Once Again, When ABBA Exploded The Known Musical Universe And Put It On A Small Greek Island- Amanda Seyfried s “Mama Mia!-Here We Go Again” (2018)-A Film Review

Once Again, When ABBA Exploded The Known Musical Universe And Put It On A Small Greek Island- Amanda Seyfried s “Mama Mia!-Here We Go Again” (2018)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Intern Josie Davis

Mama Mia! Here We Go Again  (When I reviewed the original version of this film I was told by Greg Green the site manager to use this title to both avoid confusion with the earlier film since they both have the same theme and most of the same cast and to replicate the way the film has been publicized), starring the divine Meryl Streep in essentially a cameo role, Amanda Seyfried up close and personal on this one, Pierce Brosnan at one time the dashing James Bond in a few films in that series, Colin Firth who somebody told me used to be to be the King of England and gave it up for his boyfriend,  Stellan Starsgard who used to be a guy named Terry with a junkie wife who owned a glass house in Malibu but got too greedy and got wasted for his troubles, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski two members of the famous doo wop, no, disco, trio Donna and the Dynamos who tore up the stage when I saw them in New York City one night with my girlfriends from high school several years ago, music by ABBA, 2018         

*******

I mentioned in my review of the 2008 version of Mama Mia!  that I was thrilled to be writing my first film review for this publication, for Greg Green and now as agreed since he was happy with my first production I am reviewing the sequel. (Once again I should mention that Greg said the way things are in the publication business today that I had better mention that I was Greg’s daughter Elsa’s roommate in journalism graduate school at NYU-something about transparency otherwise the whole thing will stink of nepotism, so I have again written what he has asked me to do). I am working here as a paid intern to learn the journalism trade and right off the bat Greg had assigned me this Mama Mia! Here We Are film which I had just seen and loved. Not only that but since Elsa already told me that her father was very thorough I got to do a review of the first one as well which he told me was to get a fresh look from new eyes about the relative merits of the two. Zack James one of the friendly older writers here who wrote the review of the original helped me with his perspective although he said musicals were not his thing and he thought there were too many musical and dance interludes something I thought was great since the storyline was pretty simple. The conditions that an intern works under here are that, since we are not covered by Guild regulations, we are paid by the word so I was doubly thrilled to have two reviews to do since my rent would be coming up and I could use the money since my parents had told me after paying for graduate school I have to fend for myself. “Learn to fly” as my father put the matter in his usual gruff way.         

Maybe the reader did not need to know that last part again, the rent money and parent abandonment part but from the last review I mentioned  a funny, wise, kind of looking like a modern version of  Merlin the Magician older writer, Sam Lowell, told me that writers getting paid by the word went out with the Pony Express and it is a shame that they are calling what he called stringers “interns” to get slave labor to do the work otherwise assigned to active Guild members. Here is where he was wise-Sam, he told me to call him Sam, said to play the game for all it is worth, to write like he did when he was starting out say, 10, 000 words when everybody knew that the space available for the piece was maybe 3000 words. They had to pay for the former number no matter how much they edited the piece down once it had been assigned. Again I will write like crazy including what Sam me told to include that I have already written since Greg likes, allows his writers, I still like how that word sounds regarding me, to let the readership know some of the “inside” stuff about the publishing business, the hard-hat water cooler stuff so I will again oblige.      

Sarah Lemoyne, who went to NYU journalism school a few years before Elsa and me, told me before I finished my first review to avoid Sam Lowell like the plague and went out of her way to warn me again after Sam told Greg that I had “the right stuff.” Told me, again that it was only a matter of time before he would have me writing his reviews for him under his by-line and would keep me a stringer, intern I told her again like the category was brand new in the business, forever again using the example of what almost happened to legendary break-through by-line writers Leslie Dumont before she got her big break with Women Today once she saw the writing on the wall here. Sarah said I would probably, if Sam was in a rush, grab some studio press release and have me doll it up. Funny, Sam still seems like a kindly old man, for the old school who knows how to pay a colleague a compliment and give good advice and encouragement,  a little wizard and while Sarah seems to be the star amount the younger up and coming writers and is being championed by the legendary Seth Garth whom I first heard about at NYU I haven’t been here, haven’t been as Sam says around the water cooler long enough to get an idea of who the players are and what they have in mind. All I know is that I want to be a film reviewer, maybe books and music later, and that Sam has been nice to me and gave me this additional information once again and which has in the Sarah business proved true-this is a cutthroat business so keep your own counsel. Listen to what everybody who has something to say have their say and then discard most of it and just write that pure, fine high white line you studied about in school. And forget the fossil “pyramid” lead nonsense which went out with the pharaohs although they still teach that stuff like it was the new dispensation in the journalism schools.

