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LGBT Inclusive Groups Still Seek to March in South Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade

TRT Editor | Jan 09, 2014 | Comments 1

Boston St. Patrick’s Peace Parade participants lining up before parade. 
Photo: TRT Archives

By: Chuck Colbert*/ TRT Reporter—

BOSTON, Mass.—When Irish eyes are smiling, the world is bright and gay, or so go lyrics of the popular song. Except, historically, on St. Patrick’s Day in South Boston, where openly gay groups are still not permitted to participate.

For several years, the parade organizers—Allied War Veterans Council—emboldened by a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, have denied marching permission for LGBT and peace veterans groups as a matter of First Amendment, free-speech rights. However, serious efforts are underway to change that.

“This is the year we all should put pressure on politicians,” said Pat Scanlon, Vietnam veteran and coordinator of Veterans for Peace, Chapter 9, Smedley D. Butler Brigade, an organization banned from marching in the South Boston parade for several years.

Scanlon pointed to changing demographics of South Boston and a new mayor as hopeful signs the peace veterans contingent will be able to march, along with openly LGBT groups. Back in September 2013, Veterans for Peace applied to Allied War Veterans, but by December 9, 2013, when the peace-vet organization had not received a reply, Scanlon sent a follow up letter. 

“When Massachusetts is, in so many ways, a beacon of inclusion for the LGBTQ community, it is disappointing to see parade organizers continue to cultivate a climate of rejection and exclusion.” —Kara Coredini, MassEquality Director.

“The exclusion of Veterans for Peace, the LGBT community, and other peace organizations, from participating [in the parade] should come to an end,” Scanlon wrote. “It is time that there be one parade that is open, inclusive and welcoming to any group wishing to celebrate this very special day. It is Saint Patrick’s Day, a celebration of the patron saint of Ireland and Saint Patrick was a man of peace.”

Scanlon’s letter pointed not only to changing attitudes toward LGBT people in society at large, but also to cultural and social changes within South Boston.

“Many members of the LGBT community currently live, work and worship” in the neighborhood, he wrote.

In fact, two parades have trekked through the streets of South Boston since 2010 when the peace veterans first applied but were rejected. Scanlon said parade organizers used not wanting the word “peace” connected to the word “veteran” as reason enough to ban the group from marching. Last year, when the Veterans for Peace organized the second march, which took place one hour after the main event and was separated by Boston city street sweepers, the parade had more than 2,000 participants. Those who marched with the St. Patrick’s Peace Parade included six bands, trolleys, duck boats, floats, and the like—all organized into eight separate divisions under the categories of veterans, peace, LGBT, religious, environmental, labor, political, social, and economic justice.

Born on St. Patrick’s Day, Scanlon, 66, a straight Irish American who grew up Catholic in Philadelphia and attended parochial schools for 19 years, explained his motivation.

“This is an injustice,” Scanlon said. “An injustice against one is an injustice against all, and in one of the most progressive cities in the country, if not the world, to have this injustice taking place should not be tolerable.”

The father of a gay son, Scanlon does not mince words in calling out the ban on LGBT groups. 

“It’s homophobic,” he said, referring to the attitude of parade organizers. “It’s exclusion. It’s hatred. That’s what all this is about.”

In addition to applying to the Allied War Veterans Council, Scanlon said his parade group has also asked the City of Boston for its own parade permit with a 12 p.m. kick-off time, one hour before Allied War Veterans’ start time.

Michael Dowling, 59, a gay resident of South Boston for 35 years and president of the South Boston Association of Non-Profits, is taking another approach. He said the community-based non-profit association has applied to the Allied War Veterans, proposing “an inclusive unit called ‘We are South Boston.’” The application, he explained, contains “really strong, inclusive language, including LGBT language with signs that would identify participants in the parade.”

Dowling said he takes issue with Scanlon’s outsider approach.

“The efforts of Pat Scanlon have helped perpetuate the hardships of the neighborhood and how it is portrayed,” Dowling said.

He went on to explain why.

“Because when [Scanlon] calls the neighborhood bigoted and homophobic, he riles up those hatreds that are still there, and makes it more difficult for people to be out, and makes it more difficult for people to work here,” said Dowling. “So it sets us back.”

But Scanlon takes issue with Dowling’s suggestion of such name calling. The South Boston neighborhood is not the problem, said Scanlon, explaining, “The attitudes of the residents of South Boston have changed dramatically in the last 20 years.” It’s the Allied War Veterans who hold bigoted and homophobic attitudes, he said.

At the same time, both Scanlon and Dowling said they believe South Boston has indeed changed significantly in the last two decades.

“Everything in South Boston has changed,” said Scanlon. “The neighborhood has changed, the politics have changed, the culture has changed, and [Catholic] churches have closed. The only thing that has not changed is the attitude of the six guys who run the parade. That too will change.”

