A Fine Romance, Circa 1945- With Billie Holiday In Mind

A Fine Romance, Circa 1945- With Billie Holiday In Mind    

 

 

 

 

Over in the darken corner a couple, she a very bleached blonde, naturally so or not only she and God know (perhaps the hairdresser as well but what with the war shortages with the chemicals necessary for artificially very bleached blonde hair going into Europe rather than say frisky brunettes probably just God), mascaraed blue eyes and a fair dusting of powders and whatnots that make a gal alluring to the opposite sex, long slinky gown although not of recent purchase since like the hair ingredients the materials for such glamour-enhancement long ago went ashore at Normandy), and silver dancing slippers of recent purchase since she had a friend  who had a friend who worked on Seventh Avenue and that was that was talking to her companion of the evening. His description was ease itself beyond the short high side walls haircut that meant he was still in one or another branches of the military service, just then clean-shaven although he was one of those men bedeviled by the need to shave twice daily, regulation cologne which made a guy alluring to the opposite sex, regulation brown eyes, and a fairly-well beribboned Army uniform to take the mystery out of which branch he belonged to and which made clear that he had seen action in some theater in Europe.      

 

In front of the young couple who from a quick glance and the manner of their gestures had not known each other long but on the other hand these gestures did not exhibit the tell-tale symptoms of a first date, the timid talk, the off-hand laughter and the occasional blush when in the newness of the situation one party makes a social blunder had well-used glasses of red wine accompanied by some wine correct meat dishes. Probably the Beef Alsace for which the Club Martin up in high 49^th Street  New York City was famous for far and wide but in the darkness which they craved just those tender moments nondescript from afar. Beside the menu of the day was far removed from what they were talking about, what interested them that evening.

 

See our soldier boy, let’s call him Adam Jordan which is actually his name so there need be nothing mysterious or nefarious about it, and his date, let’s call her Brenda Dubois for that is her name although she would not like that information broadcast widely since she is under-age, under-age for nightclubbing if not for other activities had just a few minutes before stepped outside into a back room of the Club, the band’s dressing area, and shared a joint, marijuana, with Nick Janeway, the famous trumpeter, who was working at the Club now that he had been discharged from the Army, discharged with a fairly be-ribboned uniform which meant that he too had seen serious action in one of the European theaters of combat although this evening he was wearing the standard tuxedo of the house band at the Club Martin. As anyone may have guessed Nick and Adam had served together in Europe and this night Nick had gotten Adam and Brenda in as his guests for the evening’s entertainment.            

 

This was hardly the first time that Nick and Adam had “flamed” up (their personal term so the hick other soldiers who were still drinking sodas or Army beer would not catch on) for they had endured the travails of the slugfest battles of Europe by being well-doped up when the action cooled off (and not when in battle as those medals on their respective uniforms can attest too). This night however was Brenda’s first time and while she was thrilled and afraid at the same time when Adam had broached the question she wanted to be a good sport so inhaled deeply, too deeply, the mandatory few drags, had the equally mandatory fits of coughing which accompany the smoke for the beginner and was just beginning to get a decent buzz off of the stuff.

 

She thought to herself, beside the million flashing silly thoughts,   that Adam was a cool guy, knew some cool guys and maybe they would get along after all. She had not been sure the first few dates after Adam had picked her up at a USO dance over in Times Square when she had gone with a girlfriend in order to support the guys who were coming off the transport ships by the thousands now that the war in Europe was over that they would get along since he was so worldly and she was just a very bleached blonde from Brooklyn. He had laughed during dinner at that remark and asked her if she wanted to go back to Nick’s hangout and blow another joint. Loosened up she agreed and they sat with Nick until it was time for him to perform.        

 

Brenda and Adam navigated their way back to their darkened corner and were talking loosely with spurts of giggles on Brenda’s part when Nick and his fellow band members mounted the small elevated stage several tables away and began their intros. While Brenda and Adam were lighting each other’s cigarettes (tobacco of course) the house lights dimmed even further and a black woman, maybe thirty or so with a big flower, some kind of orchid in her pulled back black hair, and a gown with matching slippers that certainly had been recently purchased as Brenda had seen a copy in one like it in one of the recent issues of a women’s magazine and began singing A Fine Romance in a sultry, sexy, sassy, voice that would make the angels weep for their inadequacies. Brenda thus fortified looked over at Adam who was watching and nodding to Nick as he played and thought, a fine romance, a fine romance indeed.          

The Struggle Continues-No Justice, No Peace-Black Lives Matter-All Out In NYC-October 24

The Struggle Continues-No Justice, No Peace-Black Lives Matter-All Out In NYC-October 24  

Frank Jackman comment:

Usually when I post something from some other source, mostly articles and other materials that may be of interest to the radical public that I am trying to address I place the words “ A View From The Left” in the headline and let the subject of the material speak for itself, or the let the writer speak for him or herself without further comment whether I agree with the gist of what is said or not. After all I can write my own piece if some pressing issue is at hand. Occasionally, and the sentiments expressed in this leaflet is one of them, I can stand in solidarity with the remarks made. I do so here.     

When The Pictures Got Small-With Gloria Swanson and William Holden’s Sunset Boulevard In Mind

When The Pictures Got Small-With Gloria Swanson and William Holden’s Sunset Boulevard In Mind

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Yeah, Joe, Joe Anybody if you really want to know, Joe just another guy who went through the traumas of World War II like a lot of other guys although don’t ask him about because you will get the pat I did my duty, I did what had to be done and that is that, yeah, a pat answer if that is what you want, if anybody is this cuckoo world is asking about yesterday’s news. But Joe Gillis is the name he went by (Joseph Francis Gillis is what it said on the birth certificate, later adding an Xavier when the Bishop confirmed him so he was brought up at least that far Catholic but don’t ask him that either because you will get another pat answer, one you may not like if you are sensitive about your religion, or anybody’s), the name that the studio, or better studios since he was strictly a free-lancer, strictly on “spec” in those days put on the couple of screenplays he got some credit for anyway, although the story lines he had submitted flipped from what he had originally written.

What you would get a full answer about is that little tragedy, small size in the great movies scheme but meaning a lot to a guy who just knew he had the stuff to make it (apparently nobody told him or he didn’t listen that “the cinema” was filled to the rafters with guys and dolls who had that stuff, join the line brother, join the line), about the miserable fate of his scripts though, and a little harangue about Hollywood, its producers, directors, assistant directors, not a few stars, or starlets (although he had had a few rather nice casual affairs on some very downy billows with a few on the way up, his way up), hell, even the best boy and grip not knowing true literature, true art if it hit them in the face with a cannon (and wouldn’t he like to). And if he was the chips he would give you every detail, “in the chips” meaning he had some gainful work and was not collecting that measly unemployment that barely got him by in that crummy two-bit rooming house and that junk heap of a car he was still paying money on, and was found at The River, a favorite watering hole for the Hollywood back lot crowd either on their way up or down because the booze was cheap and Hank, the bar-tender owner, was not stingy with his drinks, or with credit if you had some decent hard-luck story to throw his way, once or twice no more.  

