holies-the idea that art is the search for beauty, for the sublime, for something greater than humankind’s meager experiences in the collective. In the alternative, no, sometimes in the alternative but sometimes as part of the general breeze I have been confronted with the dog whistle catch-all “art for art’s sake” to justify every weird and wicked concept placed under the rubric of art. (Everyone knows, lay and professional alike, that such a misty concept is like manna from heaven when the writer is clueless about the meaning of a particular piece so I need go no further on that except to once again chuckle when I run across the usage in a serious monogram.) The worst offenders are in this order the art pages journalists of the major newspapers and general journals who merely grab whatever press releases the august members of the art cabal roll out and submit them untouched except maybe snip off the press release part  as good coin to their respect editors, the art gallery owners the source of much of this malarkey who are stuck with unsaleable merchandise having made the wrong moves as to which way the wind was blowing in the upper circles of that world, and the professional art critics who take those crumbs and in turn make the average art collector, high-end art collector preferable but anyone who has the hard cash will do, salivate at owning whatever the market will bear.

Additionally, some professional art critics and here I will give a specific name, Clarence Dewar from Art Today who is my current frustration-causing opponent refuse to believe that this high-blown art world has created anything but the exemplars of humankind. He will defend any artist, great or small, against any faults found in their very human makeups. His latest defense is of the famous what today would be called child pornographer except in paint and metal Edgar Degas who I have shown for what he was and nothing more, or less. Degas was obsessed with the ballerinas although he had other vices as well. Had made hundreds of copies featuring what are clearly underage, even for the times underaged girls at the studios mainly. He caused a furor, went crazy or something when Madame LeBlanc refused to let him hang around her studio of novice ballerinas. She had to threaten to get the gendarmes (as little good as that would do since Edgar was a “national treasure”). Naturally the great Impressionist artist was, according to Dewar, only looking for the sublime, only looking to create beauty.     

I have taken his Four Ballerinas, on display in the French Impressionist section of the National Gallery down in Washington where they hang with other Impressionist artists who knew all about his craven sexual practices and who would be appalled that he is still allowed to share space with them although through the manipulations of the art cabal all talk of the scandals have been suppressed. From the painting it was clear that all four ballerinas were well under sixteen years old mostly from their girlish figures and their seeming naiveite. From what police records are still extant after Madame LeBlanc later when she had more proof than he was just “annoying” her charges attempted unsuccessfully to have Degas charged as a panderer I have found two at least were under fourteen. But that is only the top of the iceberg, one girl, Brigette, claimed with witnesses that Degas after one sitting had sexually abused her, and had previously tried as well. The Paris police response reflecting higher echelon decisions-nothing.      

I should point out as well since Dewar made a point of the matter in his sordid Degas’ painting defense that the girls all had clothes on so no foul. What Dewar missed was that clearly the two left girls were provocatively getting ready to undress or had been directed to pose that way by Degas who was notorious, and now rightly so, for keeping a closed studio. Moreover the closeness of the four young women on the left side of the canvass is a well-known coded reference to sexual congress, which made me think he was doing this painting for some fellow voyeur. That puts paid to Dewar’s concoctions. To finish off the scene on the right with all the Edenic pastoral which for millennia have represented “foreplay” and to which the young women are heading tells all we need to know collected along with the other information. Then too the lame argument that Degas’ eyesight was failing. We had a big laugh over that one was trying to pull over on an unsuspecting public at the water cooler where even the philistines who hate art had to chuckle. 

I am very conscious that in the age, the righteous age of #MeToo we have to be careful about being anachronistic to an earlier time before child molestation became the currency on the news and elsewhere. I think I have cleared that hurdle. What made me stop for a moment, and which has caused me some anguish as contemporary society has come down hard on those males especially who had a power relationship over usually younger women was the worth of their creative powers against their piggishness toward vulnerable women. It is still an open question which brooks no easy answer. Frankly Degas’ work does not speak to the high side of sexual expression in modern art that say for example Grady Lamont and even Eduard Vuillard speak to in their best works (and Grady acknowledges that sex is what is driving his work unlike Degas who cover his sordid tracks with bogus paintings of race horses and such so that nobody would find out what he was really doing in those tight studio spaces and ballet school locker rooms or whatever the called the dressing areas in such places back then). I have suggested though in the Degas case since the evidence is pretty strong that he molested at least one and probably more than one young ballerina that he be dropped from that “national treasure” nonsense. (This is the worst part-the part about how he enticed so many young girls- who knows maybe he “enticed” them with his connections to big time ballet performances if they “came across” for him. That would leave Dewar’s silly declining eyesight stuff in the dust.)    

