***Out In The 1950s Film Noir Night-With Douglas Sirk’s Shockproof In Mind -Take Two

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Jenny Marsh grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, the 1930s Great Depression wrong side of the tracks that made it a very wrong side, made it much worse wrong side for the ninth child of a drunken father and a hard-pressed mother trying to keep nine growing hungry mouths fed. The drunken father, a carpenter and a good one when sober, had a nasty little habit of spending an inordinate amount of his hard work paycheck, meaning any, at his local Dublin Grille thus creating that hard-pressed mother. Mainly though Jenny’s father by the time she came of age was blur, a ship passing in the night, someone who never hit or abused but also one who never showed any kindness either. The hard-pressed mother, given the circumstances, did not move very far out of that hard-pressed range. And how could she trying to raise nine kids in a small one room cold- water flat in expansive Westminster just outside Los Angeles, learning to dispense some kind of justice and sense of order with the materials at hand. Not succeeding, just flat-out not succeeding and let’s leave that part as is.   

So all Jenny knew was wants, all she knew was nots, not this not that, all she knew was cramped spaces and not room to breathe, no room to do anything but claw her way out, claw her way out just as fast as she could. Any way she could. With anybody she could, knowing that if there was a role call count at the Marsh household one child more or less would not be missed. She would not be missed especially since Jenny as the last child was the end of the road on the hand-me-downs. That was the way her sweet young life had played out, kind of the child left behind of the lot and while she never spoke of it one way or the other, never expressed any bitterness about it publicly; she early on saw the writing on the wall and acted accordingly. She kept her thoughts, her emotions, and her angers in check, from the rest of the brood. But any outsider could see, any observant outsider could see, she was holding some flames, some burning desires inside.

At thirteen, not being much of a student, and not having anybody at home looking over her shoulder to see that she attended school one truant day Jenny met Soldier Johnson down at the arcade, down at the Santa Monica pier. Soldier the well-known and feared leader of the biker corner boy gang in Westminster saw her budding womanly figure, her dark blue eyes, her long brown hair and grabbed her up without a second thought (although he was married, very married as she found out later, too much later) and staked his claim to her. Now Soldier liked them young (he married his wife at sixteen, a close shave sixteen), and he liked them exclusive. Unlike some of the other guys on his corner, his low-riders, he did not share his women (and those other women, to be honest, were as likely to like to be shared as not). What was important though is that Soldier could enforce his law, enforce it with a whip-chain if necessary. All it took was one incident to impose his rule. One night he waylaid Spanish Johnny the leader of the tough Mex low-riders just for riding on Fourth Street, Soldier’s turf. And the bloodied and bandaged Spanish Johnny was one tough hombre. So like the man says he was the king hell king of the Westminster night.

All this by way of pointing out Jenny’s initial naïve school- girlish attraction to the Soldier.

Needless to say she lost her virginity to him quickly, practically begged him to make her a women, to make her feel she belonged to someone, some thing. But she also lost, lost in the shuffle of being paid attention too, of the thrilling thought of being some man’s girl, of being a small time boss man’s girl, her moral compass. While Soldier never abused her, never hit her like some of the gang members did with their women, or anything like that he had an evil hold on her, an evil sense of her needs and of her naïve in this wicked old world. After a couple of years of her undying devotion to him he felt no compulsion about pimping her to the squares a few times when he was strapped for cash.  Low-rider corner boys have an automatic distaste for nine to five work, actually any work outside of some midnight rip-off so when it is time too cool out when the cop heat is on money is scarce and so out in the streets the women go. In that Soldier universe the exclusive clause is held in abeyance, is let go as an exception. Jenny in love, or just tired of thinking about those home wanting she fled from obliged him as her walking daddy, no questions asked, and while hustling for tricks at the bars in Westminster and later along Hollywood Boulevard, accumulated a few thirty day stays in county for her efforts.

That arrangement went on periodically until Soldier Johnson drew to an inside straight one night, got caught in a jam with some rival chieftain of the Inglewood bikers, a big tough black guy, Midnight Slim, picked up a dime for manslaughter and flew the coop to the Q (San Quentin, if you didn’t know). He left Jenny, who said she would wait for him, wait for as long as it took (that was when she found out he was married, married with two kids, when the prison refused to put her on Soldier’s visitor list) stranded, stranded walking the streets picking up an odd trick or two without the benefit of her walking daddy to protect her. Thus she was picked a couple more times for the thirty day cure. So times were no question tough, although not as tough as hanging around some nine to a room cold water flat at least that is how Jenny scoped the scene. Then Harry came along.