One of Joe’s stories, his baby, that he had brought out to Hollywood with him, written to reflect what tinsel town was buying and producing just then, male-centered war movies or Westerns to capitalize on the good feelings for the guys coming out of the war and the women who continued to fill the seats with their guys in tow were looking to see what it was all about since their guys were as silent as the grave, as silent as  Joe Gillis about what they had done for Uncle and home (almost like every guy signed a pact that they would keep their wounds, physical and mental to themselves as one final act of “being buddies,”) was about a high plains drifter, a guy who came out from the East to see what the West was all about and got his fill of it, just wanted to stay in one town long enough to see his shadow, who came into some wild ass desert town, maybe a town like Tombstone the way Joe had it figured in his head, and tamed it like some old Wild West desperado character or some long-bearded biblical prophet who could call the judgement day, call the angels home (and bed the local whorehouse owner, Ella, a good-looking redhead, too but that was a shadow he was willing to cut if it did not make it by Hayes) turned into a romance about a minister (with Henry Fonda in the lead) and the virginal but fetching girl next door (Priscilla Ford, the classic “girl next door” even if she was turning the high side of thirty).

The other started out as romance, always worth a try if you are short of script ideas as Joe was then, from hunger in other ways too when he hatched that one, about two writers, one a she, the other a he, who worked together in the Hollywood film mill of the 1940s, fell in love after the usual boy meets girl stormy arguments before they realized, happy-ending Hollywood realized that they were meant for each other and thereafter produced great story lines got turned into a murder mystery based on one of the stories Joe had them working on in the script about some failed fading actress who had a thing for younger men and who was insanely jealous when the younger women came around was “keeping a soda jerk” she ran into at Liggett’s, the one over on Hollywood and Vine naturally since “from hunger” writers could make a milkshake or a cheese sandwich as well as anybody else and off-handedly shot him on the rumor that blew her way that he was seeing somebody in wardrobe, also a job that “from hunger” writers could do as well as anybody else. Here’s how weird it got though they, the coppers, since there were no witnesses, any that would come forward one the studios pulled the hammer down, never did find out who killed the soda jerk although every teenager in America, the audience the studio was going for, could see plain as day on the screen that it was that faded actress who did the deed. The old dame must have still had some great connections to pull the tent down on that one.

Joe swore to himself on more than one occasion that he should have done like Jack Donne and Joan Ditto, a couple of top shelf screen-writers on the lot (the models for his small idea movie) who he would have drinks with in their Malibu cottage had done and walked away from their own stories when they became unrecognizable in the “mill.”  But because he was three months behind on his rent, a fatal two on his car with the repo man breathing down his back, the cupboard was bare and because he no longer had stardust in his eyes he, what did he call it to a co-worker, Betty Smith, you might have seen some of her work on Some Came Running a while back, a fellow screen-writer working in the word “sweatshop” on the United Majestic (U/M) studio lot he let those “revisions” go by since he had to “make a living.” Funny the original stories Joe had submitted and which had been reworked out of existence by the time he got his moment in the sun credit later, later after he was gone and wouldn’t be around to fuss over copyrights and royalties won a few art house kind of awards and nominations. But by then the scripts were the property of U/M and some smart guy in accounting figured that the studio could cash in to on the notoriety around Joe’s name. Still when the deal went down Joe Anybody, no, Joe Gillis buckled under, got in the payroll line on pay day.

Yeah, Joe Gillis, Joe from Anywhere Ohio, Steubenville, to give the place a name, the guy with the stardust in his eyes coming out of World War II all alive and everything, a college boy after all was said and done on the big ass GI Bill out of State U that was the ticket out of the doldrums night reporter for the Steubenville Sentinel had dreams just like every other guy (girls too if anybody was asking although not that many were then, not after that boomerang of guys coming off the troops ships needed jobs and space). See Joe saw what a lot of guys and gals saw, saw that there was nothing but gold waiting for them in the hills above Hollywood, gold sitting there just waiting for them to come west and pick it up.

Hell Joe said to himself more than once, and told the guys on the night desk too when around two in the morning the bottom drawer whiskey bottles came out that he could out write whatever hacks wrote up the screenplays passing for good work in the studios in a day and still have time for cocktails and diner. Could write, for example, one he always liked to give, circles around whoever wrote that silly story about some smart-ass detective out in Frisco town back about 1930 whose partner got iced on a case out job getting taken in, getting blind-sided about six different ways by some bimbo wearing some jasmine scent that had him up in the clouds and who admittedly had some charms got him all worked up about some statute worth a mint and figured to use his services to get the damn thing. And then flee leaving him to take the fall, maybe take the big step off if it came to that. Kids’ stuff.        

And so our boy Joe borrowed fifty bucks from his mother (promising to have her paid back in a month, a long month as it turned out since Joe never got around to paying her back), another twenty-five from his brother Jim on the sly (ditto on the payback), and took another twenty five from his old sweetie, Lorraine (no need to pay that back she said after he had taken her down to the river front shoreline one Saturday night and gave her a little something to remember him by if you got his drift when he told the boys at the news desk about his conquest)  he was off and running to sunny California. Got himself a room, small but affordable filled with many, too many, people  who had the same stardust in their eyes as Joe (and if any of them had bothered to look closely many, the rooming house not only had the latest immigrants but too many long in the tooth denizens who had missed the big show only they were not smart enough to know it. Or if smart enough decided the stardust was better to live with than what beckoned in Tulsa, Odessa, Kansas City. Moline.)

Got himself a typewriter too, rented, and wrote those two stories that U/M hired him to work the screenplays on. And so our Joe was on his way. Onward and upward. Then the roof caved in, not literally but it might as well have. See U/M and a lot of places made plenty of room for returning GIs and so Joe squeezed through the door on that basis (and the fact, which had not come out until later, until that too late mentioned before that his stories were excellent and that some reader had recommended to her boss that they go with those stories as is but he too could see their possible later value and see that Joe was from hunger enough to stand the gaff for the big rewrites that would turn his work into dross).

But that door only remained open long enough for the studio to “fill their quota,” take the government heat off, and once those conditions were they began laying off writers (and others too). And Joe found that he was just another payroll number to be blanked out, pushed out on to the mean streets of Hollywood, the streets of surly repo men, sullen landlords and sharp-eyed grocers. So Joe sat, sat like the thousand other guys looking for work, at Liggett’s Drugstore, the one near Hollywood and Vine, close to the studio lots just in case job calls came in while Mister Liggett was getting rich off of selling cups of coffee and to the “from hunger” clientele hanging out.