Dowling agreed with the changing demographics and attitudes, citing local civic groups that are inclusive of LGBT people, namely One Southie and The New Southie, both of which have Facebook pages, and the West Broadway Citizens group, which Dowling said consists predominantly of gay men who live on that thoroughfare. Dowling said South Boston Association of Non Profits is working with the neighborhood-based civic and social groups, among others, to gain permission to march.

Like Scanlon, Dowling is also seeking to gain support for their respective approaches from elected officials, including state Senator Linda Dorcena of the First Suffolk District and state Representative Nick Collins of the Fourth Suffolk District, both Democrats. South Boston falls within their respective legislative districts. Both Scanlon and Dowling have also contacted Boston’s new mayor, Martin J. Walsh, and District Two City Councilor Bill Linehan, a lifelong South Boston resident, in hopes that they can broker a deal or solution to the standoff. Linehan was also elected president of city council in early January. Scanlon has also written to the Boston Police Department and penned an open letter to residents of the city.

Dowling said he is hopeful that the neighborhood insider’s approach is the way out of the gay-ban situation, a way for the Allied War Veterans and everybody to move forward. Back in the early 90s when an openly gay group—The Irish American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston (GLIB)—marched in the parade, Dowling paid a steep price for supporting the gay group. Along the parade route, he handed out pink roses to gay, lesbian, and bisexual marchers. 

“Every window in my house was broken,” Dowling said.He added, consequently, that he had every good reason “to beat up on the neighborhood.”“But I have chosen to replace hatred of our community with service to that community,” Dowling explained.

A painter and noted artist, Dowling founded Medicine Wheels Production as a South Boston-based nonprofit organization in 2000. Its mission is “to transform communities from the inside out” through “the healing and transcendent power of public art.” Medicine Wheel’s signature event is on World AIDS Day. Another focus addresses youth drug abuse and teen suicide.

Neither Veterans for Peace nor South Boston Association of Non Profits have heard back yet from parade organizers. Both Dowling and Scanlon said they are preparing strategies if their applications are rejected. Undoubtedly, the issue will find its way to the office of Mayor Walsh, who told a reporter during the mayoral election last fall, “What needs to happen,” is a private “conversation” away from the media’s glare, with “organizers of the parade.”

“As mayor, I will sit down with them and work out a compromise so that people can feel like they can march in the parade,” Walsh explained. “This parade should be inclusive, and that goes for every other parade marching on public streets.”

Meanwhile, MassEquality, the statewide grassroots organization, has also applied to march.

“We will continue to apply every year until MassEquality is permitted to march,” said Kara S. Coredini, executive director.

Like the other two groups, MassEquality has not yet heard back from parade organizers on the status of its application. However, the parade is not among MassEquality’s highest priorities. 

Neither Veterans for Peace nor South Boston Association of Non Profits have heard back yet from parade organizers.

“The LGBTQ community in Massachusetts faces many issues more urgent than the ability to participate in a parade—youth homelessness, bullying, anti-transgender discrimination, HIV/AIDS, elder abuse, and more,” Coredini explained. “But public rejection by an established cultural institution like the St. Patrick’s Day Parade is significant in that it’s emblematic of the more life-altering rejection our community members face every day. When Massachusetts is, in so many ways, a beacon of inclusion for the LGBTQ community, it is disappointing to see parade organizers continue to cultivate a climate of rejection and exclusion. At the heart of MassEquality’s work electing pro-LGBTQ champions and advancing pro-LGBTQ legislation is changing attitudes, and each day because of that work we come closer to the day when this parade will be opened to all.”

This year’s St. Patrick Day Parade is scheduled for Sunday, March 16._______

*Chuck Colbert marched in the 1992 and 1993 South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade as one of 25 participants in the Irish American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston.

On Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Memorial To Colonel Robert Gould Shaw And The Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment (Volunteers) –Take Four   

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

…he had walked pass that blessed then defaced, muddied, unattended frieze across the street from the State House on Beacon Street in Boston it seemed like half his now graying life. Anytime he had cadged a hooky day from high school back in the early 1960s in order to head into downtown Boston and check out the day life on the Common, grab an off-beat movie at the many big house theaters on lower Washington Street to kill a couple of hours, or just hang out with the beats, beaten, and the bowed, would circle up around Beacon Street after emerging from the Park Street subway station (sometimes up Tremont then to Beacon). Walked around just to get a “feel” for his city, his mother’s birth city, the city of his birth, on humid summer days, leaves falling orange/red/yellow/autumn days, bleak snow-bound winter lights days, and rebirth green spring days. Walked head down right by the seemingly obscure defaced and unrepaired marble. Walked by thinking of his big world existential problems too intense to worry about faded pasts, or old time hokey glories.   

Later, mid-1960s later, when he went to school, a two-year school at first since that playing hooky to be one with the beaten brethren on the Common had caught up with him come graduation time and then transferred to Suffolk University in that same downtown Boston and had to work trucks down toward Congress Street to make his daily meat he would pass the memorial on his way to school and occasionally when he was second man on the trucks. Still later, after a stint in Uncle’s bloody, bloodied defeated Vietnam army at a time when he had developed a bad habit of expecting the world to owe him a living for his meager service and he lived on the hill (Beacon Hill) with some rarified suburban girl from Long Island who footed the bill (or rather some New Jack City banker Daddy) in sullen splendor (until she in her turn married some junior up and coming stockbroker) his studied neglect continued.

