“And The Choir Kept Singing Of Freedom”- Birmingham Sunday-1963-A Reflection After Viewing "Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project"Photograph Display At The National Gallery Of Art

“And The Choir Kept Singing Of Freedom”- Birmingham Sunday-1963-A Reflection After Viewing "Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project"Photograph Display At The National Gallery Of Art

Richard Farina's Birmingham Sunday 

Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project

September 12, 2018 – March 24, 2019

West Building, Ground Floor

Dawoud Bey, Mary Parker and Caela Cowan, 2012, 2 inkjet prints mounted to dibond, overall: 101.6 x 162.56 cm (40 x 64 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the Collectors Committee and the Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

For more than 40 years photographer Dawoud Bey (b. 1953) has portrayed American youth and those from marginalized communities with sensitivity and complexity. Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project marks the National Gallery of Art's recent acquisition of four large-scale photographs and one video from Bey's series, The Birmingham Project, a tribute to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. Coinciding with the 55th anniversary of this tragedy, the exhibition focuses on how Bey visualizes the past through the lens of the present, pushing the boundaries of portraiture and engaging ongoing national issues of racism, violence against African Americans, and terrorism in churches.

On September 15, 1963, four girls were killed in the dynamiting of the church, and two teenaged boys were murdered in racially motivated violence. Each of Bey’s diptychs combines one portrait of a young person the same age as one of the victims, and another of an adult 50 years older—the child's age had she or he survived. Alongside these photographs, the exhibition features Bey's video 9.15.63. This split-screen projection juxtaposes a re-creation of the drive to the 16th Street Baptist Church, taken from the vantage point of a young child in the backseat, with slow pans that move through everyday spaces (beauty parlor, barbershop, lunch counter, and schoolroom) as they might have appeared that Sunday morning. Devoid of people, these views poeticize the innocent lives ripped apart by violence.

This exhibition is curated by Kara Fiedorek, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow in the department of photographs, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

By Seth Garth

Sometimes things, events, ideas, and such lead into one another. Recently I had written a short piece based on hearing a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where the reporter was ruminating about the effect that folk-singer/songwriter Bob Dylan’s “anthem” The Times They Are A-Changin’ had on her and the Generation of ‘68 when it first hit the airwaves in 1963. That reportage got my attention since I have spent plenty of cyber-ink throughout my journalistic career highlighting various aspects of the tremendous push on my generation, that Generation of ’68 or the best part of it, of events in the early 1960s which were harbingers of what we expected to have occur that would change the world, would turn the world upside down. I thus need not go into detail here about my notion that Bob Dylan’s song set him up as the “voice” of a generation whether he wanted to be that or not. Nor about what effect that song, and songs like his had on us, gave us our marching orders.          

As part of her presentation the reporter mentioned that some events, some events down South around the black civil rights movement against one Mister James Crow like the beatings, the water-hosing and the unleashing of the vicious dogs by the police on innocent protestors had on her growing political consciousness, her desire to work for social change. Although she did not specifically mention Birmingham Sunday, the bombing of a black church killing four innocent children and wounding others that event triggered the activism button of many young people, including myself. 

I have detailed elsewhere some of the events like the black civil rights struggle down South, the fight for nuclear bomb disarmament, the emerging struggle against the escalating Vietnam War as acting as catalysts to action. Also tried to convey a more general sense of the mood of the times among young people that the world, a world then on the brink, on as one song had it on the “eve of destruction” was not responding to their needs, was not changing in ways that we could understand. Most of all that we had no say, had not been asked about what had been created in our names. And nobody in power seemed to think that they needed to consult us.  

All of this came to mind as well by a recent visit to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. where on the ground floor there was a small photographic exhibit centered on that Birmingham Sunday bombing. A kind of what if, or rather what would those who were killed or maimed look like today if they had been permitted to live out their precious lives. That got me to thinking the thoughts I expressed in that “voice of a generation” commentary and about the changes in people who did survive, who now have aged, gracefully or not, and who are thinking about, are summing up their lives and what they did, or did not do. Powerful stuff although when one realizes what is what in the world today one has to be very circumspect about the little changes we have made. Not profound but something to think about whatever generation designation.

Sports And Social Issues DO Intersect-In Honor Of Muhammad Ali, Tommy Smith And John Carlos-Colin Kaepernick-Same Struggle-Same Fight

Sports And Social Issues DO Intersect-In Honor Of Muhammad Ali, Tommy Smith And John Carlos-Colin Kaepernick-Same Struggle-Same Fight   

By Frank Jackman

It is hard to believe not that many of the same social issues, the question of racial and sexual equality in particular, from 50 years ago still haunt the land but that the yahoo, yes, yahoo reaction is still the same. Today we are talking about the intersection of sports and social issues but it could have been anything from the #MeToo movement to voter suppression in Georgia and elsewhere. It has been a while since San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, ah, ex-quarterback “took the knee” to highlight in a personal way the charged subject of black inequality and police brutality toward the black community. But given the resurgent flack with the Nike contract it pays to mention that his work, his political work has a fairly long pedigree.