 

And then she came in, came in like a rolling cloud of thunder, she who he would later find out, later when it was almost too late that those who had been around a while, had been long in the tooth on those stardust dreams maybe turned to cocaine sister dreams if you asked a certain night pharmacist nicely and were discrete enough to keep that information on the QT, called the Dragon Queen, came in with her teeth bared that night. Joe, a movie buff of long standing from the Steubenville Stand Theater re-rerun Saturday afternoon black and white double features from the 1930s just after they started to talk on the screen days when he and his other from hunger friends would sneak in the back door and slip up into the balcony and while away a lazy afternoon (and later when he came of age taking that same Lorraine mentioned above for some heavy petting although they did not sneak in the backdoor then), though he recognized her, but for a moment could not place her name.

Then Artie, a fellow screen-writer whom he would pal around with when Artie was not out with his girlfriend, Sarah, also a writer although over on the Paramount lot, said in a low voice “Here comes the Dragon Lady she must be on the prowl.” Joe asked “Who is the Dragon Lady, I recognize her but I can’t place her name.” Artie answered that Joe must be losing it, whatever stuff was in his brain because the Dragon Lady was none other than the legendary actress Norma Desmond who won three, count them, three golden boy awards back in the day. Joe turned red not knowing her since while she had in her turn gotten long in the tooth there was some kind of commanding presence about her still, the way she carried herself, the way the room hushed a bit when she breezed in along with her “secretary” Maxine, a real terror in the old days protecting Miss Desmond, no question (rumored to be her lover, her Boston marriage partner, her Isle of Lesbos companion, her Sapphic muse, you know her “love that cannot speak its name friend, hell, her dyke pal, although that information would also come a bit too late).

Joe should have taken that hushed room lack of sound and the silent actions of lots of the guys drinking up their last gulps of coffee (or bit of sandwich because under the circumstances of being reduced to Liggett’s luncheonette fare one was not sure when or where the next meal would come from), of the sudden need to head to the telephone booth with a bag full of dimes to check with your merciless agent, your merciful mother, your have mercy baby, or heading toward  the magazine section with bended head looking at the latest from the scandal sheets more seriously, or making it look that way. Or at least have checked with Artie who knew what she was there for. But no stardust boy had to step forward to “impress” Miss Desmond with his arcane knowledge of every film she ever starred in back in those re-run 1930s Strand days and asked her-“Aren’t you Miss Desmond.” And she returned his question with her brightest viper smile with a simple “yes.” Then to go in for the kill he asked “Haven’t seen you in a picture lately, too bad for you were a big star.” Of course vanity personified (and maybe necessary to get through the day when you have convinced yourself that film studios and the “day of the locust” common clay depend on seeing your every feature) Norma answered “she was still big, it was the pictures that had gotten smaller.” And with that Joe Anybody, yes, I know, Joe Gillis got caught up in the spider’s web. (What he didn’t see that night were the daggers in Maxine’s eyes once Norma began her peacock dance.)       

Nothing happened that night except upon request about his employment status Joe had answered Norma that he was a writer, currently unemployed (later she would tell him she already knew he was not working since why else would he be at Liggett’s at nine in the evening rather than slaving away trying to save some stinks-to-high-heaven script at one of the studio writers’ cubbyholes and why else would she go into Liggett’s on her own when she could buy and sell Mister Liggett ten times over), that he had a couple of scripts to his credit (he did not mention the butcher job done on them and she did not ask), and that no he was not looking for work as a reader for some seemingly corny sounding script about some gypsy woman with seven veils that Norma said she wanted help on in order to make her big comeback on the screen. Frankly as she got more animated about her project, got more flirtatious for an old dame (he at twenty-five, good-looking and despite his Hollywood stardust eyes with many sexual conquests under his belt was fairly repulsed by the thought of an old dame of at least fifty if he figured her career right, he was only off by a couple of years when the deal went down, coming on to him so graphically and sexually), and more urgent in the need to have him come out to her place on the high number end of Sunset Boulevard (the numbers where the mansions begin and the hills rise away from the heat of the city but he did not know either fact then) and at least read the script before he refused her offer he seriously balked. Told her he was not the boy for her.                    

And for a few weeks that resolve held out, until that inevitable wave of bill notices, rent due, repo man madness and food hunger got in the way and he  made his way to Sunset Boulevard. He hadn’t bothered calling because until Maxine answered the door with a vagrant smile he was not at all sure he was going to go through with the whole thing. Artie had filled him in on what he knew about the Dragon Lady which while correct as far as it went was far from being very knowledgeable although toward the end he did not blame Artie who was after all deeply in love with Sarah, hell, Joe was half in love with Sarah himself since she had said some very kind things about a few sketches of his Artie had shown her and although he was not usually attracted to the Sarah “ girl next door” type there was something very refreshing, not all jaded and facing the world just for kicks, about her even though she had been born in the devil’s kitchen, born on Vine Street a few blocks from Liggett’s. So when that Maxine door opened he was on his own.

Sure when the blats got a hold of the story later when it really didn’t matter, or would not have helped they drew a bee-line picture that Joe, a war veteran and not some skimpy-kneed kid like a few of the “soda jerks” (literally) that Norma had picked up over the years and threw over like some much trash when their number was up, knew the “score” all along and just got on the gravy train and rode, took the ticket, took the ride so no one should bleed for him, except maybe Artie who took it hard (and apparently Sarah too who Artie suspected was half in love with Joe too although he never mentioned that idea to her, and they did in the end get married so make of that what you will).

Forget about the blats, forget about what Hedda Hopper had to say about the whole mess, and that was plenty, none of it having Joe as anything as just another gone boy on the hustle from nowhere Ohio (hah, and her out on Podunk Indiana) here is  how it came down though. Joe went into that open door, into that opulent if run down mansion with his eyes open, once he figured out the score, figured it to his advantage. And for a while it worked, worked out kind of nice. That script of Norma’s, her ticket back to the top was a stinker, strictly nothing except a poor rehash of half the films she had ever been in back in the days when her every expression was plastered over every newspaper review and imitated by every young girl (and not a few boys) who had nothing but stardust in their eyes. But Joe figured that the salary she was giving him made it easy to believe that he was working “legit” that he was not just a “kept man,” Miss Desmond’s pet poodle. And for a while that illusion held up, although Artie began to suspect when he showed up at a New Year’s Eve party all decked out in fine top shelf Hollywood clothing that something more than earning a screen-writer’s salary was going on up in high number Sunset Boulevard.

And there was. Joe could see after a few weeks that Norma was going for him in a big romantic way, and he was playing into that a little, playing into her vanity that she still had something that a younger man would want. Although at first he was repelled by the idea that he would bed somebody his mother’s age he began to get a feel for the moral climate of Hollywood where the stage hands might titter over the age difference but would just nod it off as another gold-digger story like ten thousand others up in the hills, and on the lots. And so one night he took the plunge, went walking slowly to her sullen bedroom and to his fate.

