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.       

Of The Caffe Lena And Stuff-Rosalie Sorrels’ My Last Go Round

Of The Caffe Lena And Stuff-Rosalie Sorrels’ My Last Go Round

CD Review

By Zack James

My Last Go Round, Rosalie Sorrels and friends, 2002 

My old high school friend, Seth Garth, who went every step of the way with me back in the 1960s into the Cambridge folk and coffeehouse scene since we lived in next town Arlington reminded me recently that we had spread our folk wings further than Cambridge and its rather boisterous scene. We had taken a few trips down to Mecca, to Greenwich Village in New York City and imbibed the full effect there. But the folk minute while it didn’t survive the British invasion and the rise of “acid” rock to grab young ears also had little outposts in places that one would not assume such music would have much play, at least back then. Seth and I had made a trip to Saratoga in those days to see a cousin of his who was going to Skidmore College. One Saturday night he took us to the Caffe Lena in that town, a small, a very small coffeehouse (still there unlike many other more famous venues which went under when the folk tide ebbed), run by a wild old woman, Lena, who single-handedly ran the place, kept the folk minute alive in that region, kept many a budding folkie from Arlo Guthrie to the McGarrigle Sisters from the wolves and from street corners. It was there that we first saw that night Rosalie Sorrels singing up songs of protest and blues, singing some stuff by a guy named Bruce Phillips, later to be called more famously Utah Phillips.    

All of this a roundabout way of introducing the CD under review, My Last Go Round, a live album of her last public performance along with some of her friends at the Saunders Theater at Harvard in 2002 which Seth and I both attended with our wives who in their own ways had imbibed the folk minute in other locales (Ann Arbor and Berkeley). Rosalie had decided to give up the road, to stick closer to home, so had invited his friends from Caffe Lena and other roads to come and perform. Invited those who were still standing and who could make it. Unfortunately the legendary Dave Van Ronk one of the key figures in the budding folk movement in New York in the late 1950s who was supposed to perform had passed away a few weeks before (to be replaced by the still standing now David Bromberg) which placed a damper on the proceedings.            

It was at this performance that Seth and I (along with the our wives) first took stock than those who stood tall in that 1960s folk minute were starting to pass on and that we had better see performances of whoever was left standing as best we could. We additionally, as we sat in the Café Algiers on Brattle Street after the performance for a late night coffee and pastry (some things never change for that was the bill of fare in the old days when we, low on funds, gravitated to the coffeehouses for cheap dates in high school and college), got into an animated conversation about who did, and who did not, still have “it.” Have a spark of that old time ability to draw a crowd to them. David Bromberg did (and does after a fairly recent performance seen at a Boston venue where he blew the crowd away with his music and a very fine back-up band. And yes, very much yes, Rosalie Sorrels, now sadly passed as well, still had it that night at the Saunders Theater. Listen up.        

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Barbara Payton’s “Bad Blonde” (1953)

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Barbara Payton’s “Bad Blonde” (1953)

DVD Review

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

Bad Blonde (released in England unbelievably as The Flanagan Boy), starring tragedy-filled blonde bombshell Barbara Payton, Tony Wright, Belinda Lee, Hammer Productions, 1953

I am done, finished, ended, kaput, vaya con dios, adios, out of here or whatever expression you like to indicate that before I blow my top I will go no further with this series of B-noirs (noirs not to die for unlike the lead-ins expression on each DVD intro). Part, the lesser part now, of that reason is based on getting tired, very tired, of the razing I have been receiving from my fellows here on this site after an irate reader called me out as essentially a “penny a word” buffoon “padding” my reviews with extra stuff that she believed didn’t need to be included in order to get the gist of what each film was about. The greater reason now is rather more simple one of B-noir exhaustion after struggling through trying to find any reason for watching the latest film in the series Bad Blonde which had many ways to go, had many possibilities to reach high B-noir almost A-level but sank into its own funk and never rose from the mud again.

To give one very germane example of what I should have expected since I have already reviewed a half dozen or so in the series is that in England the film was released under the totally boorish title The Flanagan Boy making me think of the old-time Boys’ Town out in Nebraska I think run by Father Flanagan from which every Christmas I would get some kind of Christmas stamps was supposed to send dough for the wayward boys as a result. Being wise to the world a little even then I never sent nothing since I had nothing to send although that did not stop me from using the stamps as cheap Christmas wrapping for presents. Yeah, times were that hard for us, for my family back then. But this Flanagan is nothing but an up and coming prize fighter, you know a boxer who spends his eye time eying like any good-looking young guy blondes, good or bad, or any other color around should. To name the film after him when this bad blonde dish comes hither and yon his way seemed like such a travesty along with the dialogue that I, like a used up prize fighter threw in the towel, or will after this excursion is over.                       

Here’s the beauty of a last review though. I don’t have to give, as we used to say in the old neighborhood, a rat’s ass about that irate reader who tagged me with that “penny a word” designation that will probably hang around my neck until they put me under the ground if my dear colleagues, led by Sandy Salmon, Alden Riley, and Pete Markin have anything to say about it. So I will “pad” this baby with whatever comes into my head.