That pedigree without going back further in time got highlighted for me recently by two things I noticed when I was down in Washington, D.C. on another assignment and on fellow writer Seth Garth recommendation I stepped into the National Portrait Gallery’s year-long exhibition on that fateful year 1968 which we are now commemorating the 50^th anniversary of many of the key and shocking events. I have mentioned elsewhere, as have a number of the old guard writers at this publication who also came of age in those times, my reaction to the events and so need not detain the reader on that score. A couple of photographs got me thinking about sports and society if you will. One was a clip of Muhammad Ali (former Cassius Clay) talking about his reasoning for refusing draft induction in the U.S. military during the height of the Vietnam War and the other was the perhaps more famous one of Olympic champion at the 200m Tommy Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos “taking the raised black fist” on the medal podium in Mexico City.        

Both situation evoked hue and cry from rabid sports nuts, ravenous sports officials and their hangers-on in the media and of course the disturbed the boast corporate sponsors of all things sports. So Colin join the club. What seems weird some fifty years later when the sports industry, yes, industry cries foul when business as usual, which means the population consuming what ever sports package is presented is upended by political and social controversy like this area of life was in some kind of no entrance bubble. Now I admit I am not much of a sports fan, maybe a little college football because I have felt that this was one of the least consumer-driven areas although even that is suspect but whether I agree with whatever tactic is being used sports is “fair game” as a platform for talking about social injustices and the like. Hell, the other side, the yahoos,  have been spouting their mores, morals, and bullshit forever. One example takes the thing in the right direction. At one time early in the 20^th century professional baseball had blacks on major league teams. Then the owners got together and froze blacks out as a concession to racial animosities among whites. It took practically a civil war in itself, witness the Jackie Robinson story, to get blacks back in. Case closed.        

Happy Birthday Townes- In The Time Of The Time Of The British Blues Explosion-He Ain't No One-Trick Pony- The Belfast Cowboy Rides Again Van Morrison’s “Down The Road”

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Van Morrison performing The Beauty Of Days Gone By.

CD Review

Down The Road, Van Morrison, Exile Records, 2002

Apparently just now, although this time rather accidentally, I am on something of an outlaw country moment tear, again. I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre in the late 1970s. After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other more well know country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of Townes Van Zandt whose Steve Earle tribute album Townes I have recently reviewed in this space. As I noted there, as well, while this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrambled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes and is funny mix of blues, folk rock, rock folk, and just downright outlaw country.

And that brings us to the album under review, Down The Road, and another “outlaw” country music man, the Belfast Cowboy, Van Morrison. Wait a minute, Van Morrison? Belfast cowboy? Okay, let me take a few steps back. I first heard Van Morrison in his 1960s rock period when I flipped out over his Into The Mystic on his Moondance album. And when I later saw him doing some blues stuff highlighted by his appearance in Martin Scorsese PBS History of Blues series several years ago I also flipped out, and said yes, brother blues. But somewhere along the way he turned again on us and has “reinvented” himself as the “son”, the legitimate son, of Hank Williams. And hence the Belfast Cowboy. But he ain't no one-trick pony. No way, no how, just too many lessons "learned."

If you do not believe me then just listen to him ante up on Steal My Heart Away, a classic bluesy number; the thoughtful The Beauty Of Days Gone By; the pathos of Chopping Wood; the title song reflecting back on youthful rock timesDown The Road; and, something out of time,Fast Train. The Belfast cowboy, indeed, although I always thought cowboys worn their emotions down deep, not on their blues high white note sleeves. But I guess they do.

Happy Birthday Joni Mitchell-Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part Three- The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-Tom Rush

Happy Birthday Joni Mitchell-Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part Three- The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-Tom Rush

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Tom Rush performing Joni Mitchell's "Circle Game"

CD Review

Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001

Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD.Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:

Disc Three: Phil Ochs on “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”, Richard &Mimi Farina on “Pack Up Your Sorrows”, John Hammond on “Drop Down Mama”, Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band on “Rag Mama”, John Denver on “Bells Of Rhymney”, Gordon Lightfoot on "Early Morning Rain”, Eric Andersen on “Thirsty Boots”, Tim Hardin on “Reason To Believe”, Richie Havens on “Just Like A Woman”, Judy Collins on “Suzanne”, Tim Buckley on “Once I Was”, Tom Rush on “The Circle Game”, Taj Mahal on “Candy Man”, Loudon Wainwright III on “School Days”and Arlo Guthrie on “The Motorcycle Song”

Tom Rush on “The Circle Game”. Joni Mitchell wrote it. Tom Rush sings it. That is enough for me. Except I think we have to expand the number of verses to cover later times (after 20)...and to keep slowing those circles down. Please!


