He Could Have Been A Contender, Oops, Champion Of The World-Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart’s “Kid Galahad” (1937)- A Film Review

He Could Have Been A Contender, Oops, Champion Of The World-Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart’s “Kid Galahad” (1937)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Lance Lawrence

Kid Galahad, starring Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart, Warren Morris, Jane Bryan, 1937    

A guy I used to work for when I was a kid, when I was looking for a little spending money to escort whatever flame I was pursuing at the moment was fond of saying “some guys are born to be lovers, some fighters.” That comment directed at me since in those days I was as prone to fight somebody over some now misty and silly slight, maybe someone said something about some gal I was interested before I got wise to the fact that I wasn’t much of a fighter at a skinny 140 pounds taking on guys much bigger and stronger. That guy I worked for had me tagged though as a lover not a fighter if you had to choose between the two. Especially when at sixteen I mixed it up with a guy much bigger than I over a girl and got nothing but the worst of it. This cutting up old touches had resulted from viewing the film under review, Kid Galahad, where the fighter, a guy who would turn professional fighter before the film is half over, was both a lover and a fighter. Some mean feat which would have garnered much respect in the old neighborhood if such a person existed in those days. My growing up time employer would have gladly tipped his hat to that duel prowess. Would probably too note this big exception to the rule, and exception which would not have included me in any shape or form.

     

I can’t say that as a kid I was very interested in pugilism, the art of fighting, fighting in the ring although I never then had qualms about guys who did try for the brass ring. Guys who would start out young at the local police station gym, club fighters, and move up or out, mostly out. These were mostly “from hunger” Irish and Italian guys looking to break out of the heavy labor which would be their fate if they didn’t make it out. They were never a big part of the local scene and I don’t’ remember much talk about anybody but Irish Johnny Mangone (playing the Irish mother, Italian father card) who was some kind of Golden Gloves champion although how far up I don’t remember. I do know, because my father Boyo was a ringleader, that the fathers, uncles, older brothers used to populate the local gin mill, The Tam, every Friday night to watch, and presumably bet on the profession fights on television from maybe the old Madison Square Garden in New York City sponsored by Gillette Razor Company in those beardless days.

But enough of old touches and let’s get to why this Warren Gooseberry, played by Wayne Morris, or whatever his name was from down on the farm and nothing but a blonde hick and rube who would have lasted about two minutes in my neighborhood except he had a deadly right hook before somebody got wise and christened him Kid Galahad to make the women wet as a songwriter wrote about Elvis one time. This kid was trying to make his way, trying to make enough money in the big city to buy a farm and get married. This guy was strictly from nowhere because he believed he could make the nut on tips or whatever as a bellboy in an upscale hotel. Fat chance.       

Fat chance except as part of his duties the Kid (I refuse to further  use his given moniker) winds up serving them off the arm, serving drinks, hard liquor for a boxing promoter, Nick Donati, played by tough guy  gangster type Edward G. Robinson and his significant other (although no way they called such arrangements that back then in the time frame of this film the 1930s but more like mistress or kept woman, whore in some quarters), Fluff played by Bette Davis.

(By the way according to fellow reviewer Seth Garth the last time Robinson was seen in this space was as famous Chi town gangster Johnny Rocco, he of the tough guy racketeers who dominated urban life back then, maybe now too, bleeding like a sieve after a character played by Humphrey Bogart who will be mentioned below popped him full of lead for being ugly. No, for roughing up his flame down in the Keys in Key Largo. Come to think of it that was the last time Bogie made this space as well as a good guy (in the end) who after seeing hard service in the European Theater in World War II at first claimed that “one more Johnny Rocco, more or less, was not worth dying for.” Until Johnny roughed up his honey. To complete the triad the last time Bette Davis was seen in this space according to fellow reviewer Will Bradley she was being stalked by an enraged Pacific islander woman whose paramour had been murdered by an enraged Ms. Davis who thought she was his lover in The Letter.)  