I have earnestly suggested that as reparations to the identifiable descendants of those poor young professional women of their times that the next time a Degas goes up for sale for a zillion dollars that instead that money be put in a fund to right the justice scales a little. I have had my say.  

Killer Drones and Imperialist Terror U.S. Forces Out of Somalia Now! The war waged by the U.S. imperialists against the Islamist forces of Al Shabab in Somalia has been sharply escalated under President Trump, wreaking further havoc on that already devastated country.

Workers Vanguard No. 1153	19 April 2019

Killer Drones and Imperialist Terror

U.S. Forces Out of Somalia Now!

The war waged by the U.S. imperialists against the Islamist forces of Al Shabab in Somalia has been sharply escalated under President Trump, wreaking further havoc on that already devastated country. The U.S.-led terror campaign, which Washington expects to last for years to come, has driven some 2.6 million Somalis from their homes; untold thousands languish in squalid refugee camps. As a result of military terror, drought and disease, famine stalks the population.

The ground war against the Shabab militia is being carried out by imperialist proxies—more than 20,000 African Union troops and the ragtag Somali army—overseen by some 500 U.S. military personnel. Meanwhile, unmanned and manned U.S. aircraft rain death and destruction on Somali villages in areas controlled by the Islamists. By the Pentagon’s own count, over 250 people have been blown away in some 30 airstrikes so far this year.

That carnage is a direct continuation of Barack Obama’s drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere that symbolized his execution of the “war on terror.” Apologists for the capitalist Democratic Party claim that the Trump administration has lifted Obama-era restrictions on drone strikes by declaring wide swaths of Somalia “areas of active hostilities.” In fact, the rules of engagement had already been loosened toward the end of Obama’s presidency. As the New York Times (27 November 2016) reported at the time:

“In Somalia, the 2013 rules limiting airstrikes away from ‘areas of active hostilities’ still apply for now. But in practice, restrictions are being eased there in another way: Over the past year, the military has routinely invoked a built-in exception to those rules for airstrikes taken in ‘self-defense,’ which can include strikes to help foreign partners even when Americans are not at direct risk.”

Layer upon layer of secrecy and deceit—including adamant Pentagon denials of civilian deaths—keep the sordid reality of U.S. military operations in Africa from the public eye. However, Amnesty International’s report The Hidden US War in Somalia, published last month, details a number of cases of U.S. drones blowing away farmers in their fields, individuals in their vehicles and other noncombatants. Retired brigadier general Donald Bolduc, who was commander of Special Operations Command Africa until 2017, told Amnesty that individuals are considered lawful targets based solely on four criteria: age, gender, location and geographical proximity to Al Shabab, that is, all military-age males in its territory are fair game. During a review prompted by the report, AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command, grudgingly admitted to having killed two civilians a year ago.

Today, the U.S. has at least 7,200 troops and 34 military bases in Africa, including the airfield, Camp Baledogle in Somalia. The U.S. bases are mainly concentrated in West Africa, Libya and the Horn of Africa, serving as launchpads for drone attacks and commando raids against those designated “terrorists” by Washington. In one August 2017 raid, documented by Christina Goldbaum in two Daily Beast articles (29 November and 6 December 2017), U.S. special ops and Somali army troops stormed a village, slaughtered ten unarmed civilians and placed weapons near the bodies to disguise the massacre. Such operations are carried out under the September 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that was passed with the near-unanimous support of Congress, including “progressive” 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders.

The U.S. military presence in Africa can only sow increased instability, violence and desperation throughout the continent, which has suffered over a century of colonial and neocolonial rape by the European and U.S. imperialists. It is in the interest of the American proletariat to demand the withdrawal from Somalia of all U.S. troops, as well as those of the African Union. While we communists oppose everything that Islamist reactionaries like Al Shabab stand for, we recognize that any military setback for the imperialists aids the cause of the workers and oppressed peoples of the planet. The U.S. rulers’ wars overseas, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, go hand in hand with their attacks on labor, black people and all the oppressed at home. U.S. troops, bases out of Africa!

Imperialism is the most advanced stage of capitalist development, marked by the domination of finance capital. In the imperialist epoch, the advanced powers wage wars of plunder and compete to redivide the world into spheres of exploitation. Opposition to all imperialist wars and occupations is a necessary part of our fight to forge a revolutionary workers party in the U.S. capable of leading the multiracial proletariat to power and sweeping away the capitalist system.

Decades of U.S. Imperialist Depredations

The 1991-92 counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union, a bureaucratically degenerated workers state, had worldwide repercussions, not least in the Horn of Africa. That world-historic defeat for the toilers of the world eliminated what had been the only real military counterweight to the marauding imperialists.