Yes he had passed it, that subtle stark monument to past fights, to fights worth fighting, like it was just another in a long line of historic ornaments in a town filled with memorials to its ancient arrival long continental history. You know bloody battle number one here against some heathen force, bloody battle number two there against the damn redcoats, a pigeon-bedecked statute of some fire-breathing Puritan divine casting out heathens here or some furious bearded abolitionist turning up the heat there, some battle-hardened general leaning Grant-like there, some corruption-filled over-fed civic leader in full three piece suit regalia here. Yes, the town was a breathing tribute to all that went down in the cold times American East when west, real west, was someplace around the Hudson River and white man European dreams were of making it along the Eastern seaboard and not having to trek inland luckless to face the unknown, natural or man-make.  

Had thoughtlessly briskly blinkered past that perfect pre-historic monument to some pretty important history going on right before his eyes down in bloody Birmingham/Selma/Greensboro/Philadelphia (MS that is)/Montgomery/Oxford (MS again) and one thousand other later to be  storied locales after the dust cleared (and the fight reined in). He had been attuned to all that although only touched the fringe of the crest when some army brothers, some Harlem brothers spoke of creating a new nation all shiny and black. Yet with all that civil rights let-them-vote-sent-books-to Alabama-ride-the-freedom-bus he was clueless to that aspect of his history. Clueless (and no high school history class, at least the days he attended, ever mentioned such things) to those places, Fort Wagner above all, where his people, his black proud Massachusetts 54^th (and later 55^th) had made righteous stands for freedom, had filled the sable ranks, had arms in hand confirmed the worst planter’s John Brown-benighted nightmare, had bled rivers of blood and  inelegantly sweated buckets of sweat, had trooped down to their citadel, Charleston, singing marching songs, and had not waited, no, no more wait, on some benevolent white man to do the work of freedom.

Then one cloudy day, not a 1960s day but much later after the image of the shiny black nation faded and long after he had gotten over the need to feel the world owed him a living for his meager service and for his skin, he happened to notice some work being done in the area around the monument while walking toward Park Street Station and a ride to the suburbs. That suburban ride came with its own psychic price but that is for another day as this day was a day for heroic remembrances not the stuff of benighted life. So he walked toward the site and asked about what was going on, why all the furious activity. Restoration they called it, bringing the dead back to life he thought.

Suddenly the sun glistened though a cloud and he noticed something on the then partly repaired frieze, a figure of a man. An old man trooper, an old pappy they called them back in the neighborhood back in the day, ancient bearded to almost be able to see the grey flecks sprinkled in that Jehovah nest, bed-rolled, knap-sacked, rifle-shouldered, marching in step just in front and to the left (from a front view of the scene) of a white officer on horse (whom he would find out later was the Colonel Shaw who was buried with his black brethren in  knighted dignity in some ashy pit in front of bloodied Fort Wagner). He stopped in his tracks as he realized that old soldier looked very much like his paternal grandfather, the father of his own rolling-stone father who had taken off for parts unknown and left him and his mother to the tender mercies when he was about seven. That bearded old man, grey-flecked, had (along with his grandmother) saved him from gathering a storm in the streets with the lure of the corner boy life. He had come north from sharecropper Mississippi, Mister James Crow’s Mississippi the worst kind), had taken up the shoemaker’s trade when that flourished in the town, had raised as best he could his five sons and two daughters (only his rolling-stone father a misstep) and raised hell when he could about the de facto segregation he faced every day. Had thus shouldered some serious if not heroic activities, had made up for some father sins.  

He was befuddled by the old greybeard at first since as a veteran of the Vietnam War he knew that no old pappy guys were filling the ranks of the American army in his time and so that old pappy figure perked his interest. Maybe he was kindred, but more importantly what drove the old-timer to put harm’s way between himself and his old long gone world. One day he went to the Boston Public Library over in Copley Square and found a book that dealt with the history of what he had found out that cloudy day was a memorial to the heroic Massachusetts 54^th Regiment, all volunteers, all black ranks, and all white officers raised right there in Boston. (Mostly all freedman too since old Johnny Reb was putting a summary death penalty on any former slave, anything black that he captured.)

His interest perked he sought to find out who was the model for that old pappy soldier. Had he a history, some story to tell. He never did find out if there was a real live model but he liked to think that old pappy had escaped from some desperate Tidewater plantation, maybe led others out of bondage, had followed the northern star, had made something of himself, learned a respectable trade, maybe a shoemaker like grandpa, and had prospered. Then when Frederick Douglass or one of those hot-tempered abolitionist orators raised the call to sable arms he had laid down his tools and joined up.  Joined up amid ancient memories of kin in Pharaoh’s thrall and had not waited, said no, no more wait, on some benevolent white man to do the work of bloody freedom...