Yeah you read it right Nick Donati, the famous fight manager who had many a contender but never seemed to have guy who could have or wanted to go all the way.  Nick a guy who worked the newspaper scribes like a violin whenever he had a prospect. Of course in those days the fight game, the way out for many a young guy who faced the soup kitchen or hard labor lugging stuff to and fro had many illustrious promoters ready to see what they were made of-contenders or tankers, mostly the latter. Like Nick’s nemesis Turkey Morgan, Bogie’s role, a gangster trying to get his cut in the fight racket who had through fair means or foul, mostly foul the hottest property in the game-the heavyweight champion of the world. The whole thing gathers steam when rube from nowhere Kid takes umbrage when that vaunted heavyweight champion of the world roughs up Fluff. Bang Nick Donati, how he did it nobody knows, had another fighter in his stable. And for playing Sir Galahad Fluff was ready to ditch sullen neglectful Nick for the young stud, for somebody who treated her like a lady. One conquest and the Kid hasn’t even gotten into the ring to make the Garden women audiences get funny thoughts. 

On the basis of knocking the champ for a loop Nick sent the Kid into the ring to get a little bloodied on his way up. Except to the chagrin of Nick and the deadly anger of Turkey the Kid bounces the prelim guy on the floor. The Kid had to blow town for a while so Fluff stashed him upstate at Nick’s mother’s farm. The Kid was right at home too just like he had left before seeking the bright lights of the city. Oh yeah except Ma was not alone for there is a virginal Nick younger sister, Marie, played by Jane Bryan, who winds up being crazy about the Kid-and he her. Problem, big problem, maybe two big problems really. That Fluff hunger for him and Nick’s fervent attempt to keep the mugs, the sawdust bums, the punching bag stiffs away from her. The Fluff part got taken care of by her taking a powder on Nick once she knew the freaking score with the Kid and Nick’s sister. She had been around enough to know things were hopeless especially when the Kid and Marie showed up at the nightclub where she was warbling, and Marie knew how she Fluff felt before all hell broke loose when Turkey and the champ tried to provoke the Kid.

Once Nick caught onto the romance between Marie and the Kid though he went wild, tried to do serious damage to the mug, to the Kid. Pushed the Kid into fighting the champ too soon and with the purposefully wrong strategy. Wrong approach, wrong once Fluff and Marie who were in attendance begged for mercy for the Kid. Bang-bang new strategy and the Kid takes the crown. Unfortunately, Nick, as was not usual for him, left a few loose ends like welshing on the underhanded deal he had made with gangster angry Turkey and as things worked out rather than a post-fight victory party there was a mutual shoot-out where both contestants were mortally wounded. Too bad. But good was the Kid winning the championship-and Marie. My employer would have scratched his head in approval.    

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir-Dan Duryea’s “Terror Street” (1953)

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir-Dan Duryea’s “Terror Street” (1953)

DVD Review

By Film Editor Emeritus Sam Lowell

Terror Street, starring Dan Duryea, Hammer Productions, 1953 

Long time readers of this space know, or should be presumed to know, of my long-standing love affair with film noir. The classic age of film noir in this country in the age of black and white film in the 1940s and 1950s when I would sneak over to the now long gone and replaced by condos Strand Theater in growing up town North Adamsville and spent a long double feature Saturday afternoon watching some then current production from Hollywood or some throwback from the 1940s which Mister Cadger would show in retrospective to cut down on expenses in tough times by avoiding having to pay for first –run movies all the time. I also on infrequent occasions would attend a nighttime showing with my parents if my strict Irish Catholic mother (strict on the mortal sin punishment for what turned out to have been minor or venial sins) thought the film passed the Legion of Decency standard that we had to stand up and take a yearly vow to uphold and I could under the plotline without fainting (or getting “aroused” by the fetching femmes). But mainly with me and five siblings they went to one of the three, count them three, movie theaters in small town North Adamsville by themselves to get away from our madness while Grandmother Riley tended to us with her no-nonsense regimen.

Yes, who could forget up on that big screen for all the candid world to see a sadder but wiser seen it all, heard it all Humphrey Bogart at the end of the Maltese Falcon telling all who would listen that he, he Sam Spade no stranger to the seamy side and cutting corners had had to send femme fatale Mary Astor his snow white flame over once she spilled too much blood for the stuff of dreams. Or cleft-chinned barrel-chested Robert Mitchum knowing he was doomed and out of luck taking a few odd bullets from his former femme fatale trigger –happy girlfriend Jane Greer once she knew he had double-crossed her to the coppers in Out Of The Past. Ditto watching the horror on smart guy gangster Eddie Mars face after being outsmarted after sending a small time grafter to his doom prime private detective Phillip Marlowe ordered him out the door to face the rooty-toot-toot of his own gunsels who expect Marlowe to be coming out in The Big Sleep. Those were some of the beautiful and still beautiful classics whose lines you can almost hear anytime you mention the words film noir.