At the end of 1992, the administration of George Bush Sr., operating under a UN “humanitarian” fig leaf, sent 25,000 U.S. troops to Somalia supposedly to help its starving population. In fact, the famine coincided with the largest one-year fall in grain production in history, engineered by the U.S. to drive up prices. Democrat Bill Clinton intensified the occupation in the guise of saving a “failed state” with the approval of Congress, including then Representative Bernie Sanders. As we wrote at the time:

“The whole U.S./UN intervention has been cloaked in the rhetoric of humanitarian aid. ‘Operation Restore Hope’ has instead turned Somalia once again into a UN ‘trusteeship,’ with imperialist gendarmes acting on orders from the Pentagon. The American expeditionary force went in when the famine was already dissipating. The real purposes were to allow the U.S. to act as global cops, and let President Bush look tough in the waning days of his presidency. Now with his poll ratings down, Democrat Clinton wants to do the same.”

— “U.S./UN Troops Slaughter Somalis,” WV No. 578, 18 June 1993

By the middle of 1993, U.S. helicopter gunships were regularly bombing Mogadishu. Somalis were brutalized, shot at roadblocks and massacred when they resisted the occupiers. After Somali militiamen shot down two Black Hawk helicopters on October 3, U.S. Special Forces massacred over 1,000 Somalis. But the Somalis fought back, killing 18 U.S. soldiers. After that humiliating defeat, which sparked an outcry in the U.S. and came to be known as “Black Hawk Down,” the imperialists withdrew from Somalia, their tail between their legs. It is a good illustration of how military blows against the imperialists can spur popular opposition at home against depredations of the U.S. ruling class.

After the U.S. withdrawal, a degree of civil order across much of Somalia was re-established by the sharia-based Islamic Courts Union (ICU), an alliance of various Islamists. Its retrograde regime in Mogadishu was toppled in 2006 when Ethiopian troops acting as American proxies—and in the service of the Ethiopian rulers’ own interests—invaded Somalia with the support of U.S. Special Forces and airstrikes. Washington’s stated rationale for the overthrow of the ICU was to prevent the emergence of an Al Qaeda “safe haven.” As it happened, Al Shabab emerged as an offshoot of the ICU out of the fight against the two-year Ethiopian occupation, eventually taking control of Mogadishu and most of southern and central Somalia.

Once again, the imperialists intervened using African proxies. In 2011, an African Union “peacekeeping” force sponsored by the UN, funded by the European Union and commanded by U.S. military “advisers,” ousted Al Shabab from Mogadishu and, the following year, from the southern port of Kismayo. That force, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), continues to sow terror in the countryside. Al Shabab has retaliated with its own heinous terrorist attacks in Uganda and Kenya, targeting soccer fans, a shopping mall and a university campus. In turn, Somalis in Kenya have been the victims of brutal pogroms.

What explains the U.S. imperialists’ longstanding military engagement in Somalia? The answer begins with that country’s strategic location. Just off Somalia’s northern coast is the Gulf of Aden, which leads to Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow choke point through which all maritime traffic from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean passes. Then there is the continent-wide importance of Africa’s natural resources, from copper and other metals to oil. (Exploitation rights to oil and gas deposits off the coast of Somalia are to be tendered later this year). And with the rise of militant Islamist forces in Somalia, largely in reaction to imperialist aggression, the U.S. rulers keep waving the banner of the endless, worldwide “war on terror.”

Not least of the imperialists’ concerns in Africa is the influence of the Chinese bureaucratically deformed workers state, which for the past decade has been Africa’s biggest trading partner. The most powerful of the remaining countries where capitalist rule has been overthrown, China is the central target of the imperialists’ global counterrevolutionary machinations. It is a crime that the Stalinist rulers in Beijing today contribute over 2,000 troops to UN “peacekeeping” missions across the continent. Such missions are undertaken on behalf of the imperialists.

Imperialist subjugation of dependent countries like Somalia is an obstacle to social progress and promises only further slaughter and misery. The way forward for Africa’s impoverished masses is shown by the program of permanent revolution, developed by Leon Trotsky and verified by the Russian October 1917 Revolution. Trotsky recognized that in semicolonial countries modernization and liberation from the imperialist yoke require smashing capitalist rule and opening the way to socialist development. The continent’s proletarian concentrations—from the industrial workers in South Africa and Egypt to the oil workers in Nigeria and the port workers in Kenya—are crucial to this perspective. As we wrote in “U.S. Troops, Bases Out of Africa!” (WV No. 1122, 17 November 2017):

“The task of Marxists is to forge Trotskyist vanguard workers parties—sections of a reforged Fourth International—that would link the struggle for workers revolutions in Africa to the fight for proletarian revolution in the U.S., France and other imperialist centers. With the proletariat in power on a global scale, technology and industrial development will be tapped to lift the world’s masses out of want and misery on the road to building a classless communist society.”