      

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February 26, 2014: A Day of Outrage and Remembrance for Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis Locations at www.stopmassincarceration.net Facebook event Hoodies Up! Targets Up! Fists Raised! We’re Standing Up! No More Murder of Black Youth! February 26, two years since the modern day lynching of Trayvon Martin, eleven days after a Florida court refused to convict racist Michael Dunn for the murder of Jordan Davis. Wherever you are, put on your hoodies, get people together, print out these targets, and gather at the seats of power and influence or go to the public square.  Stand together in silence, hoodies up, fists raised, holding targets. Be part of creating a powerful visual image and stand of defiance that goes out around the world. On Wednesday, February 26, join with people in your city or town. Put on a Hoodie for Trayvon, hold a target with the message of “No More” for Jordan and all the Black and Latino youth who this system views as suspects. Defiantly represent that we refuse to accept a target being put on the back of every Black youth in this country, we refuse to accept the declaration that Black people have no rights that white people are bound to respect.  February 26, make a difference. This action can break the paralysis by being the first national action against the mistrial of the murderer of young Jordan Davis and linking this outrage to the fight for justice for Trayvon. Be a part of puncturing the lie that there is nothing we can do -- that we must accept this nightmare. Join with hundreds nationwide standing up to the murder of Black youth declaring that we are determined to stop it.  Don’t let your action be a secret from the world at large.  Take pictures of yourselves, post them https://www.facebook.com/stopmassincarcerationnetwork and send them to stopmassincarceration@gmail.com and spread them everywhere. VIDEO: Dr. Cornel West & Carl Dix say "Hoodies Up! Times Up! We're Standing Up.  NO MORE Murder of Our Youth!" More information at: Stop Mass Incarceration Network 347-979-SMIN (7646) * stopmassincarceration@gmail.com * stopmassincarceration.net and on Facebook & Twitter Now at springdaysofdroneaction.org: An international call for Spring Days of Action – 2014, a coordinated campaign in April and May to: End Drone Killing, Drone Surveillance and Global Militarization LIST YOUR ACTION HERE. | ADD YOUR NAME HERE. Share this message: VIDEO: Dr. Cornel West & Carl Dix say "Hoodies Up! Times Up! We're Standing Up.  NO MORE Murder of Our Youth!" Jamel from Stop Mass Incarceration Network and Revolution Club NYC on: Is it a generational thing? What is the situation of the youth? Why do we need to act on Feb. 26? Click here for audio. Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can't Wait

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***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night -In The Time Before The Rock ‘n’ Roll Jailbreak –They Shoot CD Players, Don’t They?

 

 

 

 

CD Review

The 1950s: 16 Most Requested Songs, Volume II, various artists, CBS Records, 1986

Some people ask; although I am not one of them, if there was music before 1950s classic rock ‘n’ roll. Of course there was and I have taken some pains to establish the roots of rock back to Mississippi country blues, electric blues as they traveled north to the heartland industrial cities, jazz as it got be-bopped and took to swing, certainly rhythm and blues, north and south and rockabilly as it came out of the white small town South. What it owes little to, or at least I hope that it owes little to is that Tin Pan Alley/ Broadway show tune axis part of the American songbook. That seems to me a different trend and one that is reflected in this CD under review, The 1950s: 16 Most Requested Songs, which is really about the 16 most requested song before the rock jailbreak of the mid-1950s. Let’s be clear about that.

I have along the way, in championing classic rock as the key musical form that drove the tastes of my generation, the generation of ’68, contrasted that guitar-driven, drum/bass line driven sound to that of my parents’ generation, the ones who survived the Great Depression of the 1930s and fought World War II, and listened to swing, jitterbuggery things and swooned over big bands, swings bands, Frank Sinatra, the Andrews Sisters and The Mills Brothers, among others. In other words the music that, we of the generation of ’68, heard as background music around the house as we were growing up. Buddha Swings, Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree, Rum and Coca-Cola, Paper Dolls, Tangerine, and the like. Stuff that today sounds pretty good, if still not quite something that “speaks” to me. That is not the music that is reflected in this compilation and which, I think rightly, I was ready to shoot my CD player over once I heard it as I announced in the headline.

No, this is music that reflects, okay, let’s join the cultural critics’ chorus here, the attempted vanilla-zation (if such a word can exist) of the Cold War Eisenhower (“I Like Ike”) period when people were just trying to figure out whether the Earth would survive from one day to the next. Not a time to be rocking the boat, for sure. Once things stabilized a bit though then the mad geniuses of rock could hold sway, and while parents and authorities crabbed to high heaven about it, let that rock breakout occur and not have everything wind up going to hell in a hand basket. But this music, these 16 most requested songs were what we were stuck with before then. Sure, I listened like everyone else, everyone connected to a radio, but this stuff, little as I knew then, did not “speak” to me. And unlike some of that 1940s stuff still does not “speak” to me.