But there were other lesser films that were produced in this country starring the likes of the queen bee of the B-film noir night Gloria Grahame and he-man Glenn Ford. And not just this country but in Great Britain (if that term still applies after empire lost and Scotland and Wales clamoring to go their own ways) where in the 1950s many minor Hollywood stars like Dan Duryea in this film under review Terror Street (in merry olde England released as 36 Hours got work when benighted England took on the film noir world. When an outfit called Hammer Productions produced a tonof such small epics none with the cinematography mood play, diologue or plotline of those classics mentioned above and among the best of them only running neck and neck with those quickly produced Hollywood B classics.        

In the old days before I retired I always liked to sketch out a film’s plotline to give the reader the “skinny” on what the action was so that he or she could see where I was leading them. I will continue that old tradition here (and in future Hammer Production vehicles to be reviewed over the coming period) to make my point about the lesser production values of the Hammer products. Thoughtful American military pilot Bill Rogers, the role played by minor Hollywood star Duryea, snuck out of America by a friendly fugitive military plane on a mission to find out why his good-looking Norwegian-born wife met during the war (you know what war if the film was made in 1953) in holding out against the Nazi scum in England hasn’t written, has flown the coop. 

No question war-time romances were not made in heaven and so that wife, Katie, after seeing Bill off for a long term flight school assignment in America got lonely, got antsy and struck up a bad relationship with a guy who promised her adventure and some much needed dough. Dough earned by being part of an international smuggling operation, mostly diamond. So once she had some serious dough and some serious wanting habits fulfilled like minks and high-end clothes she blew Bill off-headed uptown with the Mayfair swells. Leaving no forwarding address. Yeah, the vagaries of war. But intrepid Bill wasn’t buying that story and through musing up her girlfriend found out where she was hanging her hat. That is when all hell broke loose and maybe Bill should have just shaken it off and moved on.    

But not intrepid Bill. He confronted Katie at those new digs but before he could either make his case or find out why she had cold-shouldered him he got conked on the head by a party or parties unknown. And Katie well Katie got dead, got very dead by a gun found in Katie’s old apartment by Bill but which wound up in his conked-out head hand. The frame is on and Mister Bill is made to fit it. Fit to take the big step-off, to meet his maker (via the bloody hangman) unless he can work out who the hell killed his beloved wife, and why, within 36 hours when he has to catch that fugitive plane back  to America-or else.     

Of course the thing he needed to do immediately was flee that uptown swell apartment so he could avoid the bloody coppers who wanted to make sure he met that maker. Of course as well not being English he needed some help once he made his getaway. In his dashing getaway he found himself in an apartment of a young woman, some Judy who had a heart of gold since she worked the mission racket down on cheap street. He charmed his way into her good graces and she got knee- deep into his plot. Things seem to begin to make sense once Bill got information that dear Katie was shilling for this con artist who was working the international smuggling racket and with a nefarious fence who didn’t care if school kept or not as long as the dough kept rolling in.    

Naturally that Salvation Annie had to be put in danger by Bill’s plan to smoke out this dastardly con man posing as a treasury inspector. But the thing about Salvation Annies is that they don’t wilt so easy and ours doesn’t either. When the deal went down Bill put the rooty-toot-toot to the con man and the fence took some heat from the cops. Our Bill made the 36 hour connection no swear as Annie left him off at the base nice as could be. So you can see no femme like Jane Greer, no smart guy like Eddie Mars with gunsels at his disposal and no dark scenes to make you hope old Bill doesn’t face that hangman’s noose. Now if a fox like Katie had been highlighted well maybe after she led Bill a merry chase we could have had a plotline worth talking about. Sorry Hammer.         

