The Girl With The Bette Davis Eyes-With Lowell’s Bette Davis And Jack Kerouac In Mind

The Girl With The Bette Davis Eyes-With Lowell’s Bette Davis And Jack Kerouac In Mind

By Special Guest Writer Greg Green   

  

[Greg Green, a writer well known to me in this space for his articles on his and others experiences in the devil’s war, the Vietnam War, that carved a nation in two, maybe more and from which at least culturally it has never recovered mentioned to me one day when he was getting ready to review an old time black and white movie Of Human Bondage for the American Film Gazette for which he writes occasionally that the female star Bette Davis had been born in Lowell, Massachusetts. Something that he did not know although he grew up a few towns over in leafy suburban Westford. Greg has been a longtime admirer of another Lowell native Jack Kerouac who torched a placid post-World War II world with his On The Road some sixty years ago (and which we have as Seth Garth mentioned “seemingly endlessly” and he may be right commemorated in this space recently on the sixtieth anniversary of its publication). That got Greg thinking that there must be some connection that he could draw between two such iconic celebrities from an old dying mill-town (dying even back then as the mills headed cheap textile labor south and then cheaper foreign shorts worldwide-in their respective birth times 1908 and 1922) that had seen better days beside the inevitable “there must be something in the water” theory. So he asked me to let him do a little piece trying to make some cosmic connection between the two icons and the town. Pete Markin]             

A river runs through it. The great rushing from the New Hampshire mountains, at least that is what I have been told is source ground zero of the broken down millwheel towns to the seas and unto the great cold wash Atlantic and there to homeland (homeland before Lowell migration and Quebec flee failing farms up north looking for factory river work) Europe left behind from desolation days Merrimack. Merrimack some potent Indian signifier (excuse me Indian when Indian was the name spoken and not the correct Native American or even better indigenous peoples who can  stake serious and legitimate claim to sacred ground now ill-trodden over by umpteen generations and no reparations in sight) long before the devils came in their blasted wooden hull ships from across that briny North Atlantic no high note in sight unlike the great big blow out in Frisco town when a skinny black kid blew that one to perdition. Great rushing river dividing the town between the remember “fake natives” and the on-coming foreigners come to pick up the slack in the bottomless spinning wheel pits (the noise drowning out sing-song voices and whiskey hoarse alike and maybe that is where the sober siren sought his Jack strange mystifying voice and he his throbbing pace that in the end wound up like whiskey breath).        

River, two forked river come flowing from the great ices of New Hampshire hills laying down sediments (and sentiments) along a path unto the great turn and rock formation by Pawtucketville Bridge-dividing that town even further (or is it farther) pushing out Highland visions of august majesty. Then a poor besotted girl emerges, emerges out of the dust hitting the high trail west landing forlorn and mystified in some fallen angel diner and a gas station town near the Petrified Forest (trees so ancient, think about it, that they have turned to stone some kind of metaphor there-something about staying in one place too long) in the Arizonas, out off of Route 66 heavy-travelled in the next generation by hungry guys tired of diner and gas stations at home drift to the cities but need to catch some dust and grit although what they thought of benighted stone trees who  knows in between those expansive cities). There some Papa generation before her came out looking for El Dorado or gold something different and landed in two bit desert stretches and kind of got stuck, got good and stuck there. (Not everybody made it as the skeletons along the way of cattle, horse, and human set among the bramble and down some aching arroyo tell every daredevil passer-by and every sensational dime store penny a word novelist in the days when that “contract” ruled writers on “spec” too.)

And there abandoned by a big city dream mother and an ill-defined no account wimp father she came of age dreaming the dreams, funny city girl dreams of faraway places away from the dust and those fucking stoned trees when the wind howls through the crevices (making one think of other social howls and wolves and Molochs and white-dressed nurses in mental wards and of cool jazz man hipsters and Times Square con artists working the rubes), her father the king of the species all dressed up and cowardly when it came right down to it. Dreaming book dreams, small printed page books sent from far away by those who could not take the dust, the heat, those howls and once again those fucking night-blinding stone trees which tourists would pay a pretty penny for a clip, a sliver. Jesus. Dreamed fourteenth century or was fifteenth dreams of mad man con man rabble Villon out of some Balzac French novel but real enough speaking about how he could not stay with civil people but sought solace among the petty thieves, the cut throats, the man murderers (little did she know who would come through door to marvel at her bug-eyes and blinkers making sorry Villon nothing but a second-rate Time Square hustler, hey, pacifist even) , the flotsam and jetsam among the people who lived outside the moat, who did not dream but planned.         

          

“Hey there stranger” she spoke quickly to that stranger with the strange pale voice and the paler skin despite walking the sun-drenched walk of the tramp no better than Villon’s men outside the moat and who looked like he had not had three squares in many a moon so that is what she thought when he first came in, came in and recognized in that small book, that funny thought poem by mad monk gone astray Villon and thus was kindred against the Papa silliness and some gas station jockey who tried to make love to her before her time. So they talked, he called it conversation, and told her that the night-takers descending on the flat land earth, out even in the freaking (his term not hers) stone tree desert filled with arroyo-seized skeletons that the day for conversation was quickly coming to froth, was dangerous beyond whatever small thoughts she had ever had out in that vast night sky thunder-blazed desert. She thought him the new Messiah come that she has heard about over the blaring radio that made the diner hours go by more quickly so she could retreat into Villon’s manly dreams without distraction. He, the stranger he, laughed and said no vagabond who was out filching (cadging in what he meant she thought) free eats in dust-bitten rocks could claim Messiah-hood, could survive the new age coming and coming quickly right through her door. Her bug-eyes blinkered at that, at her silly illusions when she thought about it later after he was gone, gone to who knows what savior-driven place.          

No sooner had the stranger taken his filched food (she still insisted it was cadged and would whenever anybody asked her if she had actually seen the savior, had maybe slept with him for good measure) when the night-takers stormed in (stormed in more than one way bringing half the desert hell with them as boon companion) and made her savior stranger sit on his ass on the floor. Made hell come to pass before the night was through. (He, the stranger, would comment that the night-takers took their sweet-ass time whenever they descended and that those descended on took their sweet-ass time figuring out how to get rid of the bastards). Sweet manna. Then that forlorn stranger had an idea, a good one if somebody beside her thought about it later that he would go mano a mano with the night-takers, would play the gallant when all was said and done (giving lie to the idea that he didn’t have any ideas about the night-takers except their time had come). Naturally he lost, better won/lost and left her with her book, her small Villon book, a guy from the fourteenth century or was it the fifteenth and her dreams kind of intact. A few years later some guys in a 1949 Hudson (or was it Studebaker) tired of the Route 66 road came by looking for grub, looking for free eats and some whiskey but by then she was long gone to some city that Papa and father could not fathom            

[On in the frozen Western night the no longer girlish girl hung up on old time French bandit-poets, con men, desolation angels, and holy fools, and lost in thought time of the intellectuals far from the blessed stone trees, as far away as she could get to Southern California and so “frozen” ironic she picks up a book, a paperback left on the counter by a forgetful customer who after paying for his Woolworth-quality lunch must have given up all hope. She flips it into her pocketbook to either wait on his owner’s return or for something to read that night, that lonesome stone tree wilderness night that never left her thoughts. That guy, or whoever it was, never returned and so that night she read, read until the early morning hours and then read some more.          

