Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines-In Honor Of Icarus’s Progeny- With Cary Grant And Jean Arthur’s “Only Angels Have Wings” In Mind

Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines-In Honor Of Icarus’s Progeny- With Cary Grant And Jean Arthur’s “Only Angels Have Wings” In Mind 

By Lance Lawrence

A tear comes to my eyes every time I hear the name Johnny Cielo, yes, Johnny, one of Icarus’s latter- day sons who was a pioneer in aviation when that was tricky business-when flying by the seat of your pants really was something more than a quaint saying. (By the way for passport trouble purposes, for cons and scams, for ducking the law, John Law he called them Johnny Cielo had many aliases; Johnny Too Bad, Johnny Blade, Johnny Blaze, Blaze Johnson, Johnny Icarus, Izzy Johns and who knows how many other those are just the ones I remember but I will use his real name, assuming that it is for my purposes here). Yes, Johnny was a piece of work, was somebody who gave as good as he got and who had that flight dream from very early on, from the first day he heard about Wilbur and Orville Wright and their successors. Johnny though was strictly a fly boy adventurer, although he could have had a piece of Alleghany Airlines and lived on easy street for the rest of his life. Could have been flying Piper Clubs for the country club rubes to gawk over. But our Johnny was not built that way, didn’t want to become an extended cycle repair shop guy, didn’t have Howard Hughes’ overweening desire to own it all, whatever “it” was for the moment.       

Some people, even people knowledgeable about the history of aviation in America, have claimed they never heard of Johnny Cielo until you mention the Barranca air service set-up. Then they are all ears-not so much about the aviation part, the desperate flights to get the mail out, to get stuff delivered to impossible places, but about Johnny’s red-hot affair with film siren of the 1930s and 1940s Rita Hayworth. Yeah, there was plenty of truth to his exploits with the females, with high class dames like Rita back then. Rita who was every military guy’s favorite pin-up and if not then second. Johnny led Rita a merry chase, had her abandoning that very promising and lucrative Hollywood career to follow him to the wilds of Barranca down in Central America and then ditched her leaving her no choice but to grab the next best thing (this before the Aga Khan took his run at her and snagged her for a while-even “a while” most guy’s idea of heaven). Left Rita for some vaudeville tramp down on her uppers, somebody who couldn’t even stand in the same room as Rita but Johnny was funny that way-would stay with one woman just so and that not long. Told them straight out his fly-boy life was it and he did not expect a woman, wouldn’t ask a woman to follow him where he was going. And he was right, just ask Rita who did and got not even a by your leave.   

Maybe it is better to begin at the beginning, or at least how Johnny got down on his own uppers so bad he had to take a shot a running a fool’s errant airline down in sunny Banana Republic Barranca. Johnny got deep into running dope, you know, marijuana, opium stuff like that way before most people even know what the hell illegal drugs were about from sunny Mexico up north. Did it for a few years, made a ton of money and proceeded to blow it on dames, various experimental airplane projects and hand-outs to every drifter he ran across. Then one day an agent for whatever cartel he was working for at the time, such things are murky and best left murky told him he was through, that they had some new boy, their boy who would run the merchandise.

Johnny thereafter needed work, needed it bad to keep up with the fresh but expensive Rita. Nothing doing around America for a guy whose last job was a dope smuggler so he headed south to Central America when his old friend and comrade Letts Fagan said he had a deal for him if he came fast. The deal was a secured route for a mail and express delivery for everything south of Mexico to what the hell Antarctica if he wanted to go that far if they could set up the route through some pretty tough terrain in the days when propeller was king and planes still wobbly in inclement weather. Heading out he told Rita he was going, he didn’t expect her to follow, wouldn’t ask her to but can you believe she said “let’s go” and as a sign of her own seriousness she was ready the next day to travel-a world record maybe for a woman with a big wardrobe and plenty of luggage to pull off. Johnny was impressed-and pleased.      