In The Thick Of The Great Depression-Daydreams Of Social Mobility-The Film Adaptation Of Booth Tarkington’s “Alice Adams” (1935)- A Review

In The Thick Of The Great Depression-Daydreams Of Social Mobility-The Film Adaptation Of Booth Tarkington’s “Alice Adams” (1935)- A Review    

DVD Review

Si Lannon

Alice Adams, starring Katharine Hepburn, Fred MacMurray, from a novel by Booth Tarkington, 1935   

Growing up poor is a tough dollar no doubt about it. Maybe that is why I was assigned this film Alice Adams (based on the Booth Tarkington novel) by site manager Greg Green although a number of other writers here have also grown up under those conditions. Perhaps Greg chose me because my family circumstances kind of mirror those of the main character Alice, played by Katharine Hepburn. I grew up in the working-class poor Acre neighborhood in North Adamsville south of Boston where we were kind of the “middle class” meaning nothing other than we had our own house, small and dingy but our own as my mother was always fond of saying until her dying breathe (to distinguish us from those who rented apartments in the array of triple-decker buildings that were peppered around the neighborhood). Which also meant that my father, Norman, always had steady if not well-paid work at the North Adamsville Gear Works which was a sub-contracting outfit for the shipbuilding operations which dominated the town’s economy and kept us going until that shipbuilding pulled out to off-shore locations well after I came of age in the 1950s. That steady work was an important difference in the area since many, mainly men in those days of male breadwinners and female housewives, like Peter Paul Markin’s father for one, were always last hired, first fired in the up and down shipbuilding economy. There was always a tension between those who looked like they had made and those who were going to be left behind-always left behind.

That though is where the similarities between Alice, once again played by severely beautiful Katharine Hepburn, in the film and I differ significantly. Alice was always “putting on airs,” always lying to herself and others about her class situation. Always doe-eyed daydreaming that she was someplace above her station only to be crushed more times than not-for a while. I, on the other hand unknowingly accepted that we were working poor and that I should stay with guys like Markin and some of the guys who work here who grew up in the same town or small circumstances. Maybe it was because the rich and poor classes in my town never mixed much, except maybe a little in school and that only in passing.  (The very rich or the strivers sent their kids to private schools to “escape” having to deal with the raucous public schoolers and gain some resume credentials-some sent their kids to Catholic parochial schools but they were poor as church mice too and just wanted their kids away from the heathens like me and my crowd.)      

It was almost painful to see Alice and her upward social mobility strivings at the cost of her dignity and her intelligence kowtowing to others in town who flouted their good fortune fortunes. Of course some of this is just the myth of the American dream come to small-town America via a small town American girl who maybe read too many romantic novels, Cinderella stuff, when young. Abetted by a social striving mother who harpooned her father into giving a up a steady if underpaid and underutilized his skills job in order to rise economically for Alice’s benefit. Jesus, no wonder Alice was ready to debase herself at every moment in her quest for a rich man who would carry her off.  

Maybe I better set the story and you can figure out whether she was a holy goof or had more sense than I did in trying to get out from under that small- town girl rock. Alice, via her father, lives in an old-fashioned working- class house which befitted an employee, a clerk working for somebody else. Alice though had dreams and maybe some small connections to the upper classes via a tenuous friendship with one of the town debutantes. In order to “fit in” or believe she did she developed a whole persona who denied reality and lived in cloud cuckoo land. Except at one key dance she “met” Arthur, a rich young man played by Fred MacMurray last seen in this space bleeding like a sieve after Barbara Stanwyck threw a few off-hand slugs into him after the pair plotted the murder of her husband for dough and freedom in Double Indemnity, who somehow despite her wanderlust was attracted to her. Attracted despite being in some kind of relationship with that debutante who threw the party where they met.

Despite Alice’s antics, despite her slavish devotion to her dreams of upward mobility and her willfully false consciousness about her family’s financial condition Arthur stays the course. Stays the course even when she invites him to what turns out to be a disastrous dinner. Stays the course despite her brother’s getting into legal trouble and her father too in attempting to move up in class for her sake. Ms. Hepburn in the early days had a certain refreshing rose-cheeked charm and beauty but I will be damned unless Arthur was an airhead how she snagged that guy. But she did.

One More Johnny Blake, More Or Less, Is Not Worth Dying Over…With Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart’s “Bullets Or Ballots” (1936) In Mind

One More Johnny Blake, More Or Less, Is Not Worth Dying Over…With Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart’s “Bullets Or Ballots” (1936) In Mind   

DVD Review-of sorts

By Josh Breslin who re-enters the film review wars after a long-term assignment working through the effect on cultural workers who went through World War I which will be published in this space in November during the 100^th anniversary commemorations of Armistice Day which ended that war on November 11, 1918.