This is what I started with in my last review as a lead in for this dog’s tail, a review of has-been (hell he did three of these Hammer films not to his subsequent film career advantage I don’t believe) Dane Clark’s Blackout (released in England under the quizzical title Murder by Proxy so this latest title travesty was hardly the first):   

“Wouldn’t you want a long-time film reviewer like me, or my colleagues in this space who are the regular reviewers, Sandy Salmon and Alden Riley, to draw a map for you, let you know what is what about any particular film in relationship to others in the genre. As the headline to this review notes (and has on other occasions in this ten film series) I am reviewing a series of B-film noirs from the 1950s produced by the Robert Lippert Hollywood-based organization in conjunction with Hammer Productions in England. The idea, at least this is what I have been able to gather from various readings and speculations after now having reviewed scads of these efforts, by Lippert was to grab some faded Hollywood star who either needed the dough or was looking for some film, any film, to satisfy whatever stardust lust drove him or her to the studio lots in the first place and back him or her up with an English cast, do the production in England and get away with costs on the cheap. If you knew that and then somebody, me, came along and told you that these efforts didn’t compare, didn’t compare at all with classic noirs, you know Out Of The Past, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The Last Man Standing and others that you almost know all the lines from by heart since you have seen the films so many times, wouldn’t you appreciate that knowledge   

“You would think so but you would at least in one case, actually more, but the reader I am thinking of as I write this has become something of a thorn in my side, my efforts to draw comparisons have given me nothing but grief, and had hung on me the title of “penny a word” writer as a joke by my colleagues. 

“I noted in my last review in this series, The House Across The Lake, another has-been title that in my long career in the film reviewing racket, a profession if you will which is overall pretty subjective when you think about it, I have run up against all kind of readerships and readers but my recent escapade with one reader takes the cake as they used to say in the old days. That is the person I am thinking of right now as I write yet another screed against the injustice done to me by that person. To cut to the chase a B-grade film noir is one that is rather thin on plotline and maybe film quality usually made on the cheap although some of the classics with B-film noir queen Gloria Grahame have withstood the test of time despite that quality. I have contrasted those with the classics like The Maltese Falcon, Out Of The Past, The Big Sleep, and The Last Man Standing to give the knowledgeable reader an idea of the different.

“I have as already noted done a bunch of these (excluding a couple which I refused to review since they were so thin I couldn’t justify the time and effort to even give the “skinny” on them) using a kind of standard format discussing the difference between the classics and Bs in some detail and then as has been my wont throughout my career giving a short summary of the film’s storyline and maybe a couple of off-hand comments so that the readership has something to hang its hat on when choosing to see, or not see, the film. All well and good until about my fifth review when a reader wrote in complaining about my use of that standard form to introduce each film. Moreover and this is the heart of the issue she mentioned that perhaps I was getting paid per word, a “penny a word” in her own words and so was padding my reviews with plenty that didn’t directly relate to the specific film I was reviewing.

“Of course other than to cut me to the quick “penny a word” went out with the dime store novel and I had a chuckle over that expression since I have had various types of contracts for work over the years but not that one since nobody does that anymore. The long and short of it was that the next review was a stripped down version of the previous reviews which I assumed would satisfy her complaint. Not so. Using the name Nora Charles, the well-known distaff side of the Dashiell Hammett-inspired film series The Thin Man from the 1930s and early 1940s starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, she still taunted me with that odious expression of hers. (I also mentioned there as an aside that one of the pitfalls of citizen journalism, citizen commentary on-line is that one can use whatever moniker one wants to say the most unsavory things and not flame any blow-back). Now Sandy, Alden, Pete Markin, the administrator of this space and a few others have started to call me that as well-‘hey, penny a word.” That has made my blood boil on more than one occasion but I have calmly put up with it rather than blow-up and threaten murder and mayhem to them-and to Nora…..”      

As I pointed out in that review enough of this or Nora will really have case about me “padding” my reviews. Here is the “skinny” on the film under review Bad Blonde in any case as is my wont and let dear sweet Nora suffer through another review-if she dares. A lot could have been done with this plotline, no question, and no matter dear Nora now that I have flamed out I will explain a little by comparison why this damn film is a B and not a classic. Hey this one has the eternal dilemma at its heart. A young, bored, beautiful, 1950s standard beautiful blonde, which meant very blonde and very well aware of that hard fact to the sorrows of all the brunettes, red-heads and raven-haired beauties who took back benches to goddess blonde starting with Marilyn and working down to the bad blonde in this one, Barbara Payton, playing Lorna, the unhappy young trophy wife, of an older man, a wealthy man who seemingly made his dough in some kind of rackets, but who nevertheless seems to believe that everybody in the world was his friend. And maybe they were-except that young, bored, very blonde wife who nevertheless knew that she had tagged into the next best thing-grabbing a fistful of gold in her cheapjack tank dancer life. She was not about to give up the gravy train but she was also fed up with the old man’s pawing and grabbing. And she was savvy enough once her change came to have that action stop-stopped cold.   

Enter as if manna from heaven a young prize-fighter, a young handsome Johnny, played rather woodenly and distractedly by Tony Wright, with plenty of muscle and a fatal attraction to everything that wore a skirt. Enter her life through his manager’s connection with her husband whom he knew previously and who could provide the backing necessary to get this Johnny boy, this, huh, Flanagan boy to the top of the fight racket. Once the husband sees handsome bulging Johnny, but more importantly once Lorna see him in action in the ring, her lips pursed, teeth bared, sexually aroused by the sight of him she gets her act into high gear. That husband is headed for an early grave and that is that. Of course Lorna played her Johnny like a yo-yo ignoring him at first and making little of his manhood and then letting him steam up. Easy work. So easy that when she springs the deal, the real deal, although he isn’t bright enough to see her devilish play, he is all ears. Figures that he will sweep her and the dough up. Needless to say while the murder was rather tiresome, supposedly by drowning hubby, drowning him good and dead Johnny was put on the spot, would be the fall guy, would face the big step-off for his misdeeds.