Things started out pretty well for Johnny and Rita and Johnny and his new airline. Looked like he would meet all the deadlines imposed by the contract and by his own daring. Pulled a few rabbits out of the hat to get through a bunch of horrible weather to deliver whatever there was to deliver-typical Johnny Cielo magic. Then the roof caved in, or rather that tramp from some northward-bound tramp steamer trampled into town looking for some sweet sugar daddy- or a Johnny kind of guy. She wasn’t choosey especially when she found out that Johnny was carrying Rita in tow. Two minutes after she saw him she had him in a backroom at Lett’s restaurant doing whatever she wanted, whatever he wanted. (We are all adults and know what was what but when some guy, some Johnny latter-day devotee wrote up his biography the guy left the hard sexual description part out, just like they were doing in the films in those but you know as well as I do, and I know, because before the end Johnny told me, it was oral sex, a blow job, said she was good at that, Rita too, but you had to coax Rita and not the tramp.)

Okay even tramps have names, as if it mattered to Johnny or any other guy when a woman leads him to some backroom, so hers was Jean, Jean Smith I think Johnny said she called herself. Like I said Johnny had a fistful of aliases, so she probably did too. She was from nowhere, had done nothing but was something new and shiny for Johnny and that was that. Of course two dames, a glamour gal and a tramp or any combination thereof, working the same guy in the small blistered and balmy town are not going to make anything work in the end. That was when Rita blew town, went back to Hollywood to be knocked off by the Aga Khan for a while until she got bored. (The funny thing and even that biography guy didn’t know about the situation until I sent him a letter and he looked the stuff up after Rita blew that Moslem prince off and went back-where else Hollywood not Brooklyn or wherever she was from she and Johnny went under the sheets again for a while until she blew him off-nice trick. Johnny always spoke highly of his sassy redhead after that though-always had that glean in his eye when he mentioned her name. 

The tramp won round one. A big win but Johnny was all business for a while trying to make the nut with that fucking two-bit contract that must have been written up by a Wall Street lawyer it had so many escape clauses for the owners. Johnny had by his own reckoning, a half dozen ex-World War I planes of no repute, or something like that to get the mail and goods over the hump. Tough going, very tough as he lost a few guys who like him would rather die than not fly so they took risks, big risks, just for the hell of it. And nobody, Johnny made sure of that, mourned out loud about the dead guy, grabbed his smack sack possessions and divvied them up so no moony stuff. After one guy got, a guy who was supposed to buy this Jean a steak when he tried to make a play for her behind Johnny’s back, to sit with the angels, that what they called it she sniffled up and Johnny told her to shut up or follow Rita (Johnny could be cutting). Here’s the real deal Johnny part though-five minutes after the guy flamed out Johnny was a sky pilot taking the undelivered load over the hump and back in some kind of hurricane. (That “hump” not the Burma World War II hump that almost broke the backs of English and American pilots but through Condor Pass the next country over from Barranca.)   

On The 85th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky- Fourth International-We Need A Socialist International More Than Ever

On The 85^th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky- Fourth International-We Need A Socialist International More Than Ever 

By Harry Sims

Usually I am a behind the scenes guy dishing out anniversary dates and other facts and figures to site manager Greg Green and/or the recently created Editorial Board but I felt compelled to write a little something about the anniversary, the 80^th anniversary this month of September, of the Fourth International that will be forever linked to the name of the great Russian Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky. In accordance with the seemingly obligatory notice of transparency that accompanies anything today greater that what you had for breakfast at one time I was close to those who were carrying on the wilted tradition of the Fourth International after Trotsky was assassinated by a Stalinist agent down in Mexico in the summer of 1940. Aside from that though, as the headline to this introduction telegraphs, we are still in need of an international that will lead the way forward for humankind’s hopefully more equitable future. Such progress as we are now painfully aware does not happen automatically but must be planned and led by people committed to such aims. The same is true for those who want to revive the night of the long knives that was the hallmark of the 20^th century and now the first couple of decades of the 21^st century. So the die is cast.