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The only thing as far as the law went worse that a crooked cop was an honest one. That was the familiar ring around my growing up neighborhood in the heavily French-Canadian Ocean View section of Olde Saco up in coastal old-time mill country Maine. That sentiment came to mind the other day when I watched the 1936 classic Bullets or Ballots where an honest cop, a public cop, tried to break up the rackets and got nothing but a diet of lead and maybe a big sent-off funeral from cop departments around the country.

(This saying obviously applied only to the very visible public coppers who ruined our young man-hoods although I will draw a distinction between the corrupt and honest a bit below after I mention that this only applies to civil servant coppers. Definitely not to private coppers, private eyes who we held in high regard off of the movie screen come Saturday afternoon at the Majestic in downtown Olde Saco. Although some of them might like Sam Spade, Nick Charles, Phil Larkin, and Phillip Marlowe have started out as public coppers they soon came up against that “go along, to get along” idea that most cop departments worked under and split that scene when they were looking for a little rough justice in this evil world. Tilted at windmills for a living although none of us every came in contact with any real P.I.s so that might be all hooey.)

Since this screed is as much about the cops, corrupt and honest, in that growing up town up in Maine let me give a short overview of that situation before going to the “what is what” of this film. Ocean View was heavily F-C as we used to say (F-C on my Le Blanc mother’s side with relatives who still live up there). There was always a tension between the Down-East Maine Yankee mill-owners and their hangers-on and the immigrant F-Cers from Quebec who came down to get off the dead-ass farms and make a little money when the mills were thriving mostly in my great-grandparents and my grandparents’ generations before and during World War II. In my parents’ generation those mills started to go south, to the low-wage non-union southern states before heading off-shore altogether. That did not stop the mill-owners and their hangers-on from lording it over the F-C community every way that they could. This included direct harassment of my crowd of guys who hung around Jimmy Jack’s Diner (owned by Jean-Jacques Renan who Anglicized his diner’s name to draw the old swamp Yankees in for lunch breaks and after work) mainly wishing and maybe a little thought of larceny which I will keep silent about.

Any given Friday or Saturday night during the school year, any given night in the ocean spray summer, Billy Babcock and William Smith, public coppers, and so crooked they needed a corkscrew to get into their respective uniforms would move us along even though Jimmy Jack could have cared less about us hanging around, at least outside in summer since this was peak tourist season when the place was jammed between mill-workers and “foreigners.”  During the winter, during the school year especially when we were in high school we could be inside o or outside since Jimmy Jack (sorry for not using his F-C name but we were so used to called him by his English moniker it is hard to change up even now) thought we added “class” to the place. By that he meant our hanging around brought guys with cars-and girls around. Girls to endlessly play his jukebox to perdition and back.

This is where a small example of how crooked Billy and Will were comes into play. They got a cut of the jukebox money, got a cut of the waitresses’ tips and a bunch of other small-time hoods hustles that even we from hunger kids would not stoop to do. They also make dough on their “protection” racket for small shop owners who didn’t want hoods hanging around their stores. Like I said crooked like pretzels. Which did not stop them from trying to shake us down as well to keep us out of jail when we were doing those un-said larcenies, or to just try to run us in as vagrants. A few groin kicks and police batons to the knees, front and back, were also part of their arsenal. Naturally every once in a while, the Yankee brethren who ran the mills and town would get in a reform mood and guys like Billy and Will would be bounced out. Replaced by a copper, an honest copper as far I know, like Officer Baker, that is what we called him, that is what he wanted to be called by guys like us. This guy wanted to be our friend, tried to get us to play basketball, Jesus, tried to wean us from jailbreak rock and roll whenever he came into Jimmy Jack’s’ to tell him to keep the jukebox music lower. (Like he couldn’t see that we had girls to die for who wanted louder music and no fucking basketball bozos hanging around them.) Like I said, and will say again, the only thing worse that a corrupt cop is an honest one.                 

Which brings us to one Johnny Blake, one honest copper in the red hot corrupt big urban city of New York in the film under review. This Johnny Blake, played by Edward G. Robinson who would later in one of his gangster films, Key Largo, play another Johnny, Johnny Rocco, who also fell down in a hail of bullets from a guy who didn’t like him much, made me feel the same way I had about the latter Johnny. As somebody said in that film “one Johnny Rocco, more or less, is not worth dying over.” You can figure six, two and even that nobody is going to cry much over this honest cop after he gets that big cop send-off. And they don’t except maybe some small-time hooker, bar girl, whatever, Clara,  who was running a small numbers racket while Johnny looked the other way. Yeah, she was sweet on Johnny boy but he was all cop, bled blue, although red when the deal went down.      