That is all in a day’s work as far as this film goes. A hard day’s work since while Lorna (Barbara Payton) played her role pretty well as the, well, bad blonde, this muscle-bound Johnny, this Tony Wright is an airhead. Now for comparisons. Look the theme of the bored younger wife, although not always a blonde, trying to get rid of an older husband for dough, for another man, hell, just to have him stop mauling her no matter what the money situation is as old as Adam and Eve, maybe older. In film think about Lana Turner leading John Garfield right up to the big step-off after putting her old curmudgeon cheapie diner chef husband to the big sleep and he still smiling at the thought of her right before the lord high executioner is ready to do his work in The Postman Always Rings Twice.  Think about Fred MacMurry once he sees that ankle bracelet walking down the stairs and even before he sees Barbara Standwycks’ face he is a goner-and so is her older cheapskate engineer stay-at home husband in Double Indemnity. Think, oh forget it, those classics should not even be mentioned in the same paragraph as they interplay between Johnny and Lorna here. Do you see now why I no longer give a rat’s ass about this Hammer Production material.             

Unlike a few other films in this series this film never took turns like a real thriller but the lifeless dialogue and the wooden acting by the Brits (and by faded Barbara in spots too too) made this thing a holy goof. As I have mentioned before in other reviews where things actually looked promising at the beginning here despite the come hither title (in America anyway) and the titillating advertisement poster (see above) for the film this one faded away on its own dead weight. B-noir but seriously B not heading to classics-no way. I am done.                       

Remember 1979 Greensboro Massacre!-Built The Anti-Fascist United Front!

Workers Vanguard No. 1121	3 November 2017

Remember 1979 Greensboro Massacre!-Built The Anti-Fascist United Front!

Emboldened by the overt racism of the Trump administration, fascists have stepped up their provocations and deadly attacks. Their murderous intent was clearly seen in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, when hundreds of fascists mobilized in defense of the Confederacy. Heather Heyer was murdered by a Nazi-lover who drove his car at high speed into a group of anti-fascist protesters. The goal of today’s fascists is no different than that of their Nazi and Klan forebears: racial genocide, of black people in particular, and the destruction of working-class organizations, including unions and the left.

Today, “Charlottesville” is a byword for fascist terror, just as “Greensboro” has been for 38 years. On 3 November 1979, Ku Klux Klan and Nazi fascists murdered five union organizers and anti-racist activists, supporters of the Communist Workers Party, in broad daylight in Greensboro, North Carolina. The fascist killers did not work alone; they were aided and abetted by the government. Dozens of Klansmen and Nazis in a nine-car caravan drove up to the black housing project of Morningside Homes, the assembly point for an anti-Klan rally. With calculated deliberation, they took their shotguns and semiautomatic weapons out of their trunks, aimed and opened fire directly at the 100 protesters. Then they calmly packed up and drove away. The whole massacre was shown live on TV and recorded by the Greensboro cops.

In less than 90 seconds, five demonstrators lay dead: César Cauce, Michael Nathan, William Sampson, Sandra Smith and James Waller. Ten more were wounded, one of them paralyzed for life. As soon as the attack ended, the cops swooped in and arrested survivors. Liberals, black Democrats and the trade-union bureaucracy reacted with the same lies as the bourgeois media, implying that the dead got what they deserved. Grotesquely, the New York Times described the carnage in Greensboro as a “shootout” between two “fringe groups.”

Many of the anti-Klan activists who survived were fired from their jobs, jailed and hounded by the FBI and local police. These courageous people—black and white, men and women—were targeted because they acted to oppose the fascists’ vicious campaign against blacks, Jews, unionists and leftists. Many of them had a long and honorable history in the Southern civil rights movement and as union militants in North Carolina, where Klan terror has historically been used by the bosses to keep unions out.

The Greensboro Massacre was the product of collusion between the fascists and the capitalist state. A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent helped train the killers and plot the assassinations; a police/FBI informer rode shotgun in the lead car; a Greensboro cop brought up the rear. The killers literally got away with murder. They were acquitted by all-white juries, affirming once again the meaning of “justice” in this racist, capitalist system.

The fascists announced they would “celebrate” the Greensboro Massacre a week later in Detroit. In response to this provocation in a black proletarian center, the Spartacist League built a labor/black mobilization at the same place and time that the Klan threatened to rally. Over 500 people, including black and white auto workers, turned out to make sure that the Klan did not ride in the Motor City. In organizing the protest, we had to overcome sabotage from the trade-union misleaders (especially UAW bureaucrats), who refused to endorse and build the rally, and from black Democratic Party mayor Coleman Young, who threatened to arrest the anti-Klan protesters. In an exemplary way, this mobilization showed that the working class, marching at the head of all the fascists’ intended victims, has the power to sweep the race-terrorists off the street.

The fascists must and can be stopped. Greensboro showed that the fascist killers can’t be effectively fought by individual direct action, no matter how courageous. What is necessary is to mobilize the strength of the working class. As we wrote in the immediate aftermath of Greensboro:

“Every successful cross burning, every fascist parade through a Jewish or black neighborhood, every courtroom victory in the liberals’ campaign for ‘free speech for fascists’ whets the murderers’ appetite for more violence.... This campaign of terror must be stopped. Socialists and militants in the labor movement must call on organized labor to mobilize its tremendous social power, in alliance with black and other minority organizations and the left to stop the Klan in its tracks.”

— “For Labor/Black Mass Mobilizations: Smash KKK Killers!” WV No. 243, 9 November 1979

Such mobilizations can give the working class a sense of its social power and of the class nature of the capitalist state and the Democrats. They also point to the need to forge a workers party to lead the fight for a socialist revolution. That is the only way to get rid of the fascist murderers once and for all—by doing away with the racist capitalist system that breeds them. In fighting for a workers America, we honor the memory of the Greensboro martyrs.