After The Fall-Fred Astaire and Jane Powell’s “Royal Wedding” (1951)-A Film Review

After The Fall-Fred Astaire and Jane Powell’s “Royal Wedding” (1951)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By Bart Webber

Royal Wedding, starring Fred Astaire, Jane Powell, Peter Lawford, directed by Stanley Donen, 1951

Everybody loves a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie what with the pair dancing gracefully across the whole set usually some ballroom doing amazing coordinated movements and fancy footwork accompanied by the singing of classic show tunes like “dancing cheek to cheek,” “the way you look tonight” and a million other hum the tune catch a verse here and there from ancient memory form works by the likes of venerable Cole Porter, the catchy tune Gershwins, a hot of Jerome Kern and Mr. American Broadway Irving Berlin. Everybody, well maybe not everybody, but at least fellow film reviewer Phil Larkin and me, loves Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth going through their dancing routines although I confess that I only have eyes for Rita ever since she tore up the screen in Gilda and proved why to the guys who fought and bled in World War II, the parents of my generation had her pin-up girl photo on their locker doors or in their duffle bags so I don’t know if Fred is dancing of not. Then there is this late Astaire turkey from 1951 with Jane Powell in the Technicolor-etched Royal Wedding where Fred and partner fall through the cracks in the Astaire pantheon.

Turkey you say let me count the ways. First maybe the whole idea of Technicolor is the villain. Maybe the magic of Astaire and previous partners is lost against the colors clashing with whatever it is they are doing. The black of Fred’s tux, suit, whatever he was wearing while dancing and the white of the dresses let you focus on the dance not the distractions of the backdrop. Secondly our boy has lost a step or seven by 1951 and it was noticeable that while he had the small circle steps down as usual the pair never swept the vistas as he had with his previous partners. Or maybe he just didn’t trust Jane to go the distance with him. (Even the so-called legendary dancing with the walls, a solo by Fred, toward the end of the film was done in one room, or the walls of one room.) Thirdly there was nothing memorable, meaning hummable or catch a verse on the tip of your tongue, in the various songs sung by either partner and it was almost laughable that Ms. Powell (or the director) couldn’t lip-synch to any of the operatic songs that she was supposedly singing although everybody knew, or should have been presumed to know, that she was barely opening her mouth at times (and was caught at least one time so shame on the editing crews bursting into dance before she was supposed to be finished with her number).      

Worse, worst of all was the tripe storyline which I, and fellow film critic Laura Perkins, watched together to determine who was to do the review could never figure out at least trying to coordinate the storyline with the song and dance routine. To not hold you in suspect any longer Laura “passed” on this one from about the first five minutes, said so, and so against my better instincts I was forced to actually pay attention to this dog in order to warn the reader what to expect. (Seth Garth, yet another film reviewer here, a longtime one, had the whole place in an uproar of laughter when he mentioned that it was easier in the old days on dogs like this one just to rewrite whatever the studio sent out in a press release, sign you name at the top and past in as your considered wisdom on the matter and not actually have to watch the thing.)      

Here is what happened or I think what happened. Tom, played by Astaire, and Ellen, Tom’s sister played by Jane Powell are a song and dance team doing grand business on Broadway. ( A third contender to do this review the previously mentioned Phil Larkin dropped out when he found out the much older Astaire and Powell were tagged  as brother and sister and not to be the “romance” distracted team of the musical so he could go forth on his intergenerational sex kick.) Their agent gets them booked in London for the royal wedding of Princess (now ancient Queen) Elizabeth and still consort Prince Philip although how the shows, the song and dance shows, have anything to do with to with the wedding other than by coincidence is beyond me.

Tom and Ellen while loving to play the romance field in order to add to add to their respective trophy rooms are all business-everything for the theater and the rest be damned. Except the wedding fever must have been catching since Ellen was smitten by a world weary Lord, played by Peter Lawford and Tom by a fetching dancer in the show. After the usual denial of love both are caught by the throat of Cupid’s grip and on royal wedding day, a day when everything comes together about why this thing has that title as the dance team  watch the royal wedding procession pass by about two hundred yards away from their hotel room. On the basis of that spectacle both jump the marriage hoop and live happily ever after-I guess.

As for the dance routines-a mock royal wedding act, a solo by Fred dancing with a hat stand, a ballroom dance on the rolling seas which aboard what might have been the Titanic for the amount of list they had to fight (and which reportedly and I can believe this took 150s takes), a red-light district “romance,” the aforementioned legendry walking the walls shtick, and then a politically incorrect, today, and one would have wished then as well a dance set in Haiti with an all- white cast of ensemble dancers and singers. And Haiti was not even a British colony but French before the 1789 revolution. How does this logjam fit together? Not.