Read about a guy, although in her mind it could have be a girl, who had the same wanderlust that drove her west, drove her to the great blue-pink American western night he called it looking for some father that he had never known, looking forlornly, for that father from some oil-spilled New Jersey shore river to the wind-swept China seas before the Golden Gate Bridge. Looked high and low for the missing brethren who long ago had crossed her path out in the hard stone tree night when everything was possible but the intellectuals then flabby and ill-disposed to fight the night-takers even to a draw abandoned all hope, decided that primitive man would take the day and crush any free spirits. This guy though flush with the expectations of many new adventures once the night-takers were put to the sword took to the road, took a chance that he could find that father some fucking place-maybe Latimer Street in Denver, maybe Neola, Grand Island, Reno, Winnemucca, Tulsa, Fargo (although give up all hope if you wind up in that locale). She wondered that maybe he had stolen her dreams. Maybe he had stared at the same rivers that drove her desires, yes, just maybe that was the case.]    

A young boy only spoke patois until he went to school played hooky one day and sat in the lost souls library hoping to find something that would challenge his fevered brain and slip-slopped over to the poetry section and found this guy Villon, a poet of the fourteenth or was it the fifteenth century, who spoke of dreams and crashing out (spoke too of ruffian petty larcenies outside the moat but the boy let it pass because he knew all about that, knew that poet kings only spoke of such to work up a sweat, to deal better with hipsters, con men, sullen fallen women, junkies and assorted felons riding on the railroad jungle tracks. Knew he had kindred in that long ago poet king and sought out fellows who could understand such dreams, could understand too the patois that he thought in. Would find plenty of hipsters, cons, con men, Molochs, holy goofs, cowboy angels, a teenage Adonis is spar with his brethren soul. Find Moloch, insanity, the clap, jungle fever, whiskey shakes, penniless forsaken highways, lost boys, sullen youth, Zen, chicken shit and on some days, but only some days, he wished he never left that fucking river, that holy of holies Merrimack and those wistful eyes that he remembered out in cold Winnemucca, Neola, Grand Island, Big Sur nights          

[Weird thoughts along the Merrimack lifeline (remember like bodies make-up filled with arteries and canals) a fervent solemnly disciplined fourteen year old boy armed with Woolworth’s ten cent notepads and chewed raw No. 2 pencils, sits arms akimbo, strange gangling not yet athletic fourteen year old position like some latter day saint Buddha seeing all knowing all with hashish pipe tucked into some secret place sitting out with cans of beans and rat shit on desolation row waiting for fires and damnation, in a silent black back row orchestra seat (no red dress girl singing swinging Benny Goodman songs that night to come hither him to perdition and have to ask the eternal boy-girl question-orchestra or balcony-and he would know the answer always know the answer balcony of course she silly why else would I come into the shadows with you) of the of long gone to condos or cute shops Majestic Theater off of Bridge Street staring intensely at the big white screen suddenly turned to magic motion pictures with a dust storm brewing out in some fucking petrified forest and some girl not his holding off some ragged sweater gas jockey, and dreams too.   

Waiting, eternally waiting like that fervent fourteen year old boy for something to happen, for some kicks, for something better than listening to the average swill the customers brought in the door, waiting she thought for culture, or her idea or culture anyway. What grabbed that poor boy boy though was that scene out of some latter day great American West night when he thought he would be able to choke the Eastern dust from off his shoes and live-and write, always write. So kindred, kindred too when some holy goof hobo, tramp, bum angel Buddha comes traipsing down the road looking for hand-outs and God Jesus that would be the life. He, she, they make small kindred talk and speak of that damn poet, that Villon who knew more than he should about the human condition, more than any fourteen year old boy anyway. 

But before long the dream shattered, the night-takers released from their caves come swooping down like hell’s avenging angels, avenging the lost paradise that he had read a guy by the name of Milton, half-blind had gone on and on about in some heaven’s battle and they the losers-and what of it. But when you take on the night-takers you better realize that you will take some casualties, take some holy sacred blood from the holy earth returned and that ain’t fair, ain’t fair at all but who knows maybe Buddha, Rama. Zoroaster, Jehovah, the unnamed one, planned it out that way. Out the door of that no longer silent black back row orchestra seat he was glad that he had not had some red dress come hither girl to bother him. For he wondered, wondered as he sank his eyes into the white froth of the mighty Merrimack below whether she, that Western tableau girl would ever acknowledge him, ever read his mind like he read hers.]  

Ha, as he tried to climb Bear Mountain with a dollar and a quarter in his stained dungarees (not called jeans then, not around him anyway) splattered flannel shirt and broken toe boots looking for that father he never knew (although his own father had passed on before he knew that he was looking for another father somewhere along the wino camp tracks, some arroyo bush or in some county jail working out a scheme). Had Route 66 cold because if he could search that highway he would miss some connection, some angst the shrinks called it among the hot rod car, surf board, motorcycle lost winding in stir and some rough trade honey to some beast, boys he would meet out in the great blue-pink American Western night. As he pulled his thumb out of his back pocket he finally relaxed and dug the scene. Hit long rides and short, mostly lonely truckers looking for company and searching for the sons they had never known, tramp diner stops, railroad stews on nights so cold his broken toe boots seized up on him, grabbed a couple of big rides with big blondes looking for some max daddy to be-bop with and leave in Doc’s drugstore while they waited to be “found” by some Hollywood agent. Took tokay swigs with the best of them, met up with rabid New Jersey poets, New York City Times Square gangster dope peddlers and sainted poets (funny always the poets driving him forward he would have to write that down, Ivy League junkies on the nod, and finally the Adonis of the western night whom he would be-bop with unto the San Francisco Bay dropped that high white note out in the China seas. Yeah, he had it all except maybe those bug eyes from childhood lost in some flophouse. Still on some days, and only on some days, he wished he never had left that fucking river, never that sacred ground river. He wondered if she though that same thought.               