Here is where the story got mixed, all balled up if you believed the blats who had their own reasons to play the story as a gigolo playing way over his head. After they “did the do” Joe no longer figured in the script-writing for Norma business but rather they made the rounds among her old time friends in the new Hudson she had custom-fitted for him so she could show off her new trophy. And for a while, a long while, that worked out just fine but Norma, maybe as a former actress used to getting whatever outlandish wishes of hers met, maybe just as a woman of a certain age who knew her limited appeal over the long haul or maybe that crazy streak that she had which drove more than one producer crazy in her wake Joe could not keep up, could not phantom the idea of forever being Norma’s fancy man, never to get out from under that decaying set she was parading him around to. So he started taking long rides out to Malibu at night in his new Hudson to get the “stink blowed off” as his farmer grandfather used to say. That is where he met Cara, young sweet new star on the horizon Cara. And that was his fatal mistake, or part of it.  One night along the Pacific Coast Highway parked in a parking lot who came up to them in her own Hudson (or rather Norma’s) but Maxine. Maxine told the startled pair that she has been following them for weeks and that they had better break it off or she would tell Norma. Fair enough if the world ran in Norma time, Joe was no longer happy with being Norma’s pet poodle now that the wrinkle-free Cara (and gymnast in bed which he appreciated since Norma was like a corpse one minute and then do this, do that the next) but Joe was tired of Norma time.

That tiredness is what really did Joe in. When Joe would not break it off with Cara (and from her description in the papers and a quick glance off her going to court on the television why would he, why would any guy) then Maxine told Norma the tale. Norma was livid, was ready to kill the ingrate, ready to ship him back to Steubenville in a body bag-minus the three piece suit she had just purchased for him let him go back in that foolish Robert Hall’s sport jacket he showed up at her door in. But here is where things got dicey. Norma for all her Dragon Lady reputation, all the headaches she gave every even sympathetic had portrayed every kind of villainous woman from axe murderer to midnight poisoner. The sight of blood sickened her and maimed bodies revolted her, even stage dummies. So she held her grief in, almost. And here is where the rumors about her and Maxine and their illicit love nest got all kinds of play. Although the rumor about their love was false, at least on Norma’s side, Maxine really did love Norma in that straight Boston marriage way and once Norma seemed so prostrate that she could barely move, seemed like she would never get over the Joe betrayal (that is the way Norma constantly pitched her grief) Maxine went into action. She had a final confrontation with Joe, told him to break off with Cara or she would personally do something about it. Joe, now ready to leave, ready to face the scorn of society about being an older woman’s kept man, was now ready to laugh in Maxine’s pathetic face as he walked out the door to his room toward the swimming pool to take his daily exercise. This last part is under any theory of the story that Norma and Maxine would later tell other than as an “act of god” which in high Babylon got no play is frankly filled with too many holes, has too many moving parts to make sense. Allegedly Maxine, in broad daylight, heard noises coming from the pool area, loud noises which frightened her and she grabbed the gun that Norma kept in the house to prevent burglaries (although how a pearl-handled 38 was going to stop serious breaking and enterings raised a few eyebrows. Out of her wits she saw what looked like a huge man in the shadows and just fired, fired five times in that direction. Then she called the cops who found one Joe Gillis in the pool face down with five, count them, five slugs in his body. That is the story she swore to and no one could shake her, or Norma’s story then or later at the inquest. So Joe Anybody, no, no definitely no, Joseph Gillis, Junior went to sleep as another killing, a domestic dispute after the papers got through with the war-circus that ensued like a million others nothing more.

Nothing more except to Artie, Artie Shaw to give him a name the only guy who every tried to stop Joe Gillis in his tracks, in his wrong tracks. One day a few weeks after they laid Joe to rest and went to put some flowers on his poor misbegotten grave out in the hills Artie said to Sarah that although he knew that there would never be an end to the stardust eyed kids coming to Hollywood to pursue whatever dreams they were dreaming for God’s sake Joe’s story should get out there in the hinterlands. And so it has. That and Artie’s reminder for all that stardust to keep the hell away from the high numbers on Sunset Boulevard.                            

When The Pictures Got Small-With Gloria Swanson and William Holden’s Sunset Boulevard In Mind

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

Yeah, Joe, Joe Anybody if you really want to know, Joe just another guy who went through the traumas of World War II like a lot of other guys although don’t ask him about because you will get the pat I did my duty, I did what had to be done and that is that, yeah, a pat answer if that is what you want, if anybody is this cuckoo world is asking about yesterday’s news. But Joe Gillis is the name he went by (Joseph Francis Gillis is what it said on the birth certificate, later adding an Xavier when the Bishop confirmed him so he was brought up at least that far Catholic but don’t ask him that either because you will get another pat answer, one you may not like if you are sensitive about your religion, or anybody’s), the name that the studio, or better studios since he was strictly a free-lancer, strictly on “spec” in those days put on the couple of screenplays he got some credit for anyway, although the story lines he had submitted flipped from what he had originally written.

What you would get a full answer about is that little tragedy, small size in the great movies scheme but meaning a lot to a guy who just knew he had the stuff to make it (apparently nobody told him or he didn’t listen that “the cinema” was filled to the rafters with guys and dolls who had that stuff, join the line brother, join the line), about the miserable fate of his scripts though, and a little harangue about Hollywood, its producers, directors, assistant directors, not a few stars, or starlets (although he had had a few rather nice casual affairs on some very downy billows with a few on the way up, his way up), hell, even the best boy and grip not knowing true literature, true art if it hit them in the face with a cannon (and wouldn’t he like to). And if he was the chips he would give you every detail, “in the chips” meaning he had some gainful work and was not collecting that measly unemployment that barely got him by in that crummy two-bit rooming house and that junk heap of a car he was still paying money on, and was found at The River, a favorite watering hole for the Hollywood back lot crowd either on their way up or down because the booze was cheap and Hank, the bar-tender owner, was not stingy with his drinks, or with credit if you had some decent hard-luck story to throw his way, once or twice no more.  

One of Joe’s stories, his baby, that he had brought out to Hollywood with him, written to reflect what tinsel town was buying and producing just then, male-centered war movies or Westerns to capitalize on the good feelings for the guys coming out of the war and the women who continued to fill the seats with their guys in tow were looking to see what it was all about since their guys were as silent as the grave, as silent as  Joe Gillis about what they had done for Uncle and home (almost like every guy signed a pact that they would keep their wounds, physical and mental to themselves as one final act of “being buddies,”) was about a high plains drifter, a guy who came out from the East to see what the West was all about and got his fill of it, just wanted to stay in one town long enough to see his shadow, who came into some wild ass desert town, maybe a town like Tombstone the way Joe had it figured in his head, and tamed it like some old Wild West desperado character or some long-bearded biblical prophet who could call the judgement day, call the angels home (and bed the local whorehouse owner, Ella, a good-looking redhead, too but that was a shadow he was willing to cut if it did not make it by Hayes) turned into a romance about a minister (with Henry Fonda in the lead) and the virginal but fetching girl next door (Priscilla Ford, the classic “girl next door” even if she was turning the high side of thirty).