"Circle Game"-Joni Mitchell

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like, when youre older, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and dawn
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we con only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town
And they tell him,
Take your time, it wont be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and dawn
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur
Coming true
Therell be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through.
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

From The Living Archives Of Boston Veterans For Peace-They Ain't Your Grandfather's Veterans -The Annual Honk! Parade

From The Living Archives Of Boston Veterans For Peace-They Ain't Your Grandfather's Veterans

[Ralph Morris who has lived in Troy, New York most of his life, been raised there and raised his own family there, went to war, the bloody, horrendous Vietnam War which he has made plain many times he will never live down, never get over what he did, what he saw others do, and most importantly for the long haul, what his evil government did with no remorse to people in that benighted country with whom he had no quarrel never was much for organizations, joining organizations when he was young until he came up a group formed in the fire of the Vietnam War protests -Vietnam Veteran Against the War (VVAW) which he joined after watching a contingent of them pass by in silent march protesting the war in downtown Albany one fall afternoon. Somebody in that contingent with a microphone called out to any veterans observing the march who had had enough of war, had felt like that did to “fall in” (an old army term well if bitterly remembered). He did and has never looked back although for the past many years his affiliation has been with a subsequent anti-war veterans’ group Veterans for Peace.  

Sam Eaton, who has lived in Carver, Massachusetts, most of his life, been raised there and raised his own family there, and did not go to war. Did not go for the simple reason that due to a severe childhood accident which left him limping severely thereafter he was declared no fit for military duty, 4-F the term the local draft board used. He too had not been much for organizations, joining organizations when he was young. That is until his best friend from high school, Jeff Mullins, died in hell-hole Vietnam and before he had died asked Sam that if anything happened to him to let the world that he had done things, had seen others do things, and most importantly for the long haul, what his evil government did with no remorse to people in that benighted country with whom he had no quarrel. As part of honoring Jeff’s request after Sam found out about his death he was like a whirling dervish joining one anti-war action after another, joining one ad hoc group, each more radical than the previous one as the war ground away, ground all rational approach vapid, let nothing left but to go left, until the fateful day when he met Ralph down in Washington, D.C.

That was when both in their respective collectives, Ralph in VVAW and Sam in Cambridge Red Front, were collectively attempting one last desperate effort to end the war by closing down the government if it would not shut down the war. All they got for their efforts were tear gas, police batons, and arrest bracelets and a trip to the bastinado which was the floor of Robert F. Kennedy stadium which is where they would meet after Sam noticed Ralph’s VVAW pin and told him about Jeff and his request. That experience would form a lasting friendship including several years ago Sam joining Ralph’s Veterans for Peace as a supporter, an active supporter still trying to honor his long- gone friend’s request and memory.

No one least of all either of them would claim they were organizing geniuses, far from it but over the years they participated, maybe even helped organize many anti-war events. One day their friend, Josh Breslin, who writes a by-line at this publication, and who is also a veteran asked them to send some of events they had participated in here to form a sort of living archives of the few remaining activist groupings in this country, in America who are still waging the struggle for peace.

Periodically, since we are something of a clearing house and historic memory for leftist activities, we will put their archival experiences into our archives. One of the most interesting parades they have attended over the past several years is something over what used to be known in polite society in October as Columbus Day, then except maybe in the Italian neighborhoods Discoverer’s Day and lately in those Cambridge-Somerville precincts Ingenious People’s Day is the Honk! (that exclamation mark goes with it) which starts in the latter town and end in the former town in Harvard Square. This is what they laughingly call a “preaching to the choir” parade, meaning of course those who are without some combination of progressive/leftwing/identity politics while not excluded would be out of place in contingents of wild-eyed marching bands (definitely not your John Phillip Sousa productions), jugglers, clowns, lithe stilt-walkers and whatever including more cross-dressing than one would think possible in such a relatively small space.     

The beauty of this one for Smedleys, the Smedley Butler Brigade, the designation of the local chapter, made up of like Ralph many Vietnam era veterans is that the parade is mercifully short by parade standards and moves pretty quickly. Best of all is the great response they get from the crowds along the route. As Ralph mentioned to Josh one time the rush that he got from the crowds especially in Harvard Square got him through the year. Josh wondered if Sam felt the same. Site Manager Greg Green]   

 

First Call-Honk! Parade-Harvard Square Octoberfest Marchers and Volunteers for Sunday October 7^th -use this thread to response to announcement=Ralph Morris     

Right now I am heading a committee of Tommy Boucher, John Ratliff, John Robinson and Pat Scanlon as marchers/volunteers