In Defense Of What Now Figures To Be “Premature” Anti-Fascist Fighters-Cary Grant And Ingrid Bergman in Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious” (1946)-A Film Review

In Defense Of What Now Figures To Be “Premature” Anti-Fascist Fighters-Cary Grant And Ingrid Bergman in Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious” (1946)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Fritz Taylor

Notorious, starring Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Claude Raines, directed by the late Sir Alfred Hitchcock ( I was not sure whether when somebody had the honorific “sir” before his name and it is not hereditary whether it sticks for eternity and nobody else around the publication knew either so lacking somebody connected with the College of Heraldry I will keep it and let the bloody queen and her minions figure it out), 1946

The regular reader may wonder why I, Fritz, Taylor, who usually does commentary on wars and military affairs and not film reviews drew this assignment. That can be answered with two remarks. First, sort of strangely given the casualty numbers I was the only one on the staff, regular or contributing as is my status, who had lost a relative, actually two relatives, my uncle on my mother’s side and a cousin on my father’s side in World War II. Specifically, in the European Theater where the Soviet-led and American-assisted struggle was against the Nazi, fascist scourge. The anti-fascist sentiment runs very deeply in my family, my Southern-roots family who take such things seriously, take the military seriously. The second was that of all the people associated with this publication who are actively, meaning not just writing about it but out on the streets, opposing the current wave of fascist expression in social media and out on those very same streets which goes under several names Nazi, White Nationalist, Alt-Right but they are birds of a feather it has been determined around the water cooler that I am the most vociferous and involved. Sam Lowell, who under normal circumstances would hit a home run on the subject matter of the film under review, Notorious, is not only in a running battle with a young up and coming colleague but has sensed that I can do greater justice to the subject and so persuaded Greg Green to let me take a stab at it.

I was not familiar with this film although as a kid I saw several Sir Alfred Hitchcock films, mostly in color like Vertigo, The Bird, and his re-make of his original The Man Who Knew Too Much so I was a bit shocked by the premise that the American government in 1946, in the person of Dev a federal agent of some sort, played by suave and solid Cary Grant, was gung-ho about tracing down some recalcitrant and nasty exiled Nazis and their agents down in Rio. More so since the reality was that the American government was, except for the hardened Nazis at Nuremburg and such were trying to rehabilitate this ramble in the struggle against the Soviet Union in the ice-cold Cold War. But what really galled me was the idea then, today too in the age of Trump, that the anti-fascist struggle was to be left in the hands of governmental agents. My every instinct rebelled against that false idea, those “alternative facts” knowing what has been happening in the past several years. 

But to the film on its own premises. We already know about Dev, about the federal agent part but that would get the agency he worked for now nowhere since the guys who they were dealing with, those rats down in Rio were hooked into what was going on, were wise to the idea that the feds were on to them. Dev and friends needed a “lure,” needed a stoolie and who better that the party girl daughter of a guy who was sentenced in federal court in Miami for treason against the United States and who subsequently took his own poison pill just like in the movies. Enter one Alicia, played but off-handedly, ah, beautiful to fall down and cry for Ingrid Bergman, she last seen in this space according to Seth Garth who keeps tabs on such things as Victor Lazlo’s wife and rock in Casablanca leaving Rick of Rick’s Café and Louie to form a beautiful friendship. After lots of hemming and hawing and a little off-hand romancing Alicia buys into the project although what role she will play is not yet determined. So off to Rio but don’t blame that torrid town for harboring rats and their ilk.

Enter the plan once Dev and Alicia get settled in. The “mark” one Alex, played by Claude Rains last seen in this space according to Seth Garth who as I have already mentioned keeps tabs on such things as Rick of Rick’s Café out of Casablanca that’s in Morocco next beautiful friend after Victor Lazlo and Ingrid take off on the last plane to Lisbon to lead the anti-fascist resistance in sunken Europe, who with an overbearing mother is central to the financing of what they plan will be the 4th Reich (and no mistakes this time letting a bum like Hitler grind things down to nothing). That is where the “lure” literally comes in. Somehow Alex and Alicia knew each other, and Alex had been smitten -and would still be smitten. 

Of course, that would complicate the Alicia-Dev budding romance but the fight against the rats and the closing down of their rathole had to come first. The thing got so carried away though that smitten Alex actually married Alicia as a test of whether she was sincerely smitten by him. Sorry Alex she only has eyes for Dev whatever eye wash both try to put out to the public. The trouble, big trouble for Alex, is that Alicia is not only beautiful, hey lets’ call it by its right name, drop dead beautiful, but smart and worms some secret info out of him in passing before he realizes that she is a freaking American agent. Alex tries to slowly poison Alicia to get out from under what is in store for him but ready Dev comes to the rescue and Alex has to play along. Play along to his doom once his confederates figure out Alicia knew too much via the Alex pipeline. The last scene is great at some level when one of the Nazi confederates calls Alex to come hither and the dreaded door closes behind him. Gone.               

If assuming the American government gave enough of a rat’s ass about crushing a fascist revival in the bud in 1946, which we now know was hooey, to put an agency on the task it is also wrong to assume that we can let the cretins, and here I mean today’s progeny of those cretins, take care of their own like that last scene mentioned above. That said maybe the best way to really look at this film in order to get my blood pressure down is to see it as yet another variation on old Hollywood chestnut-boy meets girl- that has saved a million films and we will deal with the political conclusions ourselves. Yeah, Sam was right to tag me for this review. Enough said.    

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-One Night With You

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-One Night With You

OR

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 Sam Lowell thought it was funny how things worked out in such contrary fashion in this wicked old world, not his expression that “wicked old world” for he preferred of late the more elastic and ironic “sad old world” but that of his old time North Adamsville corner boy Peter Markin who will be more fully introduced in a moment (Markin aka Peter Paul Markin although nobody ever called him that except his mother, as one would expect although he hated to be teased by every kid from elementary school on including girls, girls who liked him too as a result, and his first ill-advised wife, a scion of the Mayfair swells who tried, unsuccessfully, to impress her leafy suburban parents with the familiar waspy triple names).

Neither of those expressions referred to date back to their youth since neither Sam nor Peter back then, back in their 1960s youth, would have used such old-fashioned religious-drenched expressions to express their take on the world since as with all youth, or at least youth who expected to “turn the world upside down” (an expression that they both did use in very different contexts) they would have withheld such judgments or were too busy doing that “turning” business they had no time for adjectives to express their worldly concerns. No that expression, that understanding about the wickedness of the world had been picked up by Sam from Peter when they had reconnected a number of years before after they had not seen each other for decades to express the uphill battles of those who had expected humankind to exhibit the better angels of their nature on a more regular basis. Some might call this nostalgic glancing back, especially by Peter since he had more at stake in a favorable result, on a world that did not turn upside down or did so in a way very different from those hazy days.   