The other started out as romance, always worth a try if you are short of script ideas as Joe was then, from hunger in other ways too when he hatched that one, about two writers, one a she, the other a he, who worked together in the Hollywood film mill of the 1940s, fell in love after the usual boy meets girl stormy arguments before they realized, happy-ending Hollywood realized that they were meant for each other and thereafter produced great story lines got turned into a murder mystery based on one of the stories Joe had them working on in the script about some failed fading actress who had a thing for younger men and who was insanely jealous when the younger women came around was “keeping a soda jerk” she ran into at Liggett’s, the one over on Hollywood and Vine naturally since “from hunger” writers could make a milkshake or a cheese sandwich as well as anybody else and off-handedly shot him on the rumor that blew her way that he was seeing somebody in wardrobe, also a job that “from hunger” writers could do as well as anybody else. Here’s how weird it got though they, the coppers, since there were no witnesses, any that would come forward one the studios pulled the hammer down, never did find out who killed the soda jerk although every teenager in America, the audience the studio was going for, could see plain as day on the screen that it was that faded actress who did the deed. The old dame must have still had some great connections to pull the tent down on that one.

Joe swore to himself on more than one occasion that he should have done like Jack Donne and Joan Ditto, a couple of top shelf screen-writers on the lot (the models for his small idea movie) who he would have drinks with in their Malibu cottage had done and walked away from their own stories when they became unrecognizable in the “mill.”  But because he was three months behind on his rent, a fatal two on his car with the repo man breathing down his back, the cupboard was bare and because he no longer had stardust in his eyes he, what did he call it to a co-worker, Betty Smith, you might have seen some of her work on Some Came Running a while back, a fellow screen-writer working in the word “sweatshop” on the United Majestic (U/M) studio lot he let those “revisions” go by since he had to “make a living.” Funny the original stories Joe had submitted and which had been reworked out of existence by the time he got his moment in the sun credit later, later after he was gone and wouldn’t be around to fuss over copyrights and royalties won a few art house kind of awards and nominations. But by then the scripts were the property of U/M and some smart guy in accounting figured that the studio could cash in to on the notoriety around Joe’s name. Still when the deal went down Joe Anybody, no, Joe Gillis buckled under, got in the payroll line on pay day.

Yeah, Joe Gillis, Joe from Anywhere Ohio, Steubenville, to give the place a name, the guy with the stardust in his eyes coming out of World War II all alive and everything, a college boy after all was said and done on the big ass GI Bill out of State U that was the ticket out of the doldrums night reporter for the Steubenville Sentinel had dreams just like every other guy (girls too if anybody was asking although not that many were then, not after that boomerang of guys coming off the troops ships needed jobs and space). See Joe saw what a lot of guys and gals saw, saw that there was nothing but gold waiting for them in the hills above Hollywood, gold sitting there just waiting for them to come west and pick it up.

Hell Joe said to himself more than once, and told the guys on the night desk too when around two in the morning the bottom drawer whiskey bottles came out that he could out write whatever hacks wrote up the screenplays passing for good work in the studios in a day and still have time for cocktails and diner. Could write, for example, one he always liked to give, circles around whoever wrote that silly story about some smart-ass detective out in Frisco town back about 1930 whose partner got iced on a case out job getting taken in, getting blind-sided about six different ways by some bimbo wearing some jasmine scent that had him up in the clouds and who admittedly had some charms got him all worked up about some statute worth a mint and figured to use his services to get the damn thing. And then flee leaving him to take the fall, maybe take the big step off if it came to that. Kids’ stuff.        

And so our boy Joe borrowed fifty bucks from his mother (promising to have her paid back in a month, a long month as it turned out since Joe never got around to paying her back), another twenty-five from his brother Jim on the sly (ditto on the payback), and took another twenty five from his old sweetie, Lorraine (no need to pay that back she said after he had taken her down to the river front shoreline one Saturday night and gave her a little something to remember him by if you got his drift when he told the boys at the news desk about his conquest)  he was off and running to sunny California. Got himself a room, small but affordable filled with many, too many, people  who had the same stardust in their eyes as Joe (and if any of them had bothered to look closely many, the rooming house not only had the latest immigrants but too many long in the tooth denizens who had missed the big show only they were not smart enough to know it. Or if smart enough decided the stardust was better to live with than what beckoned in Tulsa, Odessa, Kansas City. Moline.)

Got himself a typewriter too, rented, and wrote those two stories that U/M hired him to work the screenplays on. And so our Joe was on his way. Onward and upward. Then the roof caved in, not literally but it might as well have. See U/M and a lot of places made plenty of room for returning GIs and so Joe squeezed through the door on that basis (and the fact, which had not come out until later, until that too late mentioned before that his stories were excellent and that some reader had recommended to her boss that they go with those stories as is but he too could see their possible later value and see that Joe was from hunger enough to stand the gaff for the big rewrites that would turn his work into dross).

But that door only remained open long enough for the studio to “fill their quota,” take the government heat off, and once those conditions were they began laying off writers (and others too). And Joe found that he was just another payroll number to be blanked out, pushed out on to the mean streets of Hollywood, the streets of surly repo men, sullen landlords and sharp-eyed grocers. So Joe sat, sat like the thousand other guys looking for work, at Liggett’s Drugstore, the one near Hollywood and Vine, close to the studio lots just in case job calls came in while Mister Liggett was getting rich off of selling cups of coffee and to the “from hunger” clientele hanging out.

 

And then she came in, came in like a rolling cloud of thunder, she who he would later find out, later when it was almost too late that those who had been around a while, had been long in the tooth on those stardust dreams maybe turned to cocaine sister dreams if you asked a certain night pharmacist nicely and were discrete enough to keep that information on the QT, called the Dragon Queen, came in with her teeth bared that night. Joe, a movie buff of long standing from the Steubenville Stand Theater re-rerun Saturday afternoon black and white double features from the 1930s just after they started to talk on the screen days when he and his other from hunger friends would sneak in the back door and slip up into the balcony and while away a lazy afternoon (and later when he came of age taking that same Lorraine mentioned above for some heavy petting although they did not sneak in the backdoor then), though he recognized her, but for a moment could not place her name.