Here is a short primer for those legions who do not have the foggiest notion of a what an International, Fourth or otherwise, is or was. These institutions are associated with various historical epochs of the socialist movement in all its struggles-victories and defeats. The first short-lived International was associated directly with the personages of the socialist revolutionaries Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the founders of the Marxist wing of socialism back in the middle of the 19^th century. The two important events beyond the fact of creating the first international devoted to the struggle for socialism were the support for the Northern side led by Abraham Lincoln in the American Civil War and the stalwart defense of the Paris Commune, the first workers republic, of 1871 which was drowned in blood by Thiers and his mercenaries. The Second International before it became a “mail drop,” before it dropped the ball in not opposing World War I on any side, an event we are commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the Armistice this year as well, was the first mass organization of international socialism toward the end of the 19^th century. With the rapid rise of industrialization under late capitalism working people swarmed to this organization to defend them. In 1914 with the aforementioned failure to oppose the bloody war which decimated the flower of the working classes of all European nations its historic important as a serious force for social change much less socialism was finished even if the shell lingered, still lingers on today.

The Third International, Communist International, Comintern, and the Fourth share not only the personage of Leon Trotsky but purported to have the same aims at various points up to World War II. The Comintern was created as a direct result of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 by leaders Vladimir Lenin and Trotsky among others for the direct purpose of leading the world socialist revolution. When that task was abandoned in practice under the Stalin regime in Russia Trotsky in exile and with not enough resources called for and established the Fourth International we are commemorating.

Traces of that Fourth International like the Second still exist but unlike the first three Internationals it was essentially still-born in a time of defeats, serious defeats for the working classes especially with the rise of Hitler in Germany. So why beside nostalgia for an old International associated with the name of an honest revolutionary do I write this short piece today. Like I said the headline has telegraphed what is needed, what I think is needed today-another International, a fifth International if you like to lead the fight against the one-sided class struggle that is being waged by the international capitalist classes. While Trotsky’s organization for many reasons including the decimation of its cadre in Europe during World War II never got off the ground some of its programmatic points in the key document that came out of the conference which established the organization-the Transitional Program- read like they could have been written today.

Beyond the program though cadre, new cadre are needed to continue the forlorn fight against the greedy vultures who control the means of production and finance and that is where Leon Trotsky’s desperate and usually lonely fight to bring the 4^th International to the light of day can still serve as a model going forward. He, Trotsky, a man who has led the Russian Revolution of 1905, has subsequently been exiled and escaped the Czarist prisons when that revolution was crushed, had been central to the seizure of power in the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, had been Commissar of War during the bloody civil war against the counter-revolutionary Whites and their international imperialist allies, and had led the fight to save the revolution when the dark hand of Stalin and his henchmen pulled the hammer down stated unequivocally at the time in 1938 that establishing a new international to fight the dark clouds coming over Europe was the most important task he had done in his life. In our own epoch we are looking for such men and women to continue the task. They will have to read about and look at these 1938 documents and that very uneven struggle along the way.

Workers Vanguard No. 1139	7 September 2018

TROTSKY

LENIN

Reforge the Fourth International!

(Quote of the Week)

Eighty years ago, on 3 September 1938, the Fourth International was established under the leadership of Leon Trotsky. In opposition to the reformism of the social-democratic Second International and the Stalinized Communist International (Comintern), its founding document, excerpted below, provided the framework for building a new world party of socialist revolution. It is the task of the International Communist League to reforge the Fourth International, which was destroyed by a revisionist current under Michel Pablo in the early 1950s that renounced the need to build Trotskyist parties.

It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.

Classical Social Democracy, functioning in an epoch of progressive capitalism, divided its program into two parts independent of each other: the minimum program, which limited itself to reforms within the framework of bourgeois society, and the maximum program, which promised substitution of socialism for capitalism in the indefinite future. Between the minimum and the maximum program no bridge existed. And indeed Social Democracy has no need of such a bridge, since the word socialism is used only for holiday speechifying. The Comintern has set out to follow the path of Social Democracy in an epoch of decaying capitalism: when, in general, there can be no discussion of systematic social reforms and the raising of the masses’ living standards; when every serious demand of the proletariat and even every serious demand of the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reaches beyond the limits of capitalist property relations and of the bourgeois state.

The strategical task of the Fourth International lies not in reforming capitalism but in its overthrow. Its political aim is the conquest of power by the proletariat for the purpose of expropriating the bourgeoisie.