The funny part (or ironic if you prefer) was that back then Sam had been in his youth the least political, the least culturally-oriented, the least musically-oriented of those corner boys like Markin, Jack Dawson, Jimmy Jenkins and “max daddy” leader Fritz Fallon (that “max daddy” another expression coined by Peter so although he has not even been properly introduced we know plenty about his place in the corner boy life, his place as “flak,” for Fritz’s operation although Fritz always called him “the Scribe” when he wanted something written and needed to play on Peter’s vanity) who kept the coins flowing into the jukebox at Phil’s House of Pizza. That shop had been located down a couple of blocks from the choppy ocean waters of Adamsville Beach (and still is although under totally different management from the arch-Italian Rizzo family that ran the place for several generations before they sold it to some immigrant Albanians named Hoxha).

That pizza parlor made it among other things a natural hang-out place for wayward but harmless poor teenage corner boys. (The serious “townie” professional corner boys, the rumblers, tumblers, drifters, grifters and midnight sifters hung around Harry’s Variety with leader Red Riley over on Sagamore far from beaches, daytime beaches although rumors had been heard of more than one nighttime orgy with “nice” girls looking for kicks with rough boys down among the briny rocks, Fritz and the boys would not have gone within three blocks of that place. Maybe more from fear, legitimate fear as Fritz’s older brother, Timmy, a serious tough guy himself, could testify the one time he tried to wait outside Harry’s for some reason and got chain-whipped by Red for his indiscretion.) Moreover this spot provided a beautiful vantage point for scanning the horizon for those wayward girls who also kept their coins flowing into Phil’s jukebox (or a stray “nice” girl after Red and his corner boys threw her over).

Sam had recently thought about that funny story that Markin had told the crowd once on a hot night when nobody had any money and were just holding up the wall at Phil’s about Johnny Callahan, the flashy and unstoppable halfback from the high school team (and a guy even Red respected having made plenty of money off of sports who bet with him on Johnny’s prowess any given Saturday although Johnny once confessed that he, rightly, avoided Harry’s after what had happened to Timmy). See Johnny was pretty poor in those days even by the median working poor standard of the old neighborhoods (although now, courtesy of his incessant radio and television advertising which continues to make everyone within fifty miles of North Adamsville who knew Johnny back in the day aware of his new profession, he is a prosperous Toyota car dealer down across from the mall in Hull about twenty miles from North Adamsville, the town where their mutual friend Josh Breslin soon to be introduced came from).

Johnny, a real music maniac who would do his football weight-lifting exercises to Jerry Lee’s Great Balls of Fire, Gene Vincent’s Be-Bop-A-Lula and stuff like that to get him hyped up, had this routine in order to get to hear songs that he was dying to hear, stuff he would hear late at night coming from a rock station out of Detroit and which would show up a few weeks later on Phil’s jukebox just waiting for Johnny and the kids to fill the coffers, with the girls who had some dough, enough dough anyway to put coins into that jukebox.

Johnny would go up all flirty to some young thing (a Fritz expression coped from Jerry Lee and not an invention of Markin as Peter would later claim to some “young thing” that he was trying to “score”) or depending on whatever intelligence he had on the girl, maybe she had just had a fight with her boyfriend or had broken up with him so Johnny would be all sympathy, maybe she was just down in the dumps for no articulable reason like every teen goes through every chance they get, whatever it took. Johnny, by the way, would have gotten that intelligence via Peter who whatever else anybody had to say about him, good or bad, was wired into, no, made himself consciously privy to, all kinds of boy-girl information almost like he had a hook into that Monday morning before school girls’ locker room talkfest (everybody already knew that he was hooked into the boys’ Monday morning version and had started more rumors and other unsavory deeds than any ten other guys).

Now here is what Johnny “knew” about almost every girl if they had the quarter which allowed them to play three selections. He would let them pick that first one on their own, maybe something to express interest in his flirtation, maybe her name, say Donna, was also being used as the title of a latest hit, or if broken up some boy sorrow thing. Brenda Lee’s I Want To Be Wanted, stuff like that. The second one he would “suggest” something everybody wanted to listen to no matter what but which was starting to get old. Maybe an Elvis, Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee thing still on the jukebox playlist but getting wearisome. Then he would go in for the kill and “suggest” they play this new platter, you know, something like Martha and the Vandelas Dancing in the Streets or Roy’s Blue Bayou both of which he had heard on the midnight radio airwaves out of Detroit one night and were just getting play on the jukeboxes. And bingo before you know it she was playing the thing again, and again. Beautiful. And Johnny said that sometimes he would wind up with a date, especially if he had just scored about three touchdowns for the school, a date that is in the days before he and Kitty Kelly became an item. An item, although it is not germane to the story, who still is Johnny’s girl, wife, known as Mrs. Toyota now.

But enough of this downstream stuff Sam thought. The hell with Johnny and his cheapjack tricks (although not to those three beautiful touchdowns days, okay) this thing gnawing at him was about old age angst and not the corner boy glory days at Phil’s, although it is about old time corners boys and their current doings, some of them anyway. So yeah he had other things he wanted to think about (and besides he had already, with a good trade-in gotten his latest car from Mr. Toyota so enough there), to tell a candid world about how over the past few years with the country, the world, the universe had been going to hell in a hand-basket. In the old days, like he kept going back to before he was not the least bit interested in anything in the big world outside of sports, and girls, of course. And endlessly working on plans to own his own business, a print shop, before he was twenty-five. Well, he did get that small business, although not until thirty and had prospered when he made connections to do printing for several big high-tech companies, notably IBM when they began outsourcing their work. He had prospered, had married (twice, and divorced twice), had the requisite tolerated children and adored grandchildren, and in his old age a woman companion to ease his time.

But there had been for a long time, through those failed marriages, through that business success something gnawing at him, something that Sam felt he had missed out on, or felt he had do something about. Then a few years ago when it was getting time for a high school class reunion he had Googled “North Adamsville Class of 1966” and came upon a class website for that year, his year, that had been set up by the reunion committee, and decided to joint to keep up with what was going on with developments there (he would wind up not going to that reunion as he had planned to although that too is not germane to the story here except as one more thing that gnawed at him because in the end he could not face going home , believed what Thomas Wolfe said in the title of one of his novels, you can’t go home again).