We need marchers to meet at about 11 AM in Davis Square to march a mile or so to Harvard Square with banners and flags. We can use someone to bring the materials to Davis Square

Each year we set up the canopy and tables with literature and clothing for sale. etc. so we need help I am not sure exactly when but probably about 10 AM to set up, to staff the table for two hour shifts and to help take down about 5 PM

Use this thread to volunteer

  

Also I would like us to use every opportunity to push our Armistice Day activities on the 100^th anniversary come Nob 11^th so we will need people to make banners or maybe Pat Scanlon can ask his banner-making to help us out yet again. Later Ralph Morris   

Happy Birthday Tom Rush -For Bob Dylan *Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part Two- The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-Eric Von Schmidt

Happy Birthday Tom Rush -For Bob Dylan *Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part Two- The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-Eric Von Schmidt

A link to YouTube's film clip of Eric Von Schmidt performing "Joshua's Gone Barbados".

CD Review

Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001

Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:

Disc Two: Dave Van Ronk on “He Was A Friend Of Mine” and You’se A Viper”, The Chad Mitchell Trio on “Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream”, Hedy West on “500 Miles”, Ian &Sylvia on “Four Strong Winds”, Tom Paxton on “I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound”, Peter, Paul And Mary on “Blowin’ In The Wind”, Bob Dylan on “Boots Of Spanish Leather”, Jesse Colin Young on “Four In The Morning”, Joan Baez on “There But For Fortune”, Judy Roderick on “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?”, Bonnie Dobson on “Morning Dew”, Buffy Sainte-Marie on “Cod’ine” and Eric Von Schmidt on “ Joshua Gone Barbados”.

Eric Von Schmidt on “Joshua Gone Barbados”. As a good historical materialism of the Marxist tradition I am very wedded to the idea that ideas, movements and the like do not just spring forth in pristine nature but are conditioned by a whole series of prior events. Figuring out the important ones that drive history has been a life-long occupation. What has required less time is the knowledge that certain folk personalities like Dave Van Ronk (and the members of New Lost City Ramblers) were waiting in Greenwich Village when the young aspiring folkies were heading to Mecca.

There were other “hot” folk spots as well, with their own local town-greeters. In the case of Cambridge by the banks of the old Charles River and adjacent to that citadel of folk wisdom, Harvard University, that task was done by, among others, Eric Von Schmidt. Bob Dylan makes reference to Eric in one of his early albums. How about that for cache? I have written elsewhere about Eric’s role I only need to note here that there are two other songs that could have been included here: his cover of “When That Great Ship When Down” (about the Titanic, naturally); and, his own “Light Rain” are good examples of the kind of energy that was around in those days.

******

Sunday, March 11, 2007
Joshua Gone Barbados. Eric Gone, Too.(v2)

JOSHUA GONE BARBADOS. ERIC GONE, TOO. (Version 2)

Eric von Schmidt, a painter and folksinger, died February 2, 2007 in Connecticut. Bob Dylan wrote of him that “He could sing the bird off the wire and the rubber off the tire, he can separate the men from the boys and the note from the noise". But why should that be of interest to people in St. Vincent? Because his most recorded and most famous song, "Joshua Gone Barbados", is about an incident that happened near Georgetown:

http://svgblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/joshua-gone-barbados-eric-gone-toov2.html

"Joshua Gone Barbados".


"Cane standing in the fields getting old and red
Lot of misery in Georgetown, three men lying dead
And Joshua, head of the government, he say strike for better pay
Cane cutters are striking, Joshua gone away.

Chorus: Joshua gone Barbados, staying in a big hotel
People on St. Vincent they got many sad tales to tell.

Sugar mill owner told the strikers, I don't need you to cut my cane
Bring in another bunch of fellows, strike be all in vain.
Get a bunch of tough fellows, bring 'em from Sion Hill
Bring 'em in a bus to Georgetown, know somebody get killed.

And Sonny Child the overseer, I swear he's an ignorant man
Walking through the canefield, pistol in his hand
But Joshua gone Barbados, just like he don't know
People on the Island, they got no place to go.

Police giving protection, new fellows cutting the cane
Strikers can't do nothing, strike be all in vain
And Sonny Child he curse the strikers, wave his pistol 'round
They're beating Sonny with a cutlass, beat him to the ground.

Chorus 2:There's a lot of misery in Georgetown,
you can hear the women bawl
Joshua gone Barbados, he don't care at all.

Cane standing in the fields getting old and red
Sonny Child in the hospital, pistol on his bed
I wish I could go to England, Trinidad or Curacao
People on the Island they got no place to go.