Oh, you want proof. Here is one example. On this compilation Harbor Lights is done by Sammy Kaye and his Orchestra. This was cause one for wanting to get a pistol out and start aiming. Not for the song but for the presentation. Why? Well, early in his career Elvis, while he was doing his thing for Sam Phillips’ Memphis Sun Records operation, covered this song. There are a myriad of Elvis recordings during the Sun period, including compilations with outtakes and alternative recordings of this song. The worst, the absolute worst of these covers by Elvis has more life, more jump, dare I say it, more sex than the Kaye recording could ever have. And it only gets worst from there with incipient things like Frankie Lane’s I Believe, Johnny Mathis’ It’s Not For Me To Say, and Marty Robbins’ (who did some better stuff later) on A White Sports Coat (And A Pink Carnation). And you wonder why I ask whether they shoot CD players. Enough said.
*******
Harbor Lights Lyrics
(words & music by H. Williams - J. Kennedy)

I saw the harbor lights
They only told me we were parting
Those same old harbor lights
That once brought you to me.

I watched the harbor lights
How could I help it?
Tears were starting.
Good-bye to golden nights
Beside the silvery seas.

I long to hold you dear,
And kiss you just once more.
But you were on the ship,
And I was on the shore.

Now I know lonely nights
For all the while my heart keeps praying
That someday harbor lights
Will bring you back to me.

 

 

 

***Out In The 1940s Noir Night- With Blonde Ice In Mind-Redux

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Les Lewis, who knew her best, who had been her benighted lover, probably summed her up best, summed up the late Claire Summers, when he said he didn’t really know her at all, that he had no idea what made her tick, if anything. He added that as time went on and he got more of a sense of her outrageousness, of her outrageous demands and her wanting habits he realized that she had no moral compass, no moral core at all. That was the point where he started using the term “Blonde Ice” when speaking of her, although that did not stop him from being entrapped, ensnared, and enthralled by her. No way, not even when the bodies, male bodies, started piling up before his eyes. What did he say once, oh yah, she went through her men so fast she didn’t have time to have her initials embroidered on their sets of towels. Yah, Claire, Blonde Ice, take your pick, had a good run while it lasted, a damn good run. Maybe, though it’s best to go through the story so you will know how close, if you were a man, you were to falling in her clutches.                

Claire’s story, the story she told anyway, to her fellows in the Frisco Gazette newsroom where she held forth as the society page editor, was that she was from nowhere USA like a lot of young people who migrated West after the war, World War Two for those who are asking, and that she was from hunger, from the cheap mean streets of that from nowhere that she had come from. She made it plain, plain as day, to everybody, no, to every guy in the place, and elsewhere that the from hunger thing was strictly in the past and that if anybody wanted to keep company with her they better have dough, big dough, and connections to the Mayfair swells, or leave her alone. That didn’t stop anybody, any guy, in the newsroom, or elsewhere from taking a run at her, a hard run. See she was blonde, young, with a good shape, and pleasing, publicly pleasing, like a kitten. A kitten that would scratch your eyes out as soon as look at you but that came later.    

Here is how Claire operated, operated up front and in public, to give you an idea of what she was capable of when she had her wanting habits on. Les Lewis, the editorial page writer, you might have since his by-line if you got the Gazette was, well, smitten by her, and she by him in a calculating sort of way. And so while she was waiting for the next best thing they stuck together. And only for that amount of time. A while later, maybe six, eight, months later this Carl Castle, a self-made millionaire took a run at her. He didn’t have to run hard, not hard at all because all she saw was dollar signs. So she dumped Les, forthwith, and married Carl and his money. But see here is where she, hell, maybe all dames, went screwy. She wanted to keep Les around as a stand-by, keep him around for those nights when Carl was away on business, or she just wanted an off-hand romp.  Needless to say a guy who was a self-made millionaire didn’t get that kale by being a stooge, even for a dame. So when Carl caught on to Claire’s act, caught on during their honeymoon for chrissakes, he dropped her like a hot potato. 

Or rather he would have if he had had the chance. But Claire, clear-eyed Claire, was not giving up the gravy train after what she had been through and so she wasted him with a pair of slugs, wasted him before he could cut her out. Here is the beauty of it though she set the scene up like Carl had committed suicide. Nice touch. And that kept the wolves, the legal wolves, away for a while. And here is a nicer touch she took right up with Les like nothing had happened. And he was so gone on her that he bought into her fantasy.

Of course Les for Claire was just a safe harbor until she could snare something else, and you know she did. That is how strong her wanting habits were. So the next best that came along was a high-priced lawyer, Stan Lewin, yes, that Stan Lewin the big corporate lawyer for Ajax Consolidated. A big catch. So Les was out the door, or half-way out the door, again. Poor sap, he had it bad, as bad as man could have it for a woman and still be on two feet. Maybe he was getting just a little wise, because around that time he started referring to her as Blonde Ice around the office. Little good it did him once Stan announced that he and Mrs. Castle were to be wedded. 