After he had registered on the site giving a brief resume of his interests and what he had been up to these past forty years or so years Sam  looked at the class list, the entire list of class members alive and deceased (a rose beside their name signifying their passing)  of who had joined and found the names of Peter Markin (he had to laugh, listed as Peter Paul Markin since everybody was listed by their full names, revenge from the grave by his poor mother, and that leafy suburban first wife who tried to give him Mayflower credentials, he thought) and Jimmy Jenkins among those who had done so. (Jack Dawson had passed away a few years before, a broken man, broken after his son who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan had committed suicide, according to Peter, as had their corner boy leader, Fritz Fallon, homeless after going through a couple of fortunes, his own and a third wife’s). Through the mechanism established on the site which allowed each class member who joined to have a private e-mail slot Sam contacted both men and the three of them started a rather vigorous on-line chat line for several weeks going through the alphabet of their experiences, good and bad (the time for sugar-coating was over unlike in their youth when all three would lie like crazy, especially about sex and with whom in order to keep their place in the pecking order, and in order to keep up with Fritz whom lied more than the three of them combined. Peter knew that, knew it better than anybody else but to keep his place as “scribe” in that crazy quill pecking order went along with such silly teenage stuff, stuff that in his other pursuits he would have laughed at but that is what made being a teenager back then, now too, from what he saw of his grandchildren’s trials and tribulations).

After a while, once the e-mail questions had worked their course, all three men met in Boston at the Sunnyvale Grille, a place where Markin had begun to hang out in after he had moved back to Boston (read: did his daytime drinking) over by the waterfront, and spent a few hours discussing not so much old times per se but what was going on in the world, and how the world had changed some much in the meantime. And since Markin, the political maniac of the tribe, was involved in the conversations maybe do something about it at least that is what Sam had hoped since he knew that is where he thought he needed to head in order to cut into that gnawing feeling. Sam was elated, and unlike in his youth he did not shut his ears down, when those two guys would talk politics, about the arts or about music. He had not listened back then since he was so strictly into girls and sports, not always in that order (which caused many problems later including one of the grounds for one of his divorces, not the sports but the girls).

This is probably the place for Sam to introduce Peter Markin although he had already given an earful (and what goes for Peter goes to a lesser extent for Jimmy who tended to follow in Pete’s wake on the issues back then, and still does). Peter as Sam already noted provided that noteworthy, national security agency-worthy service, that “intelligence” he provided all the guys (and not just his corner boys, although they had first dibs) about girls, who was “taken,” a very important factor if some frail (a Fritz term from watching too many 1940s gangster and detective movies and reading Dashiell Hammett too closely, especially The Maltese Falcon),was involved with some bruiser football player, some college joe who belonged to a fraternity and the brothers were sworn to avenge any brother’s indignities, or worse, worse of all, if she was involved with some outlaw biker who hung out in Adamsville and who if he hadn’t his monthly quota of  college boy wannabes red meat hanging out at Phil’s would not think twice about chain-whipping you just for the fuck of it (“for the fuck of it” a  term Jimmy constantly used so it was not always Markin or Fritz who led the verbal life around the corner), who was “unapproachable,”  probably more important than that social blunder of ‘hitting on” a taken woman since that snub by Miss Perfect-Turned-Up-Nose would make the rounds of that now legendary seminar, Monday morning before school girls’ locker room (and eventually work its way though Markin to the boys’ Monday morning version ruining whatever social standing the guy had spent since junior high trying to perfect in order to avoid the fatal nerd-dweeb-wallflower-square name your term). Strangely Markin made a serious mistake with Melinda Loring who blasted her freeze deep on him and he survived to tell the tale, or at least that is what he had the boys believe. Make of this what you will he never after that Melinda Loring had a high school girlfriend from North Adamsville High, who, well, liked to “do the do” as they called it back then, that last part not always correct since everybody, girls and boys alike, were lying like crazy about whether they were “doing the do” or not, including Markin.

But beyond, well beyond, that schoolboy silliness Markin was made of sterner stuff (although Sam would not have bothered to use such a positive attribute about Markin back then) was super-political, super into art and what he called culture, you know going to poetry readings at coffeehouses, going over Cambridge to watch foreign films with subtitles and themes that he would try to talk about and even Jimmy would turn his head, especially those French films by Jean Renoir, and super into music, fortunately he was not crazy for classical music (unlike some nerds in school then who were in the band) but serious about what is now called classic rock and roll and then in turn, the blues, and folk music (Sam still shuttered at that hillbilly stuff Markin tried to interest him in when he thought about it).

That was how Peter had first met Josh Breslin, still a friend, whom he introduced to Sam at one of their meetings over at the Sunnyvale Grille. Josh told the gathering that Markin had met him after high school, after he had graduated from Hull High (the same town where Johnny Callahan was burning up the Toyota sales records for New England) down at the Surf Ballroom (Sam had his own memories of the place, some good, some bad including one affair that almost wound up in marriage). Apparently Josh and Peter had had their wanting habits on the same girl at one Friday night dance when the great local cover band, the Rockin’ Ramrods held sway there, and had been successively her boyfriend for a short period both to be dumped for some stockbroker from New York. But their friendship remained and they had gone west together, gone on that Jack Kerouac On The Road  for a number of years when they were trying their own version of turning the world upside down on. Josh also dabbled (his word) in the turning upside down politics of the time.

And that was the remarkable thing about Peter, not so much later in cahoots with Josh because half of youth nation, half the generation of ’68 was knee-deep in some movement, but in staid old North Adamsville High days, days when to just be conventionally political, wanting to run for office or something, was kind of strange. See Peter was into the civil rights movement, nuclear disarmament, and social justice stuff that everybody thought he was crazy to be into, everybody from Ma to Fritz (and a few anonymous midnight phone-callers yelling n----r-lover in the Markin home phone).  He had actually gone into Boston when he was a freshman and joined the picket-line in front of Woolworths’ protesting the fact that they would not let black people eat in their lunchrooms down south (and maybe Markin would say when he mentioned what he was up to they were not that happy to have blacks in their northern lunchrooms either ), had joined a bunch of Quakers and little old ladies in tennis sneakers (a term then in use for airhead blue-haired lady do-gooders with nothing but time on their hands) calling on the government to stop building atomic bombs (not popular in the red scare Cold War we were fighting against the Russians North Adamsville, or most other American places either), running over to the art museum to check out the exhibits (including some funny stories about him and Jimmy busting up the place looking at the old Pharaoh times slave building Pyramids stuff uncovered by some Harvard guys way back), and going to coffeehouses in Harvard Square and listening to hokey folk music that was a drag. (Sam’s take on that subject then, and now.) So Peter was a walking contradiction, although that was probably not as strange now as it seemed back then when every new thing was looked at with suspicion and when kids like Peter were twisted in the wind between being corner boys and trying to figure out what that new wind was that was blowing though the land, when Sam and the other corner boys, except Jimmy and sometimes Jack would try to talk him out of stuff that would only upset everybody in town.