—Leon Trotsky, “The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International,” commonly known as the Transitional Program (1938)

Bet, Bet Straight Up-With The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood Corner Boys In Mind

Bet, Bet Straight Up-With The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood Corner Boys In Mind

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

[This little piece of fluff, this little boyhood remembrance had originally been written as my swan song as a film reviewer, as the film editor here. And to an extent that is /was true when I penned the stuff. That before the big internal struggle that roiled this publication for several months and which finally led to the purge and exile of Allan Jackson, long-time site manager and my oldest friend from high school days. “Purge” and “exile” no exaggeration although I don’t have time for the details here except that when the deal went down I voted with the rebel younger writers to give my old friend the boot under the idea that as with my own retirement it was time to “pass the torch.” I still think I was right and that although Allan and I have reconciled things probably better today under the new leadership. The part that is wrong though is that my swansong was premature. As part of the dust up the younger writers (and here I was neutral) insisted that new site manager Greg Green have an Editorial Board that he would run things by unlike the one-man rule of Allan Jackson. I was tagged for the chairmanship of the Board and so since I am still around I have decided on occasion as here that a few pithy words might come from my pen. S.L]

As everybody familiar with this space knows (or with the on-line version of the American Film Gazette )I have retired from the day to day grind of writing film reviews and have handed over that chore, at least temporary, to my in the not too distance future retiring old friend, colleague and competitor Sandy Salmon. I noted when I posted my retirement notice that I, like old time military men, would just fade away. I also noted that I would as the occasion warranted write a little something, a little commentary if the subject interested me. That is my purpose today.        

Recently Sandy Salmon reviewed a 1947 film, a murder mystery of sorts that had a long prior pedigree, Seven Keys To Baldpate, which had been based on a play by the same name back in the early 20^th century which in turn was based on a crime novel by the great crime writer Earl Derr Biggers (whose popular Charlie Chan series is perhaps much better known). Sandy did a good job of reviewing this film which hinged on the idea of a guy, a crime writer, making a bet with his publisher for five thousand cash that he could write a crackerjack mystery novel in twenty-four hours. As he attempted to do such out in the boondocks at an allegedly closed down inn with the only key to the place all hell broke loose, a couple of off-hand murders and such, by people who had collectively mysteriously come up with the six other keys of the title. One of those six people was a ringer, was the good-looking blonde with well-turned legs secretary to the guy who the crime writer made the bet with. No, not a sex lure like would be included in such a plotline now, at least not publicly, not in 1947 but to distract him anyway she could to make him miss his deadline. What the hell that ain’t fair, no way, especially when after the smoke cleared and the crime writer solved the whole mystery of why the other five people were there she flopped herself on his lap when he went to write that story to win the bet and dared him to ignore her. Needless to say the other guy won the bet        

Sandy mentioned at the start of his review that some guys will bet on anything, any proposition to pass the time. That got me to thinking after I had read the review about what the deal was in the old days in my growing up hometown of North Adamsville about forty miles west of Boston when me and my high school corner boys who hung around Sal’s Pizza Parlor would to while away the lonesome, girl-less, no dough, no serious dough to not be girl-less bet on all kinds of propositions for a couple of bucks, maximum five probably. Certainly not five thousand which as Sandy mentioned is nothing but walking around money now but then was a number which we could not get around, couldn’t believe existed, not in our neighborhood where rubbing nickels together was a tough enough battle.

Now a lot of the bets with guys like Sammy Young, Billy Riley, Jack Callahan the great school football player before Chrissie McNamara did her own flop down on his lap and dared him to move her which he had had absolutely no inclination to do, Sid Green, Pat Murphy and Ian Smith were on the outcome of various sports events. You know back in those days whether the hapless Red Sox would finish last in the American League (or how long a losing streak the team would go on once they started their inevitable losing), how many points would the golden age Celtics score (or allow). We also did our fair share of betting on football games, no so much the games themselves as each play, pass or run, stuff like that, which sounds exotic but except for one time when I got on a bad streak and lose twenty-two bucks which took me about six weeks of caddying for the Mayfair swells to pay was usually the difference of two or three dollars.         