Then Artie, a fellow screen-writer whom he would pal around with when Artie was not out with his girlfriend, Sarah, also a writer although over on the Paramount lot, said in a low voice “Here comes the Dragon Lady she must be on the prowl.” Joe asked “Who is the Dragon Lady, I recognize her but I can’t place her name.” Artie answered that Joe must be losing it, whatever stuff was in his brain because the Dragon Lady was none other than the legendary actress Norma Desmond who won three, count them, three golden boy awards back in the day. Joe turned red not knowing her since while she had in her turn gotten long in the tooth there was some kind of commanding presence about her still, the way she carried herself, the way the room hushed a bit when she breezed in along with her “secretary” Maxine, a real terror in the old days protecting Miss Desmond, no question (rumored to be her lover, her Boston marriage partner, her Isle of Lesbos companion, her Sapphic muse, you know her “love that cannot speak its name friend, hell, her dyke pal, although that information would also come a bit too late).

Joe should have taken that hushed room lack of sound and the silent actions of lots of the guys drinking up their last gulps of coffee (or bit of sandwich because under the circumstances of being reduced to Liggett’s luncheonette fare one was not sure when or where the next meal would come from), of the sudden need to head to the telephone booth with a bag full of dimes to check with your merciless agent, your merciful mother, your have mercy baby, or heading toward  the magazine section with bended head looking at the latest from the scandal sheets more seriously, or making it look that way. Or at least have checked with Artie who knew what she was there for. But no stardust boy had to step forward to “impress” Miss Desmond with his arcane knowledge of every film she ever starred in back in those re-run 1930s Strand days and asked her-“Aren’t you Miss Desmond.” And she returned his question with her brightest viper smile with a simple “yes.” Then to go in for the kill he asked “Haven’t seen you in a picture lately, too bad for you were a big star.” Of course vanity personified (and maybe necessary to get through the day when you have convinced yourself that film studios and the “day of the locust” common clay depend on seeing your every feature) Norma answered “she was still big, it was the pictures that had gotten smaller.” And with that Joe Anybody, yes, I know, Joe Gillis got caught up in the spider’s web. (What he didn’t see that night were the daggers in Maxine’s eyes once Norma began her peacock dance.)       

Nothing happened that night except upon request about his employment status Joe had answered Norma that he was a writer, currently unemployed (later she would tell him she already knew he was not working since why else would he be at Liggett’s at nine in the evening rather than slaving away trying to save some stinks-to-high-heaven script at one of the studio writers’ cubbyholes and why else would she go into Liggett’s on her own when she could buy and sell Mister Liggett ten times over), that he had a couple of scripts to his credit (he did not mention the butcher job done on them and she did not ask), and that no he was not looking for work as a reader for some seemingly corny sounding script about some gypsy woman with seven veils that Norma said she wanted help on in order to make her big comeback on the screen. Frankly as she got more animated about her project, got more flirtatious for an old dame (he at twenty-five, good-looking and despite his Hollywood stardust eyes with many sexual conquests under his belt was fairly repulsed by the thought of an old dame of at least fifty if he figured her career right, he was only off by a couple of years when the deal went down, coming on to him so graphically and sexually), and more urgent in the need to have him come out to her place on the high number end of Sunset Boulevard (the numbers where the mansions begin and the hills rise away from the heat of the city but he did not know either fact then) and at least read the script before he refused her offer he seriously balked. Told her he was not the boy for her.                    

And for a few weeks that resolve held out, until that inevitable wave of bill notices, rent due, repo man madness and food hunger got in the way and he  made his way to Sunset Boulevard. He hadn’t bothered calling because until Maxine answered the door with a vagrant smile he was not at all sure he was going to go through with the whole thing. Artie had filled him in on what he knew about the Dragon Lady which while correct as far as it went was far from being very knowledgeable although toward the end he did not blame Artie who was after all deeply in love with Sarah, hell, Joe was half in love with Sarah himself since she had said some very kind things about a few sketches of his Artie had shown her and although he was not usually attracted to the Sarah “ girl next door” type there was something very refreshing, not all jaded and facing the world just for kicks, about her even though she had been born in the devil’s kitchen, born on Vine Street a few blocks from Liggett’s. So when that Maxine door opened he was on his own.

Sure when the blats got a hold of the story later when it really didn’t matter, or would not have helped they drew a bee-line picture that Joe, a war veteran and not some skimpy-kneed kid like a few of the “soda jerks” (literally) that Norma had picked up over the years and threw over like some much trash when their number was up, knew the “score” all along and just got on the gravy train and rode, took the ticket, took the ride so no one should bleed for him, except maybe Artie who took it hard (and apparently Sarah too who Artie suspected was half in love with Joe too although he never mentioned that idea to her, and they did in the end get married so make of that what you will).

Forget about the blats, forget about what Hedda Hopper had to say about the whole mess, and that was plenty, none of it having Joe as anything as just another gone boy on the hustle from nowhere Ohio (hah, and her out on Podunk Indiana) here is  how it came down though. Joe went into that open door, into that opulent if run down mansion with his eyes open, once he figured out the score, figured it to his advantage. And for a while it worked, worked out kind of nice. That script of Norma’s, her ticket back to the top was a stinker, strictly nothing except a poor rehash of half the films she had ever been in back in the days when her every expression was plastered over every newspaper review and imitated by every young girl (and not a few boys) who had nothing but stardust in their eyes. But Joe figured that the salary she was giving him made it easy to believe that he was working “legit” that he was not just a “kept man,” Miss Desmond’s pet poodle. And for a while that illusion held up, although Artie began to suspect when he showed up at a New Year’s Eve party all decked out in fine top shelf Hollywood clothing that something more than earning a screen-writer’s salary was going on up in high number Sunset Boulevard.

And there was. Joe could see after a few weeks that Norma was going for him in a big romantic way, and he was playing into that a little, playing into her vanity that she still had something that a younger man would want. Although at first he was repelled by the idea that he would bed somebody his mother’s age he began to get a feel for the moral climate of Hollywood where the stage hands might titter over the age difference but would just nod it off as another gold-digger story like ten thousand others up in the hills, and on the lots. And so one night he took the plunge, went walking slowly to her sullen bedroom and to his fate.

Here is where the story got mixed, all balled up if you believed the blats who had their own reasons to play the story as a gigolo playing way over his head. After they “did the do” Joe no longer figured in the script-writing for Norma business but rather they made the rounds among her old time friends in the new Hudson she had custom-fitted for him so she could show off her new trophy. And for a while, a long while, that worked out just fine but Norma, maybe as a former actress used to getting whatever outlandish wishes of hers met, maybe just as a woman of a certain age who knew her limited appeal over the long haul or maybe that crazy streak that she had which drove more than one producer crazy in her wake Joe could not keep up, could not phantom the idea of forever being Norma’s fancy man, never to get out from under that decaying set she was parading him around to. So he started taking long rides out to Malibu at night in his new Hudson to get the “stink blowed off” as his farmer grandfather used to say. That is where he met Cara, young sweet new star on the horizon Cara. And that was his fatal mistake, or part of it.  One night along the Pacific Coast Highway parked in a parking lot who came up to them in her own Hudson (or rather Norma’s) but Maxine. Maxine told the startled pair that she has been following them for weeks and that they had better break it off or she would tell Norma. Fair enough if the world ran in Norma time, Joe was no longer happy with being Norma’s pet poodle now that the wrinkle-free Cara (and gymnast in bed which he appreciated since Norma was like a corpse one minute and then do this, do that the next) but Joe was tired of Norma time.