But here is the beauty, beauty for Sam now that he was all ears about what Peter had to say, he had kept at it, had kept the faith, while everybody else from their generation, or almost everybody, who protested war, protested around the social issues, had hung around coffeehouses and who had listened to folk music had long before given it up. Markin had, after his  Army time, spent a lot of time working with GIs around the war issues, protested American foreign policy at the drop of a hat and frequented off-beat coffeehouses set up in the basements of churches in order to hear the dwindling number of folk artists around. He had gotten and kept his “religion,” kept the faith in a sullen world. And like in the old days a new generation (added to that older North Adamsville generation which still, from the class website e-mail traffic had not gotten that much less hostile to what Peter had to say about this wicked old world, you already know the genesis of that term, right, was ready to curse him out, ready to curse the darkness against his small voice).

One night when Peter and Sam were alone at the Sunnyvale, maybe both had had a few too many high-shelf scotches (able to afford such liquor unlike in the old days when they both in their respective poverties, drank low-shelf Johnny Walker whiskey with a beer chaser when they had the dough, if not some cheapjack wine), Peter told Sam the story of how he had wanted to go to Alabama in high school, go to Selma, but his mother threatened to disown him if he did, threatened to disown him not for his desire to go but because she would not have been able to hold her head up in public if he had, and so although it ate at him not to go, go when his girlfriend, Helen Jackman, who lived in Gloversville, did go, he took a dive (Peter’s words). Told a redemptive story too about his anti-war fight in the Army when he refused to go to Vietnam and wound up in an Army stockade for a couple of years altogether. (Sam thought that was a high price to pay for redemption but it may have been the scotch at work.) Told a number of stories about working with various veterans’ groups, throwing medals over Supreme Court barricades, chainings to the White House fence, sitting down in hostile honked traffic streets, blocking freeways complete with those same hostile honkings, a million walks for this and that, and some plain old ordinary handing out leaflets, working the polls and button-holing reluctant politicians to vote against the endless war budgets (this last the hardest task, harder than all the jailings, honkings, marches put together and seemingly the most fruitless). Told too stories about the small coffeehouse places seeing retread folkies who had gone on to other things and then in a fit of anguish, or hubris, decided to go back on the trail. Told of many things that night not in feast of pride but to let Sam know that sometimes it was easier to act than to let that gnawing win the day. Told Sam that he too always had the gnaw, probably always would in this wicked old world. Sam was delighted by the whole talk, even if Peter was on his soapbox. 

That night too Peter mentioned in passing that he contributed to a number of blogs, a couple of political ones, including an anti-war veterans’ group, a couple of old time left-wing cultural sites and a folk music-oriented one. Sam confessed to Peter that although he had heard the word blog he did not know what a blog was. Peter told him that one of the virtues of the Internet was that it provided space (cyberspace, a term Sam had heard of and knew what it meant) for the average citizen to speak his or her mind via setting up a website or a blog. Blogs were simply a way to put your opinions and comments out there just like newspaper Op/Ed writers or news reporters and commentators although among professional reporters the average blog and blog writers were seen as too filled with opinions and sometimes rather loose with the facts. Peter said he was perfectly willing to allow the so-called “objective” reporters to state the facts but he would be damned if the blog system was not a great way to get together with others interested in your areas of interest, yeah, stuff that interested you and that other like-minded spirits might respond to. Yeah that was worth the effort.

The actual process of blog creation (as opposed to the more complex website-creation which still takes a fair amount of expertise to create) had been made fairly simple over time, just follow a few simple prompts and you are in business. Also over time what was possible to do has been updated for ease, for example linking other platforms to your site and be able to present multi-media works lashing up say your blog with YouTube or downloading photographs to add something to your presentation. Peter one afternoon after Sam had asked about his blog links showed him the most political one that he belonged to, one he had recently begun to share space with Josh Breslin, Frank Jackman and a couple of other guys that he had known since the 1960s and who were familiar with the various social, political and cultural trends that floated out from that period. 

Sam was amazed at the various topics that those guys tackled, stuff that he vaguely remembered hearing about but which kind of passed him by as he delved into the struggle to build his printing shop. He told Peter that he got dizzy looking at the various titles from reviews of old time black and white movies that he remembered watching at the old Strand second run theater uptown, poetry from the “beat” generation, various political pieces on current stuff like the Middle East, the fight against war, political prisoners most of whom he had never heard of except the ones who had been Black Panther or guys like that, all kinds of reviews of rock and roll complete with the songs via YouTube, too many reviews of folk music that he never really cared for, books that he knew Peter read like crazy but could not remember the titles. The guys really had put a lot of stuff together, even stuff from other sites and announcements for every conceivable left-wing oriented event. He decided that he would become a Follower which was nothing sinister like some cult but just that you would receive notice when something was put on the blog.

Peter also encouraged him to write some pieces about what interested him, maybe start out about the old days in North Adamsville since all the guys mined that vein for sketches (that is what Peter liked to call most of the material on site since they were usually too short to be considered short stories but too long to be human interest snapshots. Sam said he would think about the matter, think about it seriously once he read the caption below:                                                                           

“This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of our interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hardworking, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn our attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived ,and what we listened to back in the day.”

Sam could relate to that, had something to say about some of those songs. Josh Breslin laughed when he heard that Sam was interested in doing old time rock and roll sketches. He then added, “If we can only get him to move off his butt and come out and do some street politics with us we would be getting somewhere.” Peter just replied, “one step at a time.” Yeah, that’s the ticket. 

One Last Look At The Maine Peace Walk-2017 Version

One Last Look At The Maine Peace Walk-2017 Version  

Will Bradley-The Legend-Slayer Rises Like Phoenix From The Ashes To Again Bring A Fake Legend Low-And Then Some-Errol Flynn’s “Captain Blood” (1935)-A Film Review-Of Sorts

Will Bradley-The Legend-Slayer Rises Like Phoenix From The Ashes To Again Bring A Fake Legend Low-And Then Some-Errol Flynn’s “Captain Blood” (1935)-A Film Review-Of Sorts

DVD Review

By Will Bradley     

Captain Blood, starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Haviland, Basil Rathbone at the start of his career as the master criminal plaguing London during his reign of terror under the cover profession and name of private detective Sherlock Holmes, 1935

I expected once I started on this campaign to defrock various undeserved legends, hell, maybe legends in general and let people deal with sordid reality straight up to get some push-back from various special interest groups who have some reason, usually known only to them, to keep their particular legends alive and well. Certainly today we can add, starting in the White House, those who have a stake in “alternate facts,” formerly known as lies, that increasing mass who believe in angels, fairies (not gays), and the like.