Other bets were a bit racier. Like whether Sally, who was going out with Pat, would let him “touch” her, and you know what I mean and don’t ask how we verified such bets but just know that we did do so. Or whether such and such a girl, a hot girl usually, would take the bait and give one of us a date. Hell, sometimes when the girls came into Sal’s to have some pizza, Cokes and to play the great jukebox that he had over in the corner we would bet on what song a girl would play. There was a certain art to that proposition for instance if a girl had just broken up with her boyfriend there would likely be some slow sad song chosen. You get what I mean. Sometimes it would be whether the notoriously late local bus would arrive on time or not. So anything was up for betting purposes.          

         

That ringer secretary in the film though got me thinking about the strangest bet I ever made back then, maybe ever. One Friday night, another one of those girl-less ones, Jack Callahan, this is before fetching Chrissie McNamara snagged him, bet me on how high Sal would toss the pizza dough when he was kneading and stretching it to make his great pizza pies. Jack’s idea for calling the bet, mine too for taking it, was that one of us but not both could have enough kale for a date with Laura Lawrence on Saturday night. We were both interested in her and she liked us both well enough although Jack as the football hero probably had the edge aside from the money factor. So the bet was on. Oh, I forgot to tell you that if one of the corner boys made a proposition the other guy (or guys depending on the nature of the bet) had to take the bet, or lose and pay up anyway. So naturally I said “bet.”      

The time of the bet was probably about seven o’clock so we had to wait a bit for Sal to start making more pizzas for the crowd that would be coming in around eight or so for their slice and soda before heading to some date or to the local lovers’ lane. Sal did eventually get going, maybe a half an hour later. The idea for who would win any individual bet on the toss was whether Sal flipped the dough above or below the Coke sign directly behind him. I got to call the first bet. Low. I won and the race was on taking my shots at high or low. I did pretty well for a while, was up maybe seven or eight dollars which would be enough to take Laura out, maybe a movie and something to eat. I figured I was in. Then my luck began to change, change dramatically and before long I was down about ten bucks before Sal stopped tossing the goddam stuff.

Jack smiled a knowing smile, knowing that he was going to escort Laura around and maybe get to “touch” her and you know what I mean by that and I don’t have to spell it out. Here’s where everything about that film review by Sandy comes into play. Sal was the ringer. Remember Jack was a football hero and Sal loved football, loved Jack’s prowess on the field and Jack had told him the situation earlier in the day before I showed up there. They had planned to let me win early to draw me in and had set up a silent signal about which position I had taken. How about that. Don’t you think now that I am thinking about it and getting burned up all over again that the next time I go over to Jack and Chrissie’s house in Hingham that I should ask for that ten bucks back-with interest. Yeah, Sandy had it right some guys will bet on anything.             

You Can’t Always Get What You Want -A Devil’s Bargain-With Bette Davis’ “All About Eve” In Mind

You Can’t Always Get What You Want -A Devil’s Bargain-With Bette Davis’ “All About Eve” In Mind

By Sandy Salmon

[When I first took on this assignment which was in an unusual case assigned to me by the Editorial Board and specifically from its chair Sam Lowell (whom in the interest of transparency I knew in the old days when we were both stringers at American Film Gazette) rather than directly from site manager Greg Green there was talk around the water cooler that this piece would really be autobiographical. That is emphatically not the case.

To give a little biography in high school in Newark, New Jersey I developed a very strong interest in art, in being an artist. That interest was nurtured and inflamed by Mr. Jones-Henry a transplanted Englishman whose roots included some now forgotten connection with the artist Burne-Jones. He was an alumnus of the Massachusetts School of Art in Boston and had assured me that I could get into that school on his recommendation and that the all important question of scholarship money would also be forthcoming since he had some connections in the Financial Affairs Office.     