The Answer My Friend Is Blowing (No Clipped “G”) In The Wind-The Influence Of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” On The “Generation of’68”-The Best Part Of That Cohort

Link to NPR Morning Edition 'The Times They Are A-Changin" Still Speaks To Our Changing Times  https://www.npr.org/2018/09/24/650548856/american-anthem-the-times-they-are-a-changin

By Seth Garth

No question this publication both in its former hard copy editions and now more so in the on-line editions as the, ouch, 50^th anniversary of many signature events for the “Generation of ‘68” have come and gone that the whole period of the 1950s and 1960s had gotten a full airing. Has been dissected, deflected, inspected, reflected and even rejected beyond compare. That is not to say that this trend won’t continue if for no other reason that the demographics and actual readership response indicate that people still have a desire to not forget their pasts, their youth.

(Under the new site manager Greg Green, despite what I consider all good sense having worked under taskmaster Allan Jackson, we are encouraged to give this blessed readership some inside dope, no, no that kind, about how things are run these days in an on-line publication. With that okay in mind there was a huge controversy that put the last sentence in the above paragraph in some perspective recently when Greg for whatever ill-begotten reason thought that he would try to draw in younger audiences by catering to their predilections-for comic book character movies, video games, graphic novels and trendy music and got nothing but serious blow-back from those who have supported this publication financially and otherwise both in hard copy times and now on-line. What that means as the target demographic fades is another question and maybe one for a future generation who might take over the operation. Or perhaps like many operations this one will not outlast its creators- and their purposes.)    

Today’s 1960s question, a question that I have asked over the years and so I drew the assignment to address the issue-who was the voice of the 1960s. Who or what. Was it the lunchroom sit-inners and Freedom Riders, what it the hippies, was it SDS, the various Weather configurations, acid, rock, folk rock, folk, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Abbie Hoffman, Grace Slick, hell the Three Js-Joplin, Jimi, Jim as in Morrison and the like. Or maybe it was a mood, a mood of disenchantment about a world that seemed out of our control, which seemed to be running without any input from us, without us even being asked. My candidate, and not my only candidate but a recent NPR Morning Edition segment brought the question to mind (see above link), is a song, a song created by Bob Dylan in the early 1960s which was really a clarion call to action on our part, or the best part of our generation-The Times They Are A-Changin’.    

I am not sure if Bob Dylan started out with some oversized desire to be the “voice” of his generation. He certainly blew the whole thing off later after his motorcycle accident and still later when he became a recluse even if he did 200 shows a year, maybe sullen introvert is better, actually maybe his own press agent giving out dribbles is even better but that song, that “anthem” sticks in memory as a decisive summing up of what I was feeling at the time. (And apparently has found resonance with a new generation of activists via the March for Our Lives movement and other youth-driven movements.) As a kid I was antsy to do something, especially once I saw graphic footage on commercial television of young black kids being water-hosed, beaten and bitten by dogs down in the South simply for looking for some rough justice in this wicked old world. Those images, and those of the brave lunch-room sitters and Freedom bus riders were stark and compelling. They and my disquiet over nuclear bombs which were a lot scarier then when there were serious confrontations which put them in play and concern that what bothered me about having no say, about things not being addressed galvanized me.

The song “spoke to me” as it might not have earlier or later. It had the hopeful ring of a promise of a newer world. That didn’t happen or happen in ways that would have helped the mass of humanity but for that moment I flipped out every time I heard it played on the radio or on my old vinyl records record-player. Other songs, events, moods, later would overtake this song’s sentiment but I was there at the creation. Remember that, please.   

The Art Theft That Made The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft Look Like Child’s Play-Burt Lancaster’s “The Train” (1965)-A Film Review

The Theft That Made The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft Look Like Child’s Play-Burt Lancaster’s “The Train” (1965)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

The Train, starring Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Jeanne Moreau, 1965

The world, or at least the art world, those interested in art anyway is still in wonder, dismay, confusion about how the robbery of a bunch of extremely valuable paintings including work by Rembrandt and other masters from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston which after all these years still have not resurfaced in public. Wonder how what is something like a half a billion dollars’ worth of art has never seen the light of day. In some quarters, and not just among the street junkies and hipsters you can make serious money betting on who ordered the heist, who carried it out and who has kept the lid on this mystery for so long. Maybe Whitey Bulger went to his recent merciless grave with the secrets intact, maybe Myles Connors who I interviewed one night when he was in one of his short time out of jail moments in the role of President of Rock and Roll when I was a stringer at this publication although that night was about music not artworks, stolen or not, maybe Sid Larry, who is my personal chose if for no other reason that he was one of the great night crawlers of all time and never saw a jail cell. (In the interest of today’s necessary notice of transparency I have a one thousand dollar bet riding on him as the villain with his brother Ned, who I dated for a while after Josh Breslin and I split up.)   

(By the way every time patrons goes to the Gardner they are reminded of the theft by the empty framed spaces where the artwork had been prior to the theft. The interest in what happened that night and how is still high as a local Boston NPR continuing series has yet again explored what happened.) 