Those wedding plans though were Claire ‘s undoing. Somehow someone had  gotten to Stan and  put a bug in his ear about Claire’s virtue and so he called the whole thing off. Mistake, Stan mistake, a big one. See you couldn’t do something like that to Claire once she had her plans set, set in stone apparently. And so Stan went underground, six feet under.  And here again is the beauty of her mind she let Les take the fall for it. You know the jealous lover in the background routine. Set Les up for the big sent-off. And didn’t bat an eyelash. Evil, sheer evil.        

Les, and his fellows, by this point were no fools and could see a certain pattern to Claire’s behavior, and so they were ready to move heaven and earth to get Les out from under a murder rap. However they were saved the effort by a very strange occurrence. Apparently back in nowhere Claire had been married, a child-bride it seemed, to some farmer in Utah, or someplace like that. This farmer, Clyde Smythe read about Carl Castle’s demise and the accompanying picture of his widow, his own dear wife. He headed to Frisco, armed, armed and filled with righteous indignation. And that righteous indignation put one Blonde Ice on ice. RIP.      

Oh yah, it later came out that Claire had killed a couple of other guys on her way up. One a guy who was pimping her off doing tricks on the cheap streets of Reno and she blasted him one night when he was wasted on some dope. The newsies figured that was when she developed the taste for the rooty-toot-toot to solve her problems. The other guy was a guy from Vegas who knew that she had wasted her pimp and was trying to blackmail her. Bad idea, very bad.  So maybe she did have her comeuppance when Clyde showed up to even things out for mankind before it ran out of men. But don’t tell Les that, okay. He goes out to Garden Grove Cemetery every week to visit her grave. Some guys have it bad, real bad, and some dames, good or evil, make them that way.  

 

 

 

***Phillip Marlowe Lives-Redux- The 1980s Television Series

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

Phillip Marlowe Private Eye, television series starring Powers Boothe, 1983

Sure I have been on a Phillip Marlowe run of late, mainly re-reading Raymond Chandler’s major crime novels from 1930s and 1940s which feature the tough guy, seen-it-all private detective. Those novels ranging fromThe Big Sleep to Payback (seven in all) pretty much tell the story of Marlowe’s many bouts with the bad guys (and gals) of the world down in sunny Los Angeles before it exploded after World War II into a big time town. A time long ago when a man (or woman) could know that city, that slumming city and its’ high and low life without a map. Those novels also developed Marlowe’s trademark approaches to things, his forever tilting after windmills for one thing or another, usually a dame in trouble but not always, always playing by his own rules, and not afraid to take a bump or two, or a slug or two, for a client.

Some of those traits, and Chandler’s early character development of Marlowe, were first written in some short stories in the 1930s collected in one volume called Trouble Is My Business (the original twelve story volume not the more recent four story volume or the Library of America volume). Those twelve short stories were presented in a British television series in 1983 under the title Phillip Marlowe Private Eye, the DVD under review, starring Powers Boothe as out intrepid P.I. And while, for my money, it is always better with Chandler, and fellow crime novel pioneer Dashiell Hammett, to read their works to get a real flavor of how he presented Marlowe over time this series is worth watching.

Of course there have been many Marlowes starting with the king hell king Marlowe, Humphrey Bogart, in The Big Sleep and working through such Hollywood stars as Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, Robert Mitchum, James Garner, and Elliot Gould. Powers Boothe fits somewhere in the middle of that tribe, maybe being just a little too handsome and a little too nonchalant to be a top shelf Marlowe. Still, like every Marlowe, he intrepidly works his way through the twelve story set tangling with bad guys, bad women, good women, competent and incompetent cops, guys on the take, lamos, loses , drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters. The normal bill of fare for any Marlowe worth his salt. Remember though read the twelve stories first and then watch this series which, except for additional tough guy and world-weary dialogue, is faithful to the plot line of those stories.

You’ve got that right brother, trouble, trouble with a capital T is Raymond Chandler’s classic hard-boiled private detective Philip Marlowe’s business. We have followed old Phillip Marlowe through thick and thin in this space in the seven Raymond Chandler-created full-length novels. Our intrepid private eye, private dick, shamus, gumshoe or whatever you call a guy that, privately, and for too little dough scrapes off other peoples’ dirt, and does it not badly at that, in your neighborhood. And kept his code of honor intact, well mostly intact, as he, for example, tried to spare an old man some anguish, some wild daughters anguish in The Big Sleep, or tried to find gigantic Moose’s Velma, Velma who did not want to be found, not by Moose anyway, in Farewell, My Lovely or find that foolish old timey coin in The High Window despite his client’s ill-winded manners.And on it went.

But see not all trouble, trouble with a capital T or not, is worthy of the world historic Chandler Marlowe treatment dished out in full detail like in those seven novels. Sometimes the caper to be solved or case to be squared is of a lesser magnitude and so we have the Raymond Chandler compilation under review, Trouble Is My Business, to, well, shed some light on Marlowe’s lesser cases. Not that they were necessarily any easier to solve, or that he didn’t take as many bumps on the head or guns in his ribs as the longer pieces but there were fewer moving parts to deal with. So a few cases could be lumped together, four in all, as a kind of sampler for those who might not have grown up in the 1940s and 1950s enthralled by the Marlowe mystique.