As is hopefully clear from this vantage point I did not pursue that route, although some fifty years later I, at times, wish I had gone the “starving artist” in the Soho garret route. What happened to block me from going to art school was a very determined mother who feared unto the high heavens that I would stay down in the mud, stay poor for the rest of my life if I became a struggling artist. That factor was important to her since I was the one child in the family who looked like he (or she) would get out from under the grinding factory worker history of our extended family with its periods of unemployment and always, always, wanting habits for stuff we did not have, would never have. Although I was not as frantic as her about my future success that tipped the scales away from art school. But as can also hopefully be seen from this vantage point I did not become a civil servant which was my mother’s, and not only my mother’s, idea of success.      

I eventually came to this publication though through a connection with art so maybe I am sanctified. Back in the early 1970s while in college I got involved with an alternative newspaper, The East Coast Eye, which carried many articles and such that mainline newspapers wouldn’t or didn’t touch. I became something like the art reporter for the publication although unpaid as most of us were. That in turn after I graduated got me a job as a stringer for American Film Gazette (where I met Sam) doing all kinds of assignments including reviewing films a subject I hadn’t previously touched. I eventually became film editor there before my retirement, or rather before I was lured over to this publication as a half-way house to retirement once Sam persuaded me to finish my career on what he called a high note. Still some days, some pencil in hand doodling days during conferences, I wish I had chosen another road like old Robert Frost said in his famous poem. S.S]       

Confession: I, Jeffery Jaspers, had never wanted to be a film critic, or any kind of critic at all. What I wanted, what I dreamed of from an early age, maybe ten or eleven, after seeing a stage production of The Wizard Of Oz was to be an actor, a stage actor the only kind. To be on the Great White Way, on Broadway in New York City far away from my Cannon’s Bend, Pennsylvania roots. They say that politicians, successful politicians have made a devil’s bargain to get where they are, to gain power over people and projects but that profession is not the only one where individuals willingly consort with the devil, gladly, make their bargain for fame and a little stardom. I was willing to strike such a bargain to gain the bright lights but I never got that far, never got to go mano y mano with Satan for my soul against earthy paradise. Instead I have labored in the field of film criticism as something like the booby prize since I shared, still shared, what used to be called the legitimate theater’s, Broadway’s disdain for cinematic and television actors (to speak nothing of the contempt for huckster actors shilling for some godawful commercial products). I have never gotten over my failure to smell the sawdust and dabble with the greasepaint.             

There is a story behind this failure, a failure that I had some what suppressed for many years or so I thought until I did a recent re-watching, no, re-re-watching of a DVD of the classic inside Broadway film All About Eve starring Bette Davis, Anne Bancroft, George Sanders and a host of other very fine performers. When I was a senior in highs school I grabbed the lead in the senior year play Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I was so thrilled to get the Hamlet role that I asked my mother, nee Harriet DeWitt, to ask her uncle to come to the play and see if I had any serious acting ability. (Of course I thought I did and that uncle would only confirm such truths.)

See my granduncle was none other than the famous Broadway theater critic Addison DeWitt. For those who don’t remember that name for many years before he died about twenty years ago he was the critic for the Broadway Call. More importantly by that time he had been syndicated in most of the major newspapers in the country so that what Addison DeWitt had to say about a play carried much weight for anybody coming to Broadway or viewing an on-the-road production of such plays. If he left during the first act to relieve himself in the men’s room (really to have a cigarette for he was a serious chain-smoker in an age when such practices were considered manly and cool) the play would probably close that night. Although not before he had raked the dead thing over the coals for the next five days to make sure it never arose from that death spiral. If he liked a play or an actor, actress really, then he would smother with praise. As I will mention shortly there were ways, non- theatrical ways, to get that praise beyond honest work. He really was a Class A scoundrel.

So one Friday night he came up from New York (he dearly loved my mother, or maybe better, his sister and through her my mother) to see the production. Although he sat through the production I could see that he was fidgety, that he kept taking his cigarette case out and looked at it longingly. I think in retrospect I was only saved by the “no smoking” rule on school property. That and maybe an extra size devotion to my mother one of the few people he was kind to without regard to interest. Now that I have mentioned that tell-tale cigarette signal I don’t have to explain that he put two thumbs down on my acting career that night. Said I should be an English major since my mother (who secretly did not want me on the stage and had asked him once she knew he had panned me to plug that English major idea) had asked him to help along that path. Strangely he would be the person who got me my job at the American Film Gazette through some connections he had developed over the years although his contempt for film actors (and later television actors) was even greater than mine in those days.