I would have expected plenty of push-back from those myriad Robin Hood devotees who still believe the old wives’ tale about “giving to the poor” while Hood amassed a fortune in land and metals in his time what today would be the envy of any billionaire. Some poor soul tried, unsuccessfully and by himself since nobody joined him, to claim the estate records had been “doctored” by who he did not say but I believe that he is now under sedation and therefore not a threat to those who have come to realize we need no armed robbery bandits from Hood to Pretty Boy Floyd to Pretty James Preston to grab what is rightfully ours. The legend of the so-called great Spanish lover, one Don Juan, real name Jose Romero, having been created in the fevered imagination of some convent-bound young matron which spread like wild fire among the virginal set in the long chain of convents which that benighted, still benighted, country has in excess found no modern champion to dispute the facts. The hard Inquisition facts paid in torture and blood by those who ran afoul of the bastards but who kept very good records of their evil doings. Ditto one Casanova who was merely a figment of the distorted imagination of one Georgios Casanova, a second-rate painter who lost his grip on reality, which set off another set of young ladies, supposedly Enlightenment-bred young ladies, to run the rumor mill night and day. Damn puberty.              

A couple of more up to date legends proved thornier to prove but also were left hanging when no knight in armor came to defend their so-called exploits. Sadly one, a guy named Jose Rios, who claimed to be Zorro, the people’s defender was nothing but the figment of the crazed imaginations of a fistful of starving, ill-treated peasants out California way in the days before the Republic, did have a defender right in this publication. Old-timer Si Lannon got all weepy about his hidden past, or rather his mother’s as a Latina and not an Italian the way she was passed off by his father and family. Si is now writing feverish positive film reviews about the latest round of Marvel/DC comics super-heroes. Enough said.

Of course the hardest debunking, the legend that made me a legend-slayer of the first order was when I tangled with fellow writer here Seth Garth over one Sherlock Holmes, aka Lawrence Livermore. Yes, that Seth Garth who between this publication and American Film Gazette won many awards for his insightful pieces on everything from the Summer of Love in 1967 to his masterful tribute to his fallen hometown friend Pete Markin. On that one though we were tangling through different views of the fraudulent legend not trying to resuscitate some eclipsed reputation. Seth went off the beam with his silly assertions that Holmes and his boyfriend, a guy named Nigel Bruce, obviously an alias were doing their nefarious deeds as agents of some international Homintern. After a mammoth struggle my view, backed-up by Scotland Yard arrests proved that the central truth was that Larry and Nigel were running every sordid scheme from drugs to women to heists in greater London to amass their own fortunes. Even a group of devotees, acolytes, aficionados named implausibly the Baker Street Irregulars after an initial tepid defense collapsed as the indictments of Larry and Nigel came cascading in. Elementary, indeed.

Which brings me to the Johnny Cielo case in which his lingering devotees have raised a major counter-offensive defending that fraud’s so-called reputation as a key player in the development of aviation, of Icarus’ dreams. They have gracelessly conceded that Johnny was not at Kitty Hawk with Orville and Wilbur since he was not born until 1909 but have made some lame argument that he had been there in spirit. They also with a bit more grace conceded that he was not the founder of Trans-World Airline (now long- gone TWA of Howard Hughes fame) and had been something less that the leading “barnstormer” getting the mail through in various perilous countries like Barranca down in treacherous Central America where mountains grow big and the passageways narrow.    

What they have remained adamant about center on two fatal to his legend points. One that Johnny lured drop-dead beautiful Rita Hayworth, my grandfather’s and apparently every other military man’s favorite pin-up during World War II, down to Barranca to share his fate and forgo her budding film career. The other that he died heroically supplying Fidel, Fidel Castro, and his band of brothers, down in Cuba with guns and supplies after crashing in the Caribbean on his last flight. Some things diehard but I have plenty of proof that Johnny never brought Rita down south but rather a hooker, a whore, he met in Key West who looked a lot like her but whose grasp of proper English was wanting. Moreover, this Rita-look alike ran out on him with some cargo pilot once his money ran out. I might add the time frame was all wrong for Johnny’s fraudulent claim since Ms. Hayworth was then being courted by none other the Aga Khan. As for that heroic Fidel business that was easily disposed of since we have the flight manifest. Johnny did go to sleep with the fishes as they say but in the Gulf of Mexico when he stupidly ran out of fuel on his normal Key West to Naples tourist passenger run. I know this will not hold Johnny’s diehard devotees but those are the facts, Jack.

Now finally to the current legend to be slain, that of one Peter Blood, aka, Doctor Blood, Captain Blood, Peter X, Pirate Jenny, Johnny Blade and who knows a half dozen other names. His claim to fame, if you forget that bogus doctoring stuff, where he caused the death of more than one man who actually believed that an itinerant Irishman navvy could cure anything more than ingrown toenail or that he escaped from indentured servitude to lead his fellow prisoners out of servitude and into the high society life of piracy and brigandage, was that he saved Jamaica for one William of Orange, aka William I who along with his wife Mary ruled England after they got rid of King James who was a closet Catholic and general bastard and sent him into French exile.        

The real story? Well this is the hardest one of all since pirates, you heard me, pirates while stocking up with ill-gotten treasure did not leave many records around. (The so-called covenant Blood and his fellow brigands, if that is what they were, agreed to had been a mishmash of unpublishable John Locke writings with maybe a little Thomas Hobbes for good measure hardly worthy of the word covenant).  All we know is that he was a key leader of Monmouth’s rebellion in Coventry, got caught, finked on his fellow conspirators in the hope of getting in King James good graces and obtain a pardon and nevertheless was scheduled to hang since the king was in ill-humor that day. (By the way that Monmouth alliance was paved with pure gold, plenty of it, which we shall see is the nexus for everything this bum Blood did, including with his women.) Somebody got the bright idea to send the lot to Jamaica to sweat and die in the sugar cane fields for the mercenary landowners who plagued that isle. The King was in good-humor that day so off the lot went.     