In Honor Of The 110th Birthday Of The Late Legendary Private Investigator Phillip Marlowe-An Encore Interview With Dotty Malone Back In 1978-The Last Living Link To The Fame Shamus Who Has Passed Away At 98

In Honor Of The 110^th Birthday Of The Late Legendary Private Investigator Phillip Marlowe-An Encore Interview With Dotty Malone Back In 1978-The Last Living Link To The Fame Shamus Who Has Passed Away At 98

By Seth Garth as told by Dorothy “Dotty” Malone

[Back in 1978 Seth Garth, then a young stringer at American Film Gazette did a piece in honor of the late famous private detective Phillip Marlowe who was then being feted on his 70^th birthday. (Marlowe had passed away some years before of some say hubris, drink and a serious cocaine addiction.) As part of his research into some of Marlowe’s more famous cases he ran across Dotty Malone who had at one time involved with Marlowe in a case, and as he dug deeper maybe more. Ms. Malone was in any case the last living link to the famous Sternwood case which first brought Marlowe to wide public attention, some say notoriety when he married Sternwood’s older daughter, Vivian shortly after Marlowe tied up the loose ends, the loose ends that counted which was to save an old man grief before the end, before he went to his rest concerning his younger wayward daughter Carmen. The name may not mean much now in super highway times, now generally or in Los Angeles where the case unfolded, but in that old-pre-World War II town he carried a lot of weight, had pull. Reason: General Sternwood was the guy who practically invented the La Brea tar pits which made his fortune. That insured plenty of newspaper coverage and cover-up as well depending on how the wily old man wanted things done.

So as a young up and coming reporter Seth interviewed Ms. Malone, let her tell what she knew of the Sternwood story from her vantage point. Recently Seth received word that Ms. Malone whom he had not seen in many years had passed away at her home in Brentwood where she lived for mainly years at 98. He went into his files to see if he still had the Malone interview, He did have a copy and we decided that it would honor both Ms. Malone and Mr. Marlowe to have an encore presentation of her interview which gives a very different view of the Sternwood case than the police logs or the newspapers had at the time-Greg Green, site manager]

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Sure, I knew Phillip Marlowe, knew him from the Sternwood case which may not mean too much now with about twenty million stories out in the urban sprawl but did when a guy with money, a guy like old Sternwood,    more money than Midas some said after he hit pay-dirt with those stinking La Brea tarpits which put him on easy street. And gave him enough pull with the P.D. and with the L.A. Times to play whatever angle he was playing in whatever way he wanted. Originally, and I will tell you how in a minute, I only knew that the General had hired Marlowe, everybody called him Marlowe and that is the way he wanted to be called, to do some small chore, clean up the mess, for him around the antics his younger daughter who even I knew was a wild one, knew she frequented and was photographed at splashy Hollywood venues and did plenty of what today would be called kinky things with people in Hollywood. Some well-known actors and actresses, married and single, too who you would be surprised if I told you their names since you work for a film publication. You know dope, sex, strange rituals, and all you can figure it out. It was not until later that I found out the details, the details that put the case in the cold files and off the front pages of anything but the L.A. editions of the scurrilous Inquirer.

It was strictly a matter of happenstance that I would wind up meeting Marlowe, getting involved even as small a part as I had in what happened. I had come out West from my Maryland home after graduating from Bryn Mawr, mainly to get away from my straight-laced family and with the idea unlike most girls who came to Hollywood then, now too, not of becoming a film actor but a screenwriter since I was fascinated by some work that William Faulkner and Booth Tarkington had done with screenplays. I was pretty good looking, except for having to wear glasses all the time for bad eyes which would have cut down my chances of a film career if I had wanted to go that route. In those days wearing glasses, young women wearing glasses, was a subject of some social scorn once viper short story writer Dorothy Parker made everybody aware of the stigmata with her probably drunken remark that “guys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.” 

What I didn’t know, was kind of shocked at, was that there were a million girls, guys too, who wanted to be screenwriters and so I learned the hard way the way around the Hollywood studios. As you might guess, since you are with a film magazine, the way forward in this business with few exceptions is through sex. Everybody, at least everybody in the business knows that to get ahead you have to what we used to call “put out,” have sex, male or female, with some bastard to get in the studio before a camera or the writing room. I was naive enough for a while to hold out, to stay a virgin. Because Bryn Mawr was an all- women’s college I didn’t have much sexual experience, had never “gone all the way” as one of my daughter’s asked me in one of our candid mother-daughter talk-fests although I had some lesser sexual encounters. It was not until I hit Hollywood and started hanging with young actors who hung around the same places I did to try to figure out how the hell to get inside though studio gates that I went “all the way.” All the way the first time with Rory Calhoun, who when I knew him before he became a star was simply Jeff Mahoney. We remained friends ever after until his second marriage, still talk now and again. 

That is the background to how I met Marlowe, met him when I was working in a high brow book store on Sunset Boulevard while I was waiting to get into the studios, get into some writing assignment. I remember it was a rainy day, unusual for that time of year in L.A. and I had just practically thrown out a couple of young girls from Hollywood High School who had heard, correctly, that the bookstore had some interesting high-side erotica for sale. Had heard it from some boys and were curious. Since they were too young to look at such material I kicked them out after they started badgering me. Now to set the record straight especially in like of what was going on with the younger Sternwood daughter Acme Books sold strictly literary erotica which may or may not have had pictures alongside, For example, we carried the Kama Sutra, had it right on the shelves. Since smutty books come into the story I wanted to get that straight.