Take the title story, Troubles Is My Business, where a high-roller, a Mayfair swell, for his own purposes, hires Marlowe second-hand to get some dame, some cash-craving dame, a gold-digger, to lay off his son, his adopted son, to keep an eye on him, and keep him away from those addicted roulette tables that he has made his home , and squash those markers that a certain mobster, a California mobster transplanted from back East holds until that son inherits a cool few million. Naturally Marlowe tries to do an end-around by getting to the dame, getting her to lay off the son. And naturally as well that ill-bred son winds up dead, very dead, in that dame’s apartment. All signs point to the dame or the mobster or both but it only takes our boy about fifty pages to figure out what evil forces are working the scenes. And without giving anything away, once again we are going to have our noses rubbed in the hard fact that the rich, the very rich really, as F. Scott Fitzgerald used to say, are different from you and me, and get away with a hell of a lot more than you and me.

Another story, Finger Man, where Marlowe I am sure with some qualms found himself before a D.A.s grand jury telling all he knows about the nefarious doings of one set of “connected” politicians and their criminal consorts in trying to run everything that moved in some Pacific Coast town. And for his troubles he got set up, set up bad taking a long- time friend down with him before the dust cleared. Naturally a dame, a red-headed dame which tells you a little how bad things were, was knee-deep in the set-up and it almost worked except the bad guys (crooks and politicians alike) left too many moving parts to their plan and Marlowe was able to skate right through the trap. Although, as usual, he took his fair share of bumps on the head, shots fired at him, cigarette smoked and stubbed out, and dips into that bottom desk drawer whiskey bottle that will die an easy death before he is through with it.

Or how about this one, Goldfish, another in a long line of tales about searching for that El Dorado, that pot of gold, except this time it is pearls, the Leander pearls no less, and they are not in the ocean but are loose in the land as a result of a very heavy robbery where guys were killed and others guys got sent up to the big house for their efforts. But here is the kicker-the guy who would know where those pearls are, the guy who stole them and did his time to keep them, isn’t talking, is as quiet as a mouse about their whereabouts. Until Marlowe, and a nefarious pack of chiselers and other grifters, get hot on his trail. This one is a little off-balanced though since the dame who figures here is nothing but a desperado out of the Bonnie and Clyde mold and not one of gallant Marlowe’s frails. Of course she has company and as the number of those in for a cut dwindle due to various eternal departures inflicted many ways but mainly by the old equalizer , the gun,a precious one, Marlowe, is left to figure where those damn pearls are so he can get the reward for their return from the eager insurance company. Hint: strangely enough gold fish actually do enter into this one at the end. Go figure.

Or finally this one, Red Wind, a case taking us back to home ground Los Angeles and a case that our boy was not even looking for, he was just out for a quick beer before dipping into that desk drawer whiskey bottle, or something like that. And damn if pearls weren’t involved in this one too, although they came with a scent this time, perfume, sandalwood, so you know there will be trouble for Marlowe to keep his mind on business. Yah, old Marlowe was just minding his own business when trouble hit him square in the face. A little off-hand bump off of a guy who was looking for a gal, among other things, smelling of sandalwood in order sell her back some young girl pearls that some flyboy war hero gave her back in the day. And that little action led to a another murder, some blackmail, revelations of some matrimonial duplicity, a few scuffles with the cops, good and bad, and the usual assortment of bumps and slugs Marlowe seems drawn to like a moth to flame. Yes, in this one he is back on his horse tilting at windmills for a dame, and not even going under the sheets with her. Jesus.

Oh yah, about Raymond Chandler, about the guy who wrote this selection of short Marlowe stories. Like I said in another review he, along with Brother Dashiell Hammett turned the dreary gentile drawing-room sleuth by-the-numbers crime novels that dominated the reading market back in the day on its head and gave us tough guy blood and guts detectives we could admire, could get behind, warts and all. Thanks, guys.

[Hammett, the author of The Thin Man, and creator of The Maltese Falcon’s Sam Spade, maybe the most famous tough guy detective of them all. Sam, who come to think of it like Marlowe, also had a judgment problem when it came to women, women wearing that damn perfume that stops a man, even a hard-boiled detective man cold, although not an assortment of Hollywood women but one up north in Frisco town.]

In Chandler’s case he drew strength from his startling use of language to describe Marlowe’s environment much in the way a detective would use his heightened powers of observation during an investigation, missing nothing. Marlowe was able to size up, let’s say, a sizzling blonde, as a statuesque, full-bodied and ravishing dame and then pick her apart as nothing but a low-rent gold-digger. Of course that never stopped him from taking a run at one or two of them himself and then sending them off into the night, or to the clink, to fend for themselves. He also knew how to blow off a small time chiseler, a grifter, as so much flamboyance and hot air not neglecting to notice that said grifter had moisture above his upper lip indicating that he stood in fear of something if only his shadow as he attempted to pull some caper, or tried to pull the wool over Marlowe’s eyes. Or noticing a frayed collar or a misshapen dress that indicated that a guy or gal was on cheap street and just maybe not on the level, maybe scratching like crazy for his or her coffee and cakes.