After viewing the film under review, The Train, which is based on a French non-fictional book which has documented the thefts by the German Army and other allied forces of major artworks from museums and private collections in France (needless to say and sadly from Jewish art collectors with a vengeance) as they roamed stealing everything not nailed down, and some stuff that was, throughout Europe, roamed particularly through Paris when that city was the epicenter of the art world before World War II that Gardner heist seems like small potatoes. Moreover, the Germans thought that their mere possession of the confiscated property meant that they were entitled to ship the entire looted works back to Germany as the Allies started their serious counter-offensive in 1944 to take back the night from the night-takers. This film details ficticously efforts by the French Resistance to stop the train from leaving the country playing off the real situation where a Free French officer Rosenberg actually did stop a train leaving for Germany with a lot of his art dealer and collector father’s artworks. The real story seems more intriguing in some ways especially since it has taken the equivalent of a legal civil war to get even some of the art works back to their rightful owners.

But the storyline here has its own intrigue and its own sense of logic at a time when the world had gone mad, a time not so very different than our times, or what could be our times if some social tinder gets stoked with the current madness afoot in the land. The whole expedition was planned by one German officer, Waldheim played by Paul Scofield, an art aficionado who apparently did not care that in Germany most works of modern art, meaning art by guys like Otto Dix, George Groz, Picasso, Matisse, damn, even innocuous guys like Degas and Cezanne were “degenerate.” Many a German smoke-filled night saw such works put to the torch. This mad man German officer was a walking bundle of contradictions since on the one hand he had something of a snobbish elitist concept of art and culture as being exclusively the domain of cultured gentlemen like him. On the other he had no problem killing every opponent who tried to stop the shipment’s passage to speak nothing of wasting everybody who got in the way of the German advances to the West, to blood stained Paris earlier in the war when the Germans seemed invincible. He was more than willing, thought it was clever, maybe even a brilliant advance for humankind to have civilian hostages on the locomotive of the train to avoid the damn thing being blown up. Shed not one tear when he ordered the hostages machine-gunned when he plans went awry, when he couldn’t get the art out of the country.    

Of course such a man needed an adversary, a worthy opponent to check his every move. A man or a group, here agents of the French Resistance, who while not having a refined sense of art, maybe even sense that with the world going to hell in a handbasket that some baubles were not worth the effort but who nevertheless made the call to arms when some who saw art, great art or small, an accrual in humankind’s struggle to emerge from the mud took matters into their own hands to stop the looting of French national treasures. That man, Lebite, played by ruggedly handsome Burt Lancaster last seen in this space according to Sam Lowell taking a few unaccounted for slugs over some wayward dame in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers, no man of culture, a man who could have given a damn about this load of art. Except somebody, some comrades, went back down into the mud on Waldheim’s watch for trying to stop, excuse my English, but my French heritage, my Quebecois heritage is showing, his fucking train full of loot.

So the chase was on between these two uneven forces. Naturally once the line-up was set up, and knowing the outcome of World War II, Waldheim would not be successful in his thefts, although it really was a close thing. In the end nobody could, or should have, shed tear number one when our French Resistance fighter took one glance at those machine-gunned civilians and wasted Waldheim without remorse, walked away. Yeah, that Gardner Museum heist was peanuts when you think about it-and that is the unvarnished truth.       

1957 HITS ARCHIVE: Dark Moon - Bonnie Guitar

The Harder They Fall, Indeed-Humphrey Bogart’s “The Harder They Fall” (1956)-A Film Review

The Harder They Fall, Indeed-Humphrey Bogart’s “The Harder They Fall” (1956)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By “Sports Columnist” Fritz Taylor 

The Harder They Fall, starring Humphrey Bogart, Rod Stieger, based on a story of the same name by Budd Schulberg, Columbia Pictures, 1956    

[The film under review Humphrey Bogart’s The Harder They Fall is one DVD in a five DVD package of his lesser films from his Columbia Pictures days mostly in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Not all of the films do credit to Bogie’s major talent and drawing power despite what one female character in Sirocco, another film in this Columbia collection, and I quote, being the ugliest man in town and the most handsome. That estimation seems about right. 

I drafted Frank Jackman, the political reporter in this space (and at the on-line Progressive America site) to do the review of Bogie’s Sirocco since it marginally had to do with the results of World War I and the division of the spoils by the victors a subject Frank has been writing on for a couple of years now as we commemorate the 100^th anniversary years of that bloody fruitless conflict. I have drafted Fritz Taylor, normally a guy who writes about music, veterans’ affairs, and culture to review the film under review here The Harder They Fail a fascinating look at the seamy side of the professional boxing game, circa the “golden age” in the 1950s when the sport hooked up with television to create a mass audience among the plebeians. A look that aside from details about money and the nature of the presentation is probably not far off the mark today as well.     