Yes, for the record, Harry picked her up one night on the streets when he had a manly urge and she was walking, walking from hunger, so their romance, and whether you or I see it that way, it was a romance, was not something built from watching some melodramatic movie. But for Jenny Harry had something, had a certain something to hold onto now that Soldier was in the can, and off her radar with that wife thing. See Harry was a college guy, a guy who came from some blueblood family back east that had fallen on hard times and so Harry was left to do the best that he could do. And for Harry the best that he could do, the best that he wanted to do, was to be a gentleman gambler. And for the most part he was good at it. Jenny was enthralled by his manner and be his attentions after that first paid-up night, since her idea, with her narrow experience of men, her low-rider Soldier education, of a good man turned out to be a guy like Harry.

Harry who moreover taught her how to dress, taught her some gentle manners, and taught her how to talk without swearing out every other word. And took serious pains to do what he could so he could be proud to have her on his arm when he was doing his business. Harry was a regular Professor Higgins. Well almost. See Harry took his gentleman gambler job seriously, seriously enough to scorn the idea of working when times were tough, times when lady luck was against him. So now well-dressed, well-mannered, well-spoken from time to time Jenny had to work in some high-end whorehouse, Miss Millie’s over in the Hollywood Hills, that Harry knew of until his luck changed. She didn’t mind, not after all Harry had for done for her, not after he had proven that he was the first man who cared for her, really cared for her. She would do anything for Harry, anything.

And as luck, bad luck, would have it she was taken up on that pledge one night when the other shoe dropped, Harry’s other shoe. It seemed some guy, another gentleman gambler, Frank Little, was spreading the word that Harry’s luck was, well, enhanced, was helped along by a little manipulation. Jenny who couldn’t stand to hear anything like that about her walking daddy in a fit of anger blasted him with a couple of shots in the heart that night, the night he sat at the card table and made his allegations. (A person, who shall remain nameless, who was at the table that night and lost a bundle, later, after all the dust had settled in, told Jenny that Harry actual was dealing from the bottom of the deck that night. That person was not shot for his honestly. By then Jenny was a little cooler in the head). As so for protecting her walking daddy, for protecting her man’s reputation, Jenny drew a dime up at the Women’s Prison in Los Gatos. Harry said her would get her help, get her out somehow, and stand by her. And here‘s the funny thing he did, did stand by her, and did grease enough palms to get her paroled after five years. So it must have been some kind of love Harry carried for Jenny, although you and I might not appreciate the finer points of that love.

But this California parole stuff is a drag. Jenny couldn’t, couldn’t do a million things, including being seen with the likes of Harry. What she could do was get a legitimate job, one approved of by her parole officer, a time-server, John Howard. (That did not stop him, knowing her street-walking past, from grabbing a piece every now and again under threat of shipping her back for no reason, the bastard.) That job, since she had no other known legit skills, had turned out to be serving them off the arm working for Jeff, Jeff Morse, who owned a hash house on the Pacific Coast Highway above Malibu. Jeff, a friend of Howard’s, was supposed to enforce the parole regulations to the letter, to act as Howard’s agent. So for a while, a fairly long while, about a year, there was a tug of war between Jenny and Jeff over her relationship with Harry since she was seeing him on the sly. At one point Jeff, fed up with covering for Jenny, getting pressure from Howard too, had her down at the station all ready to be sent back to Los Gatos so things were dicey. But here is the funny part throughout these tussles Jeff and Jenny were kind of falling for each other, falling hard once Jenny started to see that Harry was all about Harry (with Jeff egging that idea on by reminding her that she did the time for Harry not the other way around). After a few months (and more than a few nights under the sheets over at Jeff’s apartment) they were married.

So Jenny tried to break it off with Harry. But guys like Harry don’t get to be guys like Harry by taking a hit to their pride and pocketbook so Harry threatened to expose, publicly expose, what he knew about her and her whoring days. Jeff would not like that, for sure. That would not fit comfortably in his little white picket fence house with dog and children that he had convinced Jenny they should dream of.  So one night, a night very much like the night Frank Little went to his just rewards Jenny put a couple of random slugs in Harry. And that action started a whole cascade of madness once Jenny explained to Jeff what Harry was trying to do. And Jeff bought her story, bought it without rancor. He knew that Jenny could not face another rap, could not expect to do anything but a long stretch if she turned herself in. So he cast his fate with hers, decided they had to flee. So Jeff too became an outlaw, grabbing as much dough from the diner till as he could, as they fled town not sure whether Harry was dead or alive but also not wanting to stay around to find out if he wasn’t.

So they, the pair of them, bummed around up and down the coast, Jeff working odd jobs, and Jenny keeping house, keeping on the move though, waiting, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And somehow through this entire trauma, maybe seeing how a man actually put himself on the line for her and reacting accordingly, Jenny developed a moral compass, or the one she always had hidden showed up, because she was the one who said they had to go back and face the music. And they did.

Here is how things get a little crazy in human existence though. It turned out that Harry had not died, although for a while it was a close thing. When it came time for Harry to press charges he passed, passed on the chance when he saw the Jeff-Jenny set-up as real. When he saw he was the odd man out. Yes, that Jenny finally drew a break, even if she did come from the wrong side of the tracks.