The list of such descriptive language goes on and on -sullen bartenders wiping a random whisky glass, flighty chorus girls arm in arm with wrong gee gangsters, Hollywood starlet wannabes displaying their wares a little too openly, old time geezers, toothless, melting away in some thankless no account job, guys working out of small-time airless no front cheap jack offices in rundown building s on the wrong side of town doing, well, doing the best they can. And cops, good cops, bad cops, all with that cop air about them of seen it all, done it all blasé, and by the way spill your guts before the billy- club comes down on your fragile head. (That spill your guts thing, by the way a trait that our Marlowe seems organically incapable of doing, except when it suited his purposes. No cop or gangster could force anything out of him, and they tried, believe me they tried. ) He had come from them, from the cops, from the D.A.s office in the old days, had worked with them on plenty of cases but generally he tried to treat them like one might a snake not quite sure whether it is poisonous or not.

At the same time Chandler was a master of setting the details of the space Marlowe had to work in- the high hill mansions and the back alley rooming houses (although usually not the burgeoning ranchero middle class locales since apparently that segment of society has not need of his services and therefore no need of a description of their endless sameness and faux gentility). He had a fix on the museum-like quality of the big houses, the places like General Sternwood’s in The Big Sleep or Mrs. Murdock’s in The High Window reflecting old wealth California. And he has a razor sharp sense of the arrivisite, the new blood all splash and glitter, all high-ceiling bungalow, swimming pools, and landscaped gardens.

But where Chandler made his mark was in his descriptions of the gentile seedy places, the mansions of old time Los Angeles Bunker Hill turned to rooming houses with that faint smell of urine, that strong smell of liquor, that loud noise that comes with people living too close together, too close to breath their simple dreams. Or the descriptions of the back alley offices in the rundown buildings that had seen better days populated by the failed dentists, the sly repo men, the penny- ante insurance brokers, the con artists, the flotsam and jetsam of the losers in the great American West night just trying to hang on from rent payment to rent payment. Those denizens of these quarters usually had a walk on role, or wound up with two slugs to the head, but Chandler knew the type, had the type down solid.

Nor was Chandler above putting a little social commentary in Marlowe’s mouth. Reflections on such topics as that very real change after World War II in the kind of swarms that were heading west to populate the American Western shore night. The rise of the corner boys hanging, just hanging, around blasted storefronts, a few breaking off into the cranked up hot rod hell’s highway night. The restless mobsters for broken back east looking to bake out in the southern California sun while taking over the vast crime markets. The wannabe starlets ready to settle for less than stardom for the right price. The old California money (the gold rush, gold coast, golden era money) befuddled by the all new waves coming in. And above all a strong sense of the rootlessness, the living in the moment, the grabbing while the grabbing was good mentality that offended old Marlowe’s code of honor.

And of course over a series of books Chandler expanded the Marlowe character, expanded his range of emotions, detailed his growing world-weariness, his growing wariness, his small compromises with that code of honor that he had honed back in the 1930s. Yes, Marlowe the loner, the avenging angel , the righter of wrongs, maybe little wrongs but wrongs in this wicked old world. The guy who sometimes had to dig deep in his office desk drawer to grab a shot or six of whiskey to help him think things through. Marlowe the guy of a thousand punches, the guy of a hundred knocks on the head, the guy who had taken a more than one slug for the cause, the guy who was every insurance company’s nightmare and a guy who could have used some serious Obamacare health insurance no questions asked . Yah, Marlowe.

 

peaceact@mail.democracyinaction.org Mon, Feb 24, 2014 03:52 PM

Here’s an easy quiz for you. According to an article in the Washington Post over the weekend , the Obama Administration is considering four options regarding leaving U.S.  troops in Afghanistan after the end of this year. What do you think the number should be? A.      10,000 (favored by U.S. military commanders, unsurprisingly) B.      A somewhat smaller number, unspecified C.      3,000 D.      Zero Tell the president you want all our troops home, with none left behind in Afghanistan. It’s long past time to end America’s longest war. In the words of the late, great Pete Seeger (a longtime Peace Action member): “If you love this land of the free, Bring ‘em home, bring ‘em home, Bring ‘em back from overseas, Bring ‘em home, bring ‘em home!” Peacefully Yours, Kevin Martin Executive Director Peace Action P.S. After you email the president, please click here and tell your friends to do the same. Take Action: Email the President and tell him leave no troops behind in Afghanistan. CONNECT TO US:  Find us on Facebook  Follow us on Twitter  Read our blog  Contact us You are subscribed to Peace Action's Action Alert Network. You can unsubscribe here.