This guy with a rained-splattered trench coat, you know the ones that guys like Humphrey Bogart made famous in I think Casablanca with the belt buckle to cinch the whole affair, dripping soft felt hat, wearing a suit, brown although not high end, not from what I could tell, short to medium high, older and as he approached me as I was straightening up a book bin of overstocks I noticed he had a craggy face, kind of handsome in a way. (To set the record straight I mentioned to Marlowe in a funny manner that he seemed kind of short to be a private detective after he introduced himself. He smirked and said he had had enough of that kind of talk that day since the young Sternwood girl, Carmen, ahd said the same thing when he went out to that first interview at the Sternwood mansion. He then said that didn’t seem to stop Carmen at all since he then tried to do a lap dance on him when he was standing. I laughed a knowing laugh.) He startled me by asking me some questions about rare books mainly because he no more looked like a rare book aficionado than the man in the moon. When I mentioned that fact after answering his questions about specific rare editions he noted that the young gal at the reference room in the Hollywood library had told him the same thing. I also found out later, much later, that she had given him her telephone number on the basis of his reply about helping him get through the books. I also found out that after he left the bookstore he went to the library to pick her up and I guess she showed him quite time. She had still been pissed off at him when she informed me of this later because after he had had his way with her he had left, said he was on a case.                          

That is when Phillip, I call him Phillip now that he is gone but Marlowe  then like everybody else, laid out the story about how he was working for a wealthy guy up in the hills where the wealthy lived then in their above the grimy air mansions and without mentioning any names then said the guy was being shaken down by the bookseller across the street at Geiger’s Rare Books and Antiques over some stuff that one of his daughters had gotton caught up in. When he went to see “what was what,” to cram the shakedown, this book clerk, this Agnes, I will get to her later, her and her relationship with Phillip after her various guys, protectors fell down on the job was as clueless as he was about rare books. So he came over to see what I knew, whether the operation was legitimate or was it a front for from what he saw a “dirty book” racket to high-end customers. I mentioned that he must have grown up in my religion, Catholic, because nobody I knew except them used the words “dirty book” rather than pornography or sex books. He said I was correct and could a co-religionist help him by identifying this mad monk Geiger.

I said I would help when Geiger came out of the store. Then something came over me, maybe it was that funny rain, maybe it was boredom looking forward to a dull afternoon of cataloging a new supply of titles and maybe it was just my time to break out. I don’t know but I suddenly gave him my best come hither look and he knew exactly what I meant by my remark and look. Said he had a pint of whisky, bonded, going to waste and that was that. I put the “Closed” sign on the front door and we went into the back room where I had my desk. Oh yes, how could I forget this. I told you already I have to wear glasses and he mentioned couldn’t I take then off since he was well aware of the Dorothy Parker line. I went to the mirror, fixed myself up a bit put on some new lipstick and went back to my drink. His eyes bulged when he saw me. I don’t have to write a story about what happened that afternoon do I just know my dress was pretty messed up above my knees before we were done. When it started to get dark and rainier, I noticed that Geiger was coming out of his place with his so-called chauffer, but everybody knew his boyfriend. Phil said he had to leave and would get back to me. I knew he wouldn’t, still I felt like a woman, a real woman for one of the first times and was ready to chalk it up to experience. (I was also glad as hell Rory had broken me in since Phil could be gentle in some ways but a cave man in others-in sexual ways.)

In any case after that afternoon I kept tabs on the story. Through the newspapers, through a few people I knew including the store owner who knew what Geiger had been up to since his own daughter had been trapped in the vicious drug, sex and pornography tomb, pillow talk and checking in occasionally with the cop on the beat who knew the chief police department guy, a guy named Bernie Olds who got Phil the job with Sternwood in the first place since they had worked together in the D.A. office before Marlowe got canned for going around some rule, around some honcho who got his claws clipped.

I would not have mentioned this back when I was interested in the case, kept tabs on the players, on all the moving parts but I also knew a couple of hat check, cigarette and photography girls who worked in the Club Luna, no holds barred anything goes places on the outskirts of town where the Sternwood sisters, Vivian and Carmen, who were what the now gentle old general had nightmares about what he had spawned hung their hats. The reason I knew them goes back to when I was earnestly trying to be a screenwriter, trying to get into the film business and these young women were also trying to the same and like me were skimming working other jobs until that proverbial ship came. I should also mention that one of them, maybe two, the twins, Cecilia and Shirley, probably went to bed with our Phillip, although from what was told to me by the hat check girl, Pamela, who I had roomed with when I first came west it didn’t last long because Phil was kind of rough with them, thinking they were on the make and that was that. I could see that such women would be repelled by what was the ugly side of the craggy-faced handsome man.

By the way Seth since I noticed you didn’t pursue the question whether it was out of some silly chivalry for an old lady or fear of what I might come up with that “pillow talk,” bedroom late night after sweating up the sheets if it was typical L.A. night was a serious source of finding out stuff that never made the papers. Never made the papers because a young reporter named Ray Chandler, a member of one of the Chandler branches that ran the L.A. Times then took his orders from above, from some uncle who squashed whatever he could since he used to play tennis with the General in Bel Air in the old days when both were sprightlier. Ray was on the story from the beginning, from the Geiger hit and I had met him when he was rummaging around seeing what people in various shops knew about Geiger’s rackets and he came in to see me. I told him what I knew which then was not much more than he knew but somehow his manner and my idea that maybe I could get in the studios through writing as a reporter, or, face it sleeping with a reporter got him angle asked for date. Later he would take me down to his family’s cottage (a semi-mansion but he always called it a cottage) in La Jolla on the weekends and I would rifle around his study desk and get whatever information he was holding back from me. By the end of our relationship which didn’t survive much past the conclusion of the case I knew as much as he did about the goings on across L.A. to smother the case or really try to solve the damn thing.        