This is where the Peter X part comes in since we know from the manifest of HMS Anne that he was aboard when the ship docked in Port Royal. He wound up according to the bill of sale being sold to some young female member of one of the leading landowner’s entourage, one Aria Bishop, something like that to serve her in whatever way she wanted, probably in some bed or other. The X part came in because he refused to give his last name and because he could not write so Peter X it was. (That last piece of information should clue us in that he was no doctor even though in those days you did not need to go to Harvard Medical School to practice and that covenant was another one of those so-called democratic examples that have made his fans, hopefully after this expose dwindling clot of fans, made of pure clothe and which those same fans have touted as Blood being a direct precursor of the American revolutionaries in 1776-bullshit)              

After Aria used Mr. X up, moved on to some other felon since she seemed to have a predilection for the type, especially pirates, he started plotting his escape, his exile he called it. This part is true enough and commendable except the price of his freedom was the betrayal of his fellow slaves, let’s call them what they really were, to one Colonel Bishop, Aria’s protector since it was him or them. All the noise about band of brothers was so much hot air with that crowd, it was later when he would foist that democratic stuff when he got to the Tortugas and picked up a mixed crew of ruffians and kill-crazy maniacs. This motley crew, this turn to sweet piracy is when we first hear him referred to as Captain Blood, and not always with honor since he was final court of judgement among that crew he gathered to rape and pillage whatever was not tied down, and even some stuff that was.      

The Captain Blood legend has it that he went to sea many times and grabbed whatever he fancied from whatever flag a ship was flying and that eventually when William with that Mary hanging onto him for dear life kicked King James’ ass out of England he was to become the big cheese in the Caribbean and maybe further afield. Like some wily and wary Dutchman was going to let a fugitive, a slave, a pirate run the colonial operations of the Empire. Jesus some people really are gullible and get what they deserve.  

The real deal is that Peter, let’s call him that rather than that bogus Captain thing he ran around with for a while never ran out to sea, got according to the slim colonial medical records seasick every time (apparently the passage over from England when he got his reprieve was a nightmare for his fellows). He had a guy, a Frenchman met in the Tortugas, named Basil Rathbone, something like that run the sea-borne operations while he sat in the Black Swan Tavern and drank his rum and had his way with whatever women he desired. Some poor Cambridge graduate looking for adventure ran into him down there and bought his whole line of baloney, brought it back to London and that was the start of a now four centuries old lie. Yeah, another legend bites the dust.    

Crossing The Color Line-When It Counted-Baseball’s Jackie Robinson Story-Chadwick Boseman’s “42”-(2013)-A Film Review

Crossing The Color Line-When It Counted-Baseball’s Jackie Robinson Story-Chadwick Boseman’s “42”-(2013)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

42, starring Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford, 2013

Although the number of female sports reporters, including anchors and such, has grown exponentially since my pre-Title X in college days I admit I have never been a sports fan, never really followed, seriously followed in any case, the subject of the film under review, 42, baseball. Except to vicariously root for the New York Yankees whenever they raised their heads come World Serious times since I grew up around Albany in New York (that “World Serious” expression courtesy of Ring Larner via his You Know Me, Al stories via Sam Lowell who was, is a baseball nut). That rooting for the Yankees a not unimportant factor in the lives of both Sam and I since we have been long time companions and Sam growing up in North Adamsville south of Boston a rabid Red Sox fan which has led to many an “armed truce” come rivalry time. (I was experienced in “armed truces” well before meeting Sam many years ago since Albany is a “divided” city, or at least my clan was, is between loyalty to Yankees and Sox).   

Since I am not a baseball fan, as defined by Sam and many others-meaning knowing all kinds of arcane information about every aspect of the game how do I wind up getting this assignment. Well let’s get back to Sam, that well-known long- time companion who as film editor here back a few years before he retired would routinely do the sport films as they came up like the film adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s The Natural starring Robert Redford. Sam and I wound up watching this film not under the baseball hook but under my long-time “crush” on Harrison Ford ever since early Star Wars and my interest in seeing Chadwick Bozeman who plays Number 42, Jackie Robinson in something other than comic book super-hero Black Panther.  

After watching the film, as is our wont, Sam’s old-time expression, we discussed the merits of the film. That is where I made my “fatal” mistake. I told Sam who was awash in the glory of seeing the first black man in major league baseball (not capitalized as now) when major league baseball really was the king of the American pastime day-and later night when the lights came. Robinson helped integrate the sport AND help win the National League pennant for Brooklyn in 1947 AND win Rookie of the Year although the film was not really about baseball. Sure that was the tag line but the real deal was how for blacks since slavery times every step forward was something like a world-historic ordeal, was fought for with blood and guts by a few and then carried on by many. Since Sam had been assigned the film by site manager Greg Green (as he would have been even under recently sacked previous site manager Allan Jackson who was a boyhood friend of Sam’s and fellow baseball nut-Red Sox version) since he told me and Greg that he would have concentrated on the sports angle and somewhat downplayed the racial angle to have me to the review in order to say what I have just said above.

Greg hemmed and hawed for a while since he also is a member in good-standing of the baseball nut fraternity and wanted to highlight the incredible athletic ability and dedication that Jackie Robinson had which he believed added greatly to his ability to withstand the racial taunts and “assorted bullshit” his term, which Robinson had to withstand that first and later seasons from those “crackers,” my term who saw the game as another white preserve. A white preserve just as later, as today for that matter, blacks and others of color have had to break the white preserve on riding buses, voting, housing, employment, education you name it. All things that whites have taken for granted and not given it another thought. I include myself in that category as well.

I will now get off my soapbox since I have said what I wanted to say about my angle on the film and give you as Sam has eternally said “the skinny” on the film some of which I have already telegraphed. Branch Rickey, played by Harrison Ford, old time good old boy talking out of the side of his mouth, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, later to be the Los Angeles Dodgers which some of the diehards in Brooklyn have never forgotten or forgiven, for a whole series of reasons personal, professional and business-wise which get a workout in various scenes in the film decided baseball, or at least his team needed to be integrated to be successful and to cater to the fair number of blacks who attended Dodger games. As in the case of Rosa Parks later and others Rickey did not want to get just any black but one that represented the better aspects of the black race. Up steps Jackie Robinson who was playing excellent no money baseball in Negro League dungeons in the South and who would have continued to do so if Rickey hadn’t given him a call. That decision for good or evil would drive the rest of the film except for the off-hand romance interspersed between baseball scenes between Robinson and the woman who would become his wife and mainstay Rachel.            

Obviously, Rickey, and Robinson, knew that what they were facing was a daunting task from confronting those white preserve crowds to fellow baseball players, teammates and opponents, who hated the idea to fellow baseball owners to the Jim Crow conditions which precluded blacks in the South, and in the North too but less publicly blatant from white-only facilities. The centerfold on this was Robinson’s grit on and off the field and Rickey’s drive to do the right thing. All of that gets thoroughly vetted throughout the film. Of course the great plays and the marching toward the pennant get worked in as well. Despite Sam’s thrill a minute at the baseball plays this one is a good close look at American sport in a day when football which has replaced baseball as the American pastime is knee-deep in controversy around black players and their allies “taking a knee” and putting a bright spotlight on the role of the police in the black community. What else is new.