As I have mentioned earlier this year when Si Lannon talked me into letting him do a couple of pieces on an amateur golf tournament at his golf course in which his friends were competing the American Left History site very seldom treads on the major media of sports reporting or commentary so I had to “draft” Fritz Taylor to do this piece. His “credentials”? Well Fritz, a pretty tough guy in his youth down in Georgia from what I have heard and he has told us, while he was in Vietnam in the late 1960s before he got what he called “religion” on the question of war and peace had been a regimental boxing champion in his 4^th Division. His reason for getting involved in this business was strictly to get out of guard duty, KP, endless patrols and the like for what proved to be little effort on his part. It also however did not save him from a couple of purple heart wounds during his tour of duty. Pete Markin]               

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Although I never pursued the manly art of boxing, you know pugilism, hell, fighting and beating a guy’s brains out with your fists beyond teenage Golden Gloves work down in home country Georgia and a purely opportunistic time in the Army in Vietnam as regimental champ in the 4^th Division to get out of bullshit duty I think I know what makes a guy, makes certain guys jump at the change to get out from under. That “getting out from under,” a process still going on in the professional boxing ranks is something guys, tough guys mostly, have been doing in one way or another since Roman gladiator times if not before. You can trace in this country an almost perfect trail of what recent ethnic/racial group is down at the bottom of the heap by who is fighting other guys for a living to grab the brass ring, to avoid having to go down in the factories and sweatshops to earn their livelihood.      

But enough of the amateur sociology and on to the film here which gives a pretty good view of what the sport was like in the 1950s “golden age” of boxing in America. A time when with the advent of television guys like my father, Hugh Taylor, fresh from World War II service in the Pacific and bogged down in a job he did not like in a textile mill that had moved from Nashua, New Hampshire to Athens, Georgia for the cheaper labor costs they say, was able to sit at home on a Friday night and watch, beer in hand, maybe better beers in hand, and see serious fights from places like New York’s Madison Square Garden. I think he may have gone, with his work buddies, a few times to Atlanta to see the fights in person as well but don’t hold me to that. The main thing is that working class guys mainly, although there was a certain celebrity tinge as well when guys like Ernest Hemingway or Norman Mailer would attend such fisticuffs, formed the audience for these bouts.          

As the old-time film critic in this space, now emeritus, Sam Lowell, was fond of saying when he wanted to give a summary of a film here is the “skinny” on this one. Humphrey Bogart, Bogie, last seen in this space according to what Frank Jackman said in his review of another film in this Columbia Pictures package Sirocco as the leading character in Zack James’s commemoration series of the 75^th anniversary of the opening of the classic film Casablanca , plays Eddie Willis a has-been sports writer thrown on the scrap heap from a newspaper that had gone under in the shrinking newspaper wars world who “from hunger” takes a job as publicist from the long-pursuing shady boxing promoter and fixer man Nick Benko,  played a little over the top but with some credible flair by Rod Steiger. (Bogie seems to have alternated in his career between serious shoot ‘em up and ask questions later bad guys like Duke Mantee in Petrified Forest to tough nut Phillip Marlowe trying to save an old man’s dignity and keep his wild side daughters in check in The Big Sleep to under the rug rat Eddie here working for his dally wages anyway he could.)

Nick was well known in New York and elsewhere for having a stable of run of the mill boxers who kept him and his in clover, kept him and his organization in business by knocking other guys on the noggin and keeping him in high end suits, swank apartments, and easy party women on the side. Like a lot of guys who are stuck in the pile he wanted a champion, wanted to have a shot at the brass ring one of his guys could bring him. Nick’s play, his proposition to Eddie was simply, simply for the talented if balky Eddie, play up, Toro, this giant, this glass-jawed and fragile boxer from down in South America he had discovered to the hilt to draw crowds and draw a chance at the heavyweight championship of the world.  No mean task even for the adroit for Eddie with an ungainly giant on his hands who couldn’t bat a fly without knocking himself out. After balking at first Eddie buys into the deal though so he can keep himself and his fetching wife in clover. That first compromise leads to a million others and as the film progresses he goes down Nick’s slippery slope with only a few swallows. 

Of course Nick has no scruples, wouldn’t know what the word meant, didn’t give a fuck about whether this sunny senor could box or not it is all theater anyway, just entertainment for the sit on your ass masses and no skin off of his nose. Still to get to the top you have to get pass step one. That glass jaw and sissy punch would get him knocked out in minute one of round one except for one little handy trick. Get the opponent to take a dive, go in the tank, play dead fast for quick dough and no questions asked. And Eddie was there pushing the bullshit, rolling that stone up the hill. Making this guy the greatest thing since old Prometheus started his trek. Not without qualms, not without balking, but still going for the clover for him and the wife off this gaucho’s back.          