After Phillip had left my store that rainy afternoon he headed across the street to his automobile and trailed Geiger and that boyfriend to his house out in the Edgewood neighborhood, not a good or bad neighborhood then but a place where the houses where far enough apart that Geiger could conduct his little racket in some privacy. According to very late filed police report Phillip had staked the place out seeing what was about. What was about was one Carmen Sternwood coming to get her dope, a thing called laudanum, basically opium cut with ether if it is done right from what I heard, having never gotten beyond jimson, weed, you know marijuana that you can find anywhere now, really knocks you out. Which fit nicely into Geiger’s operation since he would take his “dirty pictures” from a hidden camera while someone like Carmen was doing her Balinese strip. From what I knew, heard about Carmen she might have done her dance on the Pacific Coast Highway at dead sun noon as long as some man was watching but the laudanum probably made sense to a weasel like Geiger.                       

Then out of nowhere the shit hit the fan, excuse my English, as shots rang out in the rain-swept night. Marlowe, Phillip, headed in to find Geiger dead as a doornail on the floor and Carmen half-dressed sucking her thumb as two unidentified cars sped away. I am not sure, or at least I don’t remember whether Phillip, took a run at Carmen, had his way with her in the old-timey expression, that night or just cleaned up the place of any evidence she had been there. Maybe both in any case nobody heard about Geiger’s demise for a while except I did see Phillip’s car across the street in front of Geiger’s the next day and then saw a station wagon with Agnes and some guy in it and that he had hailed a cab, a cab with a female driver which was a novelty in those days even for Hollywood usually doubling down as a way for certain women to do their other business, their prostitution if you must know, without the problem of irate landlords and seedy rooms. I would later find out in a strange way, strange if hailing that very same cab and female cabbie one night when I was closing up the book store and on the ride home she as much as said he had what she called “curled his toes,” Phillip’s, after doing the tail job once his name got around as crackerjack private detective. I am not sure whether she said he was strictly for tough nights or something like that but I do know that I shared no feelings of sisterhood with her.

This is probably the time to step back a little and see why hailing that cab and following that station wagon had anything to with helping General Sternwood or his wayward daughter out of a mess. The original reason General Sternwood had asked Phillip to do his work was that he was being bribed by Geiger over Carmen’s gambling debts and was trying to decide whether to pay or not. That is the front story and made sense since the guy in that station wagon with Agnes was a grifter named Joe Brody who was in the habit of putting the bite on plenty of people, either independently or for one Eddie Mars. Mars a name I did not know at the time was the real kingpin behind every evil known to man that happened in that town, in all of Southern California really, and as I would subsequently find out from that bevy of employees I mentioned earlier owned the Club Luna where the Sternwood young women held forth. Moreover Mars was the backer behind the scenes for Geiger’s sleaze ball operation which when exposed had dragged in half the young women not only in rancid Hollywood but among the “best” families, the so-called elite. The hush would be on in that case even if General Sternwood had not called in his chips. So Phillip tagged this Joe Brophy or thought he had only Carmen looking for her nude photos showed up and fouled up the works. Or tried to. Here is where things got unglued on that front. That boyfriend of Geiger’s thought Joe had wasted his lover that rainy night and as a result decided to bang-bang Joe. Done. Boyfriend done too since Marlowe wrapped him up with a bow before long and made him a special delivery packet at the local P.D. station. Work for the old General finished and without disturbing too many things.                  

That was the front story but the back, the real reason that the getting senile old General wanted Marlowe’s services was to get a tag on a guy named Rusty Regan who had been before he disappeared a while before, he said about a month, Vivian would say a couple of months, had been something like the General’s confidante, best friend. Had blown town and allegedly had run off with Eddie Mars’ wife in the process. Phillip  figured if he found Rusty then he would get a serious lead on the “who” and the “why” of the Geiger-Brody killings. Of course, while all of this work was going on Phil was playing footsies with older daughter Vivian, at first he said to see where she fit in the picture. Was he going to have to like his friend from the D.A.s office now working as a P.I. up in San Francisco Sam Spade and sent her over when she got him in too much of a jam. This is where Eddie Mars comes more clearly into the picture. He was the backing, the protection for Geiger’s “dirty picture” racket taking a nice cut. Taking cuts of a million other things from women to dope and back as well as even more sinister stuff. All the while looking like your average businessman using the Club Luna as a front for the whole operation. Slick, very slick. Vivian had made what even she would later admit a wrong devil’s bargain with Eddie because he held everything, he could over her (including a few tumbles in the hay while that wife was supposedly away with Regan and Marlowe wasn’t looking). Even now though every time though I think about that Club Luna and those former friends of mine, that hat check and cigarette girl sister act, who took a run at Marlowe knowing that I had been with him before them. 

Funny through all of this Carmen was making her own moves, trying to figure out where she stood in the mess. Of course she headed to Marlowe’s door whatever she thought of him (according to Vivian not much, said he was too ugly to be handsome but that was no bar to a man trap like her) And of course she had her way with him, including getting him to get some cash from Eddie Mars on account at his crooked gambling tables. Although the rest of the tale is pretty straight up let me give you the details because the whole thing shifts to Eddie Mars and his henchmen, especially his “hit man” some bad ass names Carlos something I forget the last name and it is not important because he had wasted some poor sucker Joe who was fronting for that Agnes who worked for Geiger and had been Brophy girlfriend. Women like her always get somebody to take then under protection and under the covers even if they bitch and moan about all their so-called tough breaks. Needless to say, Phillip played along with Agnes for two reasons-one to get her in the sacks since she was pretty good -looking for a tramp and she had information about the whereabouts of Eddie Mars’ wife. I don’t know what happened to Agnes probably found another Joe after she found out Phillip was just there for a tumble and ran that guy into the ground before moving on again.          