That tiredness is what really did Joe in. When Joe would not break it off with Cara (and from her description in the papers and a quick glance off her going to court on the television why would he, why would any guy) then Maxine told Norma the tale. Norma was livid, was ready to kill the ingrate, ready to ship him back to Steubenville in a body bag-minus the three piece suit she had just purchased for him let him go back in that foolish Robert Hall’s sport jacket he showed up at her door in. But here is where things got dicey. Norma for all her Dragon Lady reputation, all the headaches she gave every even sympathetic had portrayed every kind of villainous woman from axe murderer to midnight poisoner. The sight of blood sickened her and maimed bodies revolted her, even stage dummies. So she held her grief in, almost. And here is where the rumors about her and Maxine and their illicit love nest got all kinds of play. Although the rumor about their love was false, at least on Norma’s side, Maxine really did love Norma in that straight Boston marriage way and once Norma seemed so prostrate that she could barely move, seemed like she would never get over the Joe betrayal (that is the way Norma constantly pitched her grief) Maxine went into action. She had a final confrontation with Joe, told him to break off with Cara or she would personally do something about it. Joe, now ready to leave, ready to face the scorn of society about being an older woman’s kept man, was now ready to laugh in Maxine’s pathetic face as he walked out the door to his room toward the swimming pool to take his daily exercise. This last part is under any theory of the story that Norma and Maxine would later tell other than as an “act of god” which in high Babylon got no play is frankly filled with too many holes, has too many moving parts to make sense. Allegedly Maxine, in broad daylight, heard noises coming from the pool area, loud noises which frightened her and she grabbed the gun that Norma kept in the house to prevent burglaries (although how a pearl-handled 38 was going to stop serious breaking and enterings raised a few eyebrows. Out of her wits she saw what looked like a huge man in the shadows and just fired, fired five times in that direction. Then she called the cops who found one Joe Gillis in the pool face down with five, count them, five slugs in his body. That is the story she swore to and no one could shake her, or Norma’s story then or later at the inquest. So Joe Anybody, no, no definitely no, Joseph Gillis, Junior went to sleep as another killing, a domestic dispute after the papers got through with the war-circus that ensued like a million others nothing more.

Nothing more except to Artie, Artie Shaw to give him a name the only guy who every tried to stop Joe Gillis in his tracks, in his wrong tracks. One day a few weeks after they laid Joe to rest and went to put some flowers on his poor misbegotten grave out in the hills Artie said to Sarah that although he knew that there would never be an end to the stardust eyed kids coming to Hollywood to pursue whatever dreams they were dreaming for God’s sake Joe’s story should get out there in the hinterlands. And so it has. That and Artie’s reminder for all that stardust to keep the hell away from the high numbers on Sunset Boulevard.                            

 

When The Fight To Turn The World Upside Down Was In Full Flower- With The Doors The Unknown Soldier In Mind

When The Fight To Turn The World Upside Down Was In Full Flower- With The Doors The Unknown Soldier In Mind

 

 

Wait until the war is over
And we're both a little older
The unknown soldier

Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Unborn living, living, dead
Bullet strikes the helmet's head
And it's all over
For the unknown soldier
It's all over
For the unknown soldier
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Comp'nee, halt
Present, arms
Make a grave for the unknown soldier
Nestled in your hollow shoulder
The unknown soldier
Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Bullet strikes the helmet's head
And, it's all over
The war is over
It's all over
War is over

Well, all over, baby
All over, baby
Oh, over, yeah
All over, baby

Ooh, ha, ha, all over
All over, baby
Oh, woah, yeah, all over
All over, heh
Add song meaning

Songwriters
Robbie Krieger;John Densmore;Jim Morrison;Ray Manzarek

From The Pen of Frank Jackman

There was no seamless thread that wrapped the counter-cultural dominated 1960s up tightly (although there is some question even in my own mind and I went through the whole thing from folk boy to  patriotic soldier to flower child about whether the movement for all its high gloss publicity and whirlwind effect dominated as much as we though). That decade or so from about 1964 to about 1974   is nevertheless beginning to look like a watershed time not just for the first wave immediate post-World War II baby-boomers (the ones born immediately after the war as the troops came home, came off the transports, and guys and gals were all hopped up to start families, figure out how to finance that first white picket fence house and use the GI bill to get a little bit ahead in the world, at least get ahead of their parents’ dead-end great depression woes) who came of social and political age then washed clean by the new dispensation but for the country as a whole. More so since we of the so-called generation of ’68, so called by some wag who decided that the bookends of the rage of the American Democratic Convention in Chicago that year and the defeat of the revolutionary possibilities in France in May of that year signaled the beginning of the ebb tide for the whole, who are still up for a fight against the military monster who is still with us are continuing to fight a rearguard action to keep what little is left of accomplishments and the spirit of those time alive.

Thinking back a bit to that time a thousand things, or it seemed like a thousand things, something new in the social, economic, political or cultural forest popping up out of nowhere in many cases, came together in pretty rapid succession to draw down in flames the dread red scare Cold War freezes of our childhoods (that time always absurdly symbolically topped off by the sight of elementary school kids, us, crouched under some rickety old desk arms over our head some air-raid drill practice time as if, as the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki can attest to, that would do the slightest bit of good if the “big one,” the nuclear bombs hit. Yeah, the Cold War time too when what did we know except to keep our obedient heads down under our desks or face down on the floor when the periodic air-raid shelter tests were performed at school to see if we were ready to face the bleak future if we survived some ill-meant commie atomic blast. (Personally I remember telling somebody then that I would, having seen newsreel footage of the bomb tests at Bikini, just as soon take my chances above desk, thank you, for all the good the other maneuver would do us.)

 

For a while anyway we were able to beat back that Cold War mentality, that cold-hearted angst, and calculated playing with our world, our world even if we had no say, zero, in creating what went on. Not so strangely, although maybe that is why people drifted away in droves once the old bourgeois order reasserted itself and pulled down the hammer, none of us who were caught up in the whirl thought it would be for only a while or at least thought it would fade so fast just as we thought, young and healthy as we were, that we would live forever. But if you took a step back you could trace things a little, could make your own “live free” categories of the events that chipped away the ice of those dark nights.