A big stretch of the film is the rise of this holy goof, as Seth Garth would call him reminding him of some junkie has-been out of Kerouac when he asked me what I was writing about, from nobody from nowhere to contender all courtesy of Nick   the friendly fixer man (and as with all such schemes with willing tank town managers, where do you think they got the expression from beyond that railroad watering spot origin, getting their nowhere boys to take the “tank’ for this monster). Finally as they head East to Chi town Senor Toro gets a crack at an over the hill, taken one or more too many punches, ex-champ which will pave the way to the big payoff championship fight in the Garden. (One too many hits which makes you wonder what their concussion brains looked like at the end of their careers now that professional football players have been found to have taken some horrible beatings over the head during their playing careers and suffered horrible damage and shortened lives because of it.) Except this ex-champ, this guy who took one too many punches couldn’t take one more, couldn’t take a Toro tap even while taking the dive. DOA.

In Nick’s scheming though this has-been boxer’s death would only made Toro a bigger draw when he hit the big time in New York against the champ. Nick tried to “negotiate” with the champ but the champ wouldn’t bite, wouldn’t make the dance of the ring go round. He wanted to murder this Toro, put him under, let him kiss the canvas floor for a while. No problem, no problem for Nick just bet against his glass-jaw sissy punch fighter and clean up. The kid took it on the chin, looked like holy hell when the champ went into overdrive, got his jaw busted up good and got less, much less than chump change for his efforts so he could finally get home and take care of his family.        

    

This bastard Nick though was a beau, had sold his contract on Toro to some tank town manager who after the kid proved to have no talent, none, would be fodder for the locals out in Podunk to begin their own career rises on. This is where Eddie finally balked, finally gets “religion” about how bad the fight game was just like I did with fucking war and got the kid the hell out of New York and home with, guess what, his, Eddie’s, share of the dough that Nick skimmed from the kid’s purses. Ugly. Of course that sets up Saint Eddie of the dreams for Nick’s hatchet. Or it seemed so but when as I can tell you a guy gets religion on something nobody can destroy him. Can’t buy, steal or put him under. Eddie in the last scene is ready to do battle to get the murderous sport of guys beating guys senseless for dough for fixers like Nick banned one way or another. Nice work if Eddie survives some back alley assault. 

[Fritz balked at saying anything about the author of the book The Harder They Fall by Hollywood “prince” Budd Schulberg (his father ran Paramount Studios) from which the screenplay of this film was taken but candor and a rather innocuous short statement in his bio in Wikipedia requires that I say something about this snitch. Snitch before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) when after he had been “outed” as an ex-Communist Party member by a fellow screenwriter he sang like a canary to save his own miserable ass by naming names of others he knew back in the day, back in the Popular Front and World War II days when such a thing as party membership was okay but in the dead of night, red scare Cold War 1950s could get you jail time witness the Hollywood Ten, witness Dashiell Hammett and others who didn’t know how to sing. Bogie for that matter telling the committee to go to hell. It must have been old home week when Schulberg, and fellow snitches Lee J. Cobb and Elia Kazan got together on the On The Waterfront film. They could have formed a singing trio. Jesus their names should live in infamy when the word cowards hits the page. Sorry Fritz it had to be said as an act of elementary hygiene. Frank Jackman]   

Happy Birthday Eric Andersen -Out In The 1960s Folk Revival Minute- The Music Of Eric Andersen- A CD Review

Happy Birthday Eric Andersen -Out In The 1960s Folk Revival Minute- The Music Of Eric Andersen- A CD Review

A link to a YouTube film clip of Eric Andersen performing one of his songs

Eric Andersen’s Greatest Hits, Eric Andersen, 1971

In the great swirl that was the folk music revival movement of the early 1960’s a number of new voices were heard that created their own folk expression and were not as dependent on the traditional works of collective political struggle or social commentary associated with the likes of The Weavers, Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie. Although Eric Andersen was a product of the intense Cambridge folk scene and knew and played with many of the stars of that scene he had a distinctive niche in that he performed mainly his own his music and his subject matter tended toward the very personal. It was only political in the most general sense that he, like the others, was breaking away from Tin Pan Alley to express his sentiments.

That said, this greatest hits compilation is almost exclusively made up of songs that he wrote in the 1960’s- the most productive period of his career. I have seen some of his more recent performances and listened to his later work and nothing compares with the work of this period. Such tunes of personal sorrow and anger as Florentine and Sheila and well as the classic Violets of Dawn and Leaving You come from this period. In short, one has to listen to (and read) the lyrics of this singer/ song writer from this time to get a real feel for his work. But if you want to take a trip back to a time when a serious argument could, and was made, that the personal was political and that folk music was, above all, about expressing the seemingly eternal notions of the complexities of love and loss then this is a part of the archives.