That Agnes information proved to be invaluable, although if Phillip had headed to the nearest cop house he could have found out that at the address Agnes had given him there was a garage run by a dopehead named Art Huck. This was another one of Eddie’s operations, hot cars, so he knew, had known all along where his wife had been. Philip really only had to figure out the why of the ruse and the still pressing question for old man Sternwood of where Regan was. At the house after some fuss he found both Eddie’s wife Rhonda and Vivian. Oh yeah, and that savage Carlos who was ready to put a few slugs into Phillip’s head if that was what the boss wanted. Except Phillip through some quick action by Vivian got to him first. That sealed the deal between them as I will explain in a minute. The whole thing had been set up, set up with too many moving parts really, between Vivian and Eddie to cover for the fact that dope-addled Carmen had shot Regan when he would not tumble to her advances. That would be Phillips’ excuse for that tumble he had had with Carmen when he first went out to the Sternwood mansion and Carmen tried to do that lap dance while he was standing up.     

Although the reason for the elaborate cover-up was clear to him now Eddie was still a threat to him, and now to Vivian since a guy like Eddie ould definitely get burned up when he heard that his high-priced hit man had been turned to mush by Phillip’s firepower. I remember reading this part, the end of Eddie Mars (although not the end of some gangster’s control of all the evils in Southern California, Guy Madison moved up the food chain and things went on as usual without missing a beat). Marlowe and Vivian had hightailed it to Geiger’s now empty house (remember Eddie owned the joint) to hold a conference with Eddie. Phillip though had faked out where their location was expecting Eddie to think he would get there first and set up a very fatal ambush for the pair. Eddie, and his eternal bodyguards waiting outside to execute the ambush, got a big surprise though when he discovered Phillip got there first and sent out some shots to alert Eddie’s guys. Phillip then forced Eddie out the door to his well-deserved fate of being riddled with machinegun bullets by his own henchmen. Nice, right.     

That wrapped up Eddie. The fate of the others. Well Carmen was put in some private hush-hush mental hospital, stayed for a few months and then headed to San Diego where she was found dead about a year later out on some pier after having had an overdose of heroin and half her clothes ripped off. Eddie’s wife, after a short clandestine affair with Phillip, headed back East and into oblivion. Vivian and Phillip as you know were married shortly after the close of the case although as you also should know, or have heard about, the marriage didn’t take and there was a huge court case over the divorce. The General, old Sternwood, well he went to what some detective fiction writer called the big sleep. That is all I can tell you. Thanks for listening.  

********

[The following addendum to the Dorothy Malone interview was not included in the piece published back in 1979 for the simple fact that I could not verify most of it before the upcoming publication date. In those days unlike what is increasingly happening in the publishing business today maybe reflecting the influence of social media you checked your sources, or your assertions didn’t see the light of day, usually. Ms. Malone’s statement that after the Marlowe-Sternwood divorce she herself got married to Marlowe could not be checked, I could not find any paper trail except the Las Vegas marriage license she showed me. The most I could find in the L.A. County Courthouse was the complete proceedings in the widely covered divorce of the two prominent citizens. The settlement Vivian Sternwood laid on Marlowe to get out from under what she, or rather her fleet of lawyers, called mental cruelty and a whiff of adultery when that meant something in such proceedings. (That adultery would presumably include Marlowe’s affair with Ms. Malone but the case never got to that point for whatever legal reasons Vivian and Phil’s lawyers came up with.) Beyond that I couldn’t find much.             

More to the point Ms. Malone’s revelation that all through the case she was “curling Marlowe’s toes,” her expression learned through him which she used any time she made a reference to her sexual activities. That part turned out later to be more provable and I was, still am, amazed that she was able to carry the affair out while Marlowe was worming his way into Vivian and the Sternwood fortune. But enough of my naivete then out in Hollywood land where morality in certain precincts was very different from that of the Acre in North Adamsville. Let Dotty say her piece, finally. Seth Garth]

Seth now that I have told you the story of the Sternwood case, the case that made Marlowe, got him cushy jobs with no heavy lifting among the Sternwood crowd, let me tell you something that might make your career, might at least get you a by-line. Didn’t you wonder, didn’t you think in your head how I knew so many of the details of the case that only could have come from Phillip, like how he felt after Eddie Mars’ hit man wasted some poor grifter trying to help out Agnes get some dough to split town when all her other protection fell down (Geiger and Joe Brody) just because he was not fast enough with the answers-and the hit man didn’t want any witnesses to implicate Mars. This may come as a shock, although I hope it doesn’t but I was “curling Marlowe’s toes” not only after he married Vivian but while the whole case was proceeding to its conclusion.

Whatever had started that rainy day in the bookstore when my hormones were jumping and Marlowe came in the door like some avenging angel, like a guy who was looking for some answers in trying to bring a little rough justice to whoever needed it didn’t stop that afternoon although it very well might have. After we mussed up my desk, I figured the whole thing was a one night, a one afternoon stand, not uncommon in looser Hollywood certainly looser than Maryland or Bryn Mawr. But after the Geiger killing, murder as turned out. he went back to the Geiger’s bookstore looking for anything that could implicate Carmen Sternwood and not finding anything he came over to my store wondering whether I had seen anything going on across the way. Since I had customers and the boss was coming into the store shortly I didn’t play my come hither routine with him but he knew by my looking at him that was what I was thinking. He said we should meet later to “compare notes.” And that started things which never really finished after that until a few years before he passed away when I met somebody who would become my second husband and who would father that daughter I was always giving my advice about men to. That night was the first night by the way that Phil used his, our intimate expression- “a guy makes passes at a gal who wears glasses who hauls his ashes.”  An old-time expression “ashes” but it would get me going more than once when he said it especially since I was sensitive about having to wear glasses all the time.