As Sam Lowell, my dear friend with his own public copper stories from down in the Acre section in North Adamsville south of Boston to tell, used to say here is the skinny. Gotham, or the do-gooder reform element in it were in one of their periodic “tired of the rackets” moods so they grabbed a head cop who they thought would clean up the town. Fat chance but they were trying anyway. This commissioner grabbed Johnny as a guy who knew the guys running the rackets, or who they thought were running the rackets. Brought him in to go palsy with Big Al Kruger the front man for whoever was really running the operations, the guys who were getting the big pay-offs. Some of Big Al’s underlings, especially one dope named Bugs, played by Humphrey Bogart who turned out to be the guy who said that remark about the Johnny Roccos of the world in Key Largo, and who liked to use his phallic symbol weapon, his gun, regularly or he got nervous suspected that Johnny Blake, ex-cop, was a stoolie, was working undercover.

Although Bugs, the guy with the itchy trigger finger, wasted a few too many people he shouldn’t have, was right about Johnny Big Al wouldn’t hear a word against Johnny once he conned him into doing the numbers racket big-time. Of course there had to be tension between “shoot and loot” old time Bugs and what he had represented back during Prohibition when a handy gun was a necessity and “businessman” low over-head Big Al. Johnny played to those irreconcilable tensions, played as well once he got in Big Al’s confidence the info-wars to find out who Mister Big really was. Well Johnny found out, found out the hard way after confronting Bugs after Bugs had wasted Big Al in a fit of hubris and was ready to take over the rackets himself. Johnny figured he was the guy the big boys would want to run things and he was right. Dead right once Bugs was tipped that Johnny was a stoolie. And the big boys-guess what-this ending is maybe something out of Bertolt Brecht’s Three Penny Opera the big boys were the biggest robbers of all-the leading town bankers. That didn’t mean much to Johnny though as he fell down with the life draining out of him on Wall Street. I wonder if he heard the noise of wings before the end-or Bugs’ ironic laugh.     

Oh What Tangled Web We Weave When We Practice To Deceive-With The Film Adaptation Of W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Letter” In Mind

Oh What Tangled Web We Weave When We Practice To Deceive-With The Film Adaptation Of W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Letter” In Mind

By Josh Breslin 

“I swear I wish sometimes I could be a woman. NO, I am not talking about turning from male to female or anything like that. Society in the year of our lord 1936 would not put up with it, would not put up with such an idea even though anybody who is anybody who has read any amount of history, the history of sexual experiences anyway knows, that cross-dressing, cross-sexing I guess you could call it has been going on since Eve came out of Adam’s rib, maybe before,” Roger Saint John mentioned in passing to his dear friend Bernard Baron. The causes for Mister Saint John’s comment were two-fold. He had just read his close friend Somerset’s latest novel, The Letter, after having avoided the pleasure as long as possible since he did not like the subject matter as a rule of whatever concoction Somerset had cooked up to titillate the literate reading public here adultery and murder, murder most foul. Moreover this same Bernard Baron had insisted that they go see the opening of the film adaptation of Somerset’s novel starring Bette Davis and he had had quite enough of the whole thing. However Roger was intrigued by the craziness, his term, that the woman would go through to hold a man, a man who was no longer interested in being with her.

This Clara, Bette Davis’ role in the film, starts off directly in scene one doing her version of rooty-toot toot on her paramour who went south on her, Roger something. Yes, dear Clara was in a tizzy over hard fact than this Roger cad was smitten by another woman. Maybe it was that Roger had gone “native” on her, had taken up with a beautiful Polynesian woman whom he swore he was pledged to eternal devotion. For that transgression he paid with about two fistfuls of bullets and plenty of splattered blood (to speak nothing of the defamation of his character as this Clara came up with the usual tart story that this Roger had made improper advantages toward her and she had to defend her honor, her womanhood in the only way that woman can-with a handy revolver.