The strange part of his part in my career is that when Broadway had gone through one of its down cycles (due to those films and television and later the cost of production and lack of deep pockets investors who were going elsewhere) he had actually been forced to get a second job at the Gazette where he bombed. Had on a whim I think or maybe as I found out more about the way he operated later, that non-theatrical way to get his attention something more he had touted the film To Tell No Lie when every other critic had deep six panned it. Had, and here is my non-theatrical speculation at play, touted Lola Moran as the greatest actress since Sarah Bernhardt. She was never heard again after that disaster and Uncle Addison probably moved onto the next best thing.            

                    

That school play night though he not only gave me my acting career walking papers but tried to put things in perspective- that was his word. Gave me a very long talk about having to make a devil’s bargain to get those stars beside your name on your dressing room door. He sensed I didn’t have it in me. I wasn’t hungry enough like he had been. He told me straight up that he had made his own devil’s pact and that was only so that he would be the number one theater critic. Had gladly done it. Then he proceeded to give me what I later realized, much later, was a cautionary tale. That was the night he told me about how he had ridden Eve Harrington’s talent to solidify his positon in the Great White Way. I had heard of Eve Harrington vaguely when I was researching and reading plays in high school and had remembered that she had lit up Broadway with her performance as Cora in I Remember The Night according to the liner notes after each play and the chronology of who performed various parts over time in the productions.     

Uncle Addison had a gleam in his eye when he mentioned her name that first time and made me think maybe he loved her, something like that. I was probably wrong, and it doesn’t change the story but here goes. Margo, yes, Margo no last name needed in the old days, in the 1940s, when her star flamed white hot on the Great White Way, but now Margo Channing for readers who are rightly clueless about who I am talking about, was truly the queen bee of Broadway with a series of hits beginning with her breakthrough role as the young ingénue in You Reap What You Sow. Like every other profession worth fighting over for number one status the contenders came early and often. Most fell down, went back to the small town or out of town theater circuit but some and Eve, Eve no last name needed in the old days when her star flamed white hot on the Great White Way, but now Eve Harrington for readers who are rightly clueless about who I am talking about did not, did give Margo one hell of a battle.         

Such rises and falls do not occur all at once or by happenstance as Uncle Addison would be the first to tell you. Tell you that a very well-placed critic or producer can pave your way with his favors for your favors (then women mostly for men but today who knows with all the possible sexual preferences abound in the land). What Uncle Addison failed to tell me, would fail to tell anybody especially those impressible ingenues blinded by the bright lights is that some actors will harness their own energies to step more quickly up the food chain. That may have been Margo although my uncle never mentioned her roots since he had not made her a star as he did with Eve but it defined Eve to a tee. From the minute she entered Margo’s life, as a dresser at first and go-fer too, every move she made was to both undermine Margo’s theater reputation-and her personal life including throwing herself at Margo’s well-known director writer fiancé. This was a no holes- barred metaphorical fistfight to the death with plenty of barbs and trickery and while Margo held her own for a while the new blood Eve rose to the top based on talent and talons.

That is the public story but Uncle Addison gave me the back story now that both Margo and Eve have passed. Eve, on her way up, had planned to take a well-known Broadway writer away from his wife but he cut Eve short. Eve had created, as many have for lesser reasons, a whole sob story previous life which was all fairy tale. After failing to lure Margo’s fiancé away from her she went after that married writer who was smitten by her. Uncle had found out the real shady story behind Eve’s façade and used that to keep her back from the writer and all for himself. (When I asked if Eve had gone to bed with him Uncle demurred but that meant to me that he had). Here is where things got weird though. Since fame is fleeing I asked Addison what happened to Eve whom like I said before I had never really heard of. He told a very chilling tale about how a young wannabe actor in her turn befriended Eve and would go on to undermine Eve and rise to the top herself. Since she is still alive Uncle would not give her name but from his look I knew too that he had something to do with her rise-and her bedding by him too.