What will surprise you even more is that shortly after Marlowe and Vivian divorced he and I got married in Las Vegas. [She showed me the copy of the marriage certificate-Seth Garth 2018] While I think that Marlowe would agree with me that we had a torrid affair it was kind of off and on depending on what was happening with him, with him and Vivian in the end. I was not happy from day one in the bookstore that he would be with other women, worse that he would wind up with Vivian which I could see from a mile away but that was the way it was with me-he was my man even when I had an occasional affair like with Ray Chandler and later with Jerry Lord, the producer, when I decided that my virtue was not more important than getting a screenwriting job. Mostly though after we were married we settled down, settled down to enjoy each other for whatever time we had.

So maybe in an odd way I should be thanking old long gone General Sternwood resting in his place of sleep for bringing Phillip Marlowe to my door. I hope you will let the world know that was the way things were between us. [This last remark after I had asked her if she had anything in the way of documentation, witnesses beyond the marriage certificate that I could hat my hand on. Seth Garth 2018]        

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Paulette Goddard’s “The Unholy Four” (1954)

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Paulette Goddard’s “The Unholy Four” (1954)

DVD Review

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

The Unholy Four (released in England as A Stanger Came Home), starring Paulette Goddard , Hammer Productions, 1954

In my long career in the film reviewing racket, a profession if you will which is overall pretty subjective when you think about it, I have run up against all kind of readerships and readers but my recent escapade with one reader takes the cake as they used to say in the old days. As the headline above indicates I have been doing a serious of reviews of B-grade film noirs by the English Hammer Production Company from the early 1950s. A B-grade film noir is one that is rather thin on plotline and maybe film quality usually made on the cheap although some of the classics with B-film noir queen Gloria Grahame have withstood the test of time despite that quality. I contrasted those with the classics like The Maltese Falcon, Out Of The Past, The Big Sleep, and The Last Man Standing to give the knowledgeable reader an idea of the different. In the current series the well-known Hollywood producer Robert Lippert contracted with Hammer for a series of ten films which would star let’s say a well-known if fated Hollywood star like Dane Clark or Richard Conte as a draw and an English supporting cast with a thin storyline.     

I had done a bunch of these reviews (minus a couple which I refused to review since they were so thin I couldn’t justify the time and effort to even give the “skinny” on them) using a kind of standard format discussing the difference between the classics and Bs in some detail and then as has been my wont throughout my career giving a short summary of the film’s storyline and maybe a couple of off-hand comments so that the readership has something to hang its hat on when choosing to see, or not see, the film. All well and good until about my five review when a reader wrote in complaining about my use of that standard form to introduce each film. Moreover and this is the heart of the issue she mentioned that perhaps I was getting paid per word, a “penny a word” in her own words and so was padding my reviews with plenty that didn’t directly relate to the specific film I was reviewing. Of course other than to cut me to the quick “penny a word” went out with the dime store novel and I had a chuckle over that expression since I have had various contracts for work over the years but not that one. The long and short of it was that the next review was a stripped down version of the previous reviews which I assumed would satisfy her complaint. Not so. Using the name Nora Charles, the well-known distaff side of the Dashiell Hammett-inspired film series The Thin Man from the 1930s and early 1940s starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, she still taunted me with that odious expression of hers. (By the way one of the pitfalls of citizen journalism, citizen commentary on-line is that one can use whatever moniker one wants to say the most unsavory things and not fame any blow-back.

Here is the “skinny” on the film under review The Unholy Four (released in England and on the continent as A Stranger Came Home which as usual in this series is closer to the nub since in fact a stranger does come home to face all kinds of hell) in any case as is my wont and let dear sweet Nora suffer through another review-if she dares. Four guys, four rich guys not of the nobility in England anyway, took a trip not shown trip to Portugal and only three came back. One guy vanished for four years and as the film opens up he shows up unannounced one party night. The guy, a guy named Phil, had this dishy wife, Angie, played by fading American screen star Paulette Goddard the first female fading star in the series which as mentioned before jacks up the film more than if there were only English nobodies playing the roles, who the other three guys on that fateful trip were in varying degrees interested in. Our man Phil, kind of a chain-smoking cuckoo, was waylaid by one of the three guys and he is well enough now to go the distance to find out who fucked him up enough that he lost his memory and is now seeking revenge-or at least answers to what happened to him and to his wife.

Problem, big problem, or really two problems one of the three guys winds up very dead the night Phil comes back home and guess what he is built to specifications to be the fall guy, to take the big-step off since everybody in their set knew that dead guy was crazy for Angie. Still the peelers don’t have enough evidence to throw him in the slammer and throw away the key. That second problem is that Phil is not altogether sure that good-looking if faded whorish Angie wasn’t playing footsie with one or more of the guys while Phil was lost in the rain out in Lisbon waiting with Victor Lazlo for some airfare to the States. She has a hell of a time trying to persuade Phil and the coppers for a bit that she did rub the dead man out. With only two guys left though Phil honed in on the killer and his lamester reasons for bopping Phil and killing the other dude. Phil lays the dude down and he and Angie head off into the sunset or something like that. For a while the film took turns like a real thriller but the dialogue and the wooden acting by the Brits (and by faded Paulette too) make this thing a holy goof. Despite the come hither title and the titillating advertisement poster (see above) for the film this one fades away on its own dead weight. B-noir but seriously B not heading to classics-no way.