But Saint John once he started to get up a head of steam decided that perhaps it would be better for the reader to have a little background as to why he was at pains to try to figure out what made the female sex tick. The ploy was pretty simple. Clara, married, unhappily married to Donald Smythe, the famous geological engineer for the East Coast Oil Company, was stuck unto death in dreary Indonesia where Donald was often called away on business for his company. Clara none too strong on Donald anyway except as a meal ticket out of the West End of London from whence she came got easily bored and started hanging around the Leeward Inn where she met this guy Steven who would wind up with many holes in him before Clara was through with him. They became hard and fast lovers for over a year and Clara, at least had dreams of getting out from under her Donald burden and leave the goddam archipelago and then Steven lowered the boom on her. Told her that he was in love with his native woman, Sisil. End of story. No, end of Steven. Clara was going to have her man or else she was going to take care of business her own way.

Here’s where things got dicey, where Saint John was at a lost to figure out what was running behind a woman’s mind when she has been unceremoniously dumped. She developed this whole elaborate plot about how her lover, now dead, and unable to contradict her had really being public nuisance number one, had thrust himself upon her. This weak sister of  an alibi which anybody who ever spent ten minutes at the Leeward Inn would know was false since Clara and Steven had their little corner love nest spot in the bar got her easily past her gullible and witless cuckolded husband, No problem. More importantly got her past the friendly constabulary which was friendly with Donald and wanted to be friendly toward whatever wishes East Coast Oil had. She was ready to walk after a perfunctory trial which was necessary given the death in the case,

Then the fucking letter came to light, the letter where Clara expressed her undying devotion to Steven and gave the back of her hand to the foolish Donald. She moved might and main to get that fucking letter back from whoever had found it. Of course it was Sisil who figured to cash in on Clara’s school girl indiscretion, cash in for then thou in cold hard cash. So the suppression of the letter got her off the murder rap. Didn’t get her off the rub out list though which Sisil had compiled just for her after taking her man from her. Maybe the whole thing should have been centered on what Sisil was going through rather than white girl Clara but that was a different time and maybe Somerset was deaf to such inklings. Go figure.             

[Afterword- we live in deeply troubled times, cold civil war times as almost every event over the past decade or so had indicated so this piece had a certain resonance for today even though the book, the subject matter and the film represented a very different look at what in the old days writer Seth Garth, quoting the late Peter Paul Markin a boyhood friend, was called the “Woman Question” in radical Cambridge circles. (In those halcyon days every political issue was framed as a question as in the Black Question, the Russian Question, the Party Question and so on so the Woman Question took its place in that context with the rise of the women’s liberation movement in the late 1960s.)

Perhaps Josh, who after all had as a moniker the Prince of Love in the Summer of Love, 1967 according to that same Seth Garth mentioned above, had been writing this piece today in 2018 rather than just five years ago he might have been a bit more circumspect about how he framed this version of the woman question which would be quite different today. Josh, with three unsuccessful marriages and many affairs, some while he was in various marriages, has made no bones about the fact that he doesn’t understand women, never has, since he was brought up with four brothers and no sisters to kind of pave the way and beside the time of his growing up time in Maine in the mid-1960s were not times that would lent themselves to develop any kind of equitable feelings toward women. And he didn’t-then-as he freely has admitted.    

But men can learn something in this wicked old world and Josh did, at least in a way, via learning about being on the right side of the angels on the question of war, now endless wars, having served in Vietnam during that hellish period. As an adjunct he “learned” to respect what the burgeoning women’s liberation movement was doing to step up the fact rather than the fiction of social equality. So, despite fits and starts, and despite that life-long habit of not understanding women, Josh has been very sympathetic to the #MeToo movement which has galvanized the country, pro and con pushed, on these days be those daughters from the various marriages.

This matter came to the fore when he had to deal thoughts of his own past mainly youthful ways of dealing with women, women as sex objects rather than social equals since that is really what is what a lot of the controversy has been about. Josh not only confesses to not understanding women but has been rather shy around them despite his reputation in various incantations of that original prince of love business. So he has never used whatever authority he had to get a woman to submit to his desires, or wants. When I asked him if he would change what he wrote when he wrote this review back a few years ago he said probably not because that would be anachronistic-moreover he really believed that Maugham’s view given his proclivities was a way of dealing with women not so foreign these days. He did say he thought running Sisil as the main character rather than Clara would be a better fit today but that was for somebody else to work on. Site Manager Greg Green]