Start in with the mid-1950s if you like, which is where I like to start dating my own sense of the new breeze coming through although being a pre-teenager then I would not have had sense enough to call it that, with the heat of the black struggle for some semblance of civil liberties down South in the fight for voter rights and the famous desegregation of buses in Montgomery and the painful desegregation of the schools in Little Rock (and some sense of greater  equality up North too as organizations like the NAACP and Urban League pushed an agenda for better education and housing). Also at that same time, and in gathering anecdotal evidence I have found that these are a common lynchpin, the first break-out of music with the crowning of rock and roll as the wave of the future (black rhythm and blues, scat, rockabilly music all mixed up and all stirred up), and the “discovery” of teen alienation and angst exemplified by sullen movie star  James Dean, who lived fast, and died fast a metaphor that would work its way through youth culture over the next generation. (And throw in surly “wild one” movie star Marlon Brando in The Wild One and a brooding Montgomery Cliff in almost anything to the mix of what we could relate to as icons of alienation and angst .)   

 

An odd-ball mix right there. Throw in, as well, although this was only at the end and only in very commercial form, the influence of the “beats,” the guys (and very few gals since that Jack Kerouac-Neal Cassady-William Burroughs-Allen Ginsberg mix was strictly a male bonding thing) who listened to the guys who blew the cool be-bop jazz and wrote up a storm based on that sound, declared a new sound, that you would hear around cafés even if you did not understand it unlike rock and roll, the guys who hitchhiked across the American landscape creating a wanderlust in all who had heard about their exploits, and, of course, the bingo bongo poetry that threw the old modernists like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound out with a bang.

Then start to throw in the struggles against the old authority in places like Frisco town where they practically ran the red-baiters in the HUAC out of town (what we, or some of us, would learn to call “bourgeois authority working hand in hand with the capitalists”), the old certitudes that had calmed our parents’ lives, made them reach out with both hands for the plenty in the “golden age of plenty.” Of course the biggest event that opened the doors for liberals, radicals, hell, even thoughtful conservatives was the sweet breeze coming down the road from Boston with the election of Jack Kennedy. Ike, the harmless uncle, the kindly grandfather, was for our parents we wanted guys who set the buzz going, let us think about getting some kicks out of life, that maybe with some thought we would survive, and if we didn’t at least we had the kicks.

That event opened up a new psyche, that it was okay to question authority, whatever the limitations and shortness of the Camelot times with the struggles against some hoary things like segregation, the death penalty, nuclear proliferation, the unevenness of social life which would get propelled later in the decade with fight for women’s liberation, gay liberation, and the fight against the draft, the damn war in Vietnam that drove a nail into the heart of our generation. A river of ideas, and a river of tears, have been, and can be, shed over that damn war, what it did to young people, those who fought, maybe especially those who fought as I get older and hear more stories about the guys who didn’t make it back to the “real” world after “Nam, those guys you see downtown in front of the VA hospitals, and those who refused to, that lingers on behind the scenes even today.

 

There were more things, things like the “Pill” (and if you need to know what pill and its purpose where have you been) that opened up a whole can of worms about what everyone was incessantly curious about and hormonally interested in doing something about, sex, sex beyond the missionary position of timeless legends, something very different if the dramatic increase in sales of the Kama Sutra meant anything, a newer sensibility in music with the arrival of the protest folk songs for a new generation which pushed the struggle and the organizing forward.

Cultural things like the experimenting with about seven different kinds of dope previously the hidden preserve of “cool cat” blacks and white hipsters (stuff that we only knew negatively about, about staying away from, thru reefer madness propaganda, thru the banning of some drugs that were previously legal like sweet sister cocaine and taunt Nelson Algren hard life down at the base of society in films like The Man With The Golden Arm), the outbreak of name changes with everybody seemingly trying to reinvent themselves in name (my moniker at one time was Be-Bop Benny draw what you will out of that the idea being like among some hipster blacks, although with less reason, we wanted to get rid of our slave names)  fashion (the old college plaid look fading in the face of World War II army surplus, feverish colors, and consciously mismatched outfits and affectation (“cool, man, cool” and “right on’ said it all). More social experiments gathering in the “nation” through rock concerts, now acid-etched, new living arrangements with the arrival of the urban and rural communes (including sleeping on more than one floor in more than one church or mission when on the road, or later on the bum). They all, if not all widespread, and not all successful as new lifestyles all got a fair workout during this period as well.     

Plenty of us in retrospective would weigh the various combinations of events differently in figuring out how the uprising started just as plenty of us have our specific dates for when the tide began to ebb, when the mean-spirited and authoritarian began their successful counter-offensive that we still live with for not taking the omens more seriously. (My ebb tide, as I have described elsewhere, was the events around May Day 1971 when we seriously tried, or thought we were seriously trying, to shut down the government in D.C. if it would no shut down the war and got nothing but billy-clubs, tear gas, beatings and mass arrests for our efforts. After those days I, and others, figured out the other side was more serious about preserving the old order than we were about creating the new and that we had better rethink how to slay the monster we were up against and act accordingly.)

Then we have the photograph (see above) that graces this short screed, and which pictorially encapsulates a lot of what went then, a lot about which side were you on when the deal went down. This photograph is almost impossible to imagine without some combination of that hell broth anti-war, anti-establishment, pro-“newer world” mix stirred up in the 1960s. Three self-assured women (the “girls” of photograph a telltale sign of what society, even hip, progressive society thought about women in those slightly pre-women’s liberation time but they, we, would learn the difference) comfortable with the loose and individualistic fashion statements of the day from floppy hats to granny dresses to bare legs, bare legs, Jesus, that alone would have shocked their girdled, silk stocking mothers, especially if those bare legs included wearing a mini-skirt (and mother dread thoughts about whether daughter knew about the pill, and heaven forbid if she was sexually active, a subject not for polite society, not for mother-daughter conversation, then she damn better well know, or else).

They are also uncomfortable about the damn Vietnam war, no, outraged is a better way to put the matter, that was eating up boyfriends, brothers, just friends, guys they knew in college or on the street who were facing heavy decisions about the draft, Canada exile, prison or succumbing to the worst choice, military induction, at a heavy rate and they unlike their mothers who came through World War II waiting patiently and patriotically for their military heroes to come home, come home in one piece, have a very different sense of the heroic. A sense of the heroic going back to ancient times, Greek times anyway, when one group of women like their stay-at-home-waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop World War II mothers demanded that their men come home on their shields if they had to rather than speak of defeat. Others, the ones that count here, refusing their potential soldier boys any favors if they went off to war, providing a distant echo, a foundation to make their request stand on some authority, for these three women pictured here. I wonder how many guys would confess to the lure of that enticement if they had refused induction. I did not refuse induction for a whole bunch of reasons but then I did not have any girlfriends who made that demand, mine early on anyway were as likely to want me to come back on a shield as those warrior-proud ancient Greek women. Too bad. But I like to think that today we could expect more women to be like the sisters above. Yeah, more, many  more of the latter, please as we continue in the nightmare world of endless war.