I have heard from more than one source, actually several since the last review, that Sarah is “sweet” on Seth, he told me to call him Seth although I feel funny calling these older guys by their first names since in grad school when some high-blown journalist came through it was Ms. This or Mr. That, even though she has a partner, a woman, whom she is having an affair with. I still don’t know how to take what she has said about Sam, about him maybe taking dead aim at me which is ridiculous since he has his long- time companion Laura Perkins who also writes here (and who when I met her watched him like a hawk and still does especially after his water cooler praise of me to fellow writers). I see what this cutthroat stuff is all about more clearly now regarding people cutting people but I am just going to write my brains out so Greg can still say he made the right decision taking Elsa’s recommendation.

Here is the “skinny” a cute word that Sam said he coined way back when he was also young and hungry to let people know a little bit about the plot and whether they should bother to see the film if is a “dog.”  I had already telegraphed that I liked the sequel  so I was prepared despite Zack to like the original and I did although now I wished I had seen them in the correct order because I had not been   aware that Sam, played by Pierce Brosnan, had actually made Donna an honest woman, had married her which makes his grieving in the sequel make more sense.

Sam Lowell, actually Sarah Lemoyne said the same thing before I wrote my first review but I will still give Sam the credit since he has been so helpful, said that musicals don’t let plot get in the way of the Tin Pan Alley songs and the dancing when dancing is part of the project as here in a couple of spectacular episodes. And Sam was right on the face of it. The boy and girl had already met so that was no real factor-the real part was that young Sophie, played by Amanda Seyfried was desperate to get married and get the hell off the island prison of a hotel that her single-parent Mom, Donna, played by very versatile Meryl Streep, had dwelt in since she was born. She loves her beau but doesn’t want to wind up like her mother who drifted to the island after a whirlwind spree with three lovers when she was younger. That three lovers will again anchor the “controversy” central to the film-which one in pre-DNA times is the father she never knew taking a cue from Jack Kerouac among others in the unknown fathers pantheon (this courtesy of Sam who is something of an expert on the “beats” from the 1950s who I have heard of in passing but really don’t know anything about).       

Motivated by the desire to know who her father is, and to gain some peace of mind, she had invited the three likeliest candidates, Sam, Harry and Bill to the island to see “what is what” and also to have her “father” give her away in the time-honored tradition. Fine, except dear mother, dear Donna who as I mentioned in the cast line-up I saw with her group Donna and the Dynamos in New York City when I was in high school, who has raised her alone is pissed off that the three guys are around. That produced angst, alienation and a few heart-felt songs and dances between the two before the wedding bells ring but seemed to be resolved nicely by having Mom give daughter away-which seemed right. Hold the cameras though just as Sophie and her man, her Sky are about to tie the knot and unleash who knows what song and dance cascade at the reception Sophie calls the whole thing off after deciding that like any thoroughly modern Millie they should live together and see the world. In any case that new decision brings forth a cascade of song and dance so all is well that ends well. Except Sophie never does find out who her father is and the three guys are just as happy to cut her in thirds-metaphorically. And guess what as I have already mentioned Sam and Donna get married in Sophie and Sky’s place.

Fast forward five, six years, same freaking isolated hillside Greek island hotel with one big exception-Donna as passed through the shades, has died. Now Sophie is ready to seriously tie the Sky knot and have the wedding and reception at the slightly refurbished inn. Then the deluge as three suspect papas, and two Donna dynamos show up to get the kid and her beau through the freaking nuptials. And in the end they will but not before another round of doubt and wonder about what Mama would say, another bout on who Papa is, attempts to placate grieving Sam-stepfather- and plenty of singing and dancing at the drop of a hat. Like I said I did like this film, did like the singing and dancing but after two musical reviews I can see where Zack James might be right that a little goes a long way. In the interest of completeness there we are. (I hope that in 2028 there is not yet another sequel where I will have to tutor some young stringer about my take on the first two like I had to with Zack on the first one.     

As We Enter The Final Phase Of The 100th Commemoration Of World War I With Armistice Day-November 11, 1918-Thoughts On The Film “King Of Hearts” (1966)

As We Enter The Final Phase Of The 100^th Commemoration Of World War I With Armistice Day-November 11, 1918-Thoughts On The Film “King Of Hearts” (1966)

DVD Review

By Josh Breslin

  

King of Hearts, Alan Bates, Genevieve Bujold, 1966    

These days, apparently, we can no longer just go through our paces and do whatever review or commentary we were assigned but also have to comment on how and why we received the assignment from our still fairly new site manager Greg Green. Greg has encouraged, if not demanded, that we go to genesis, so the reader can be more informed about how the new field of on-line publication works with the new technology. These kinds of insights in publishing used to be reserved in the now old-fashioned hard copy days to insider memoirs by publishers, writers and editors. Greg has told me he is trying to demystify the whole process and get the story out while it is “hot” and fresh. 

That said, normally anything of late having to do with commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the end of World War I would be the purview of Seth Garth who has been running a couple of series the past four years (the duration of  that war from August, 1914 on until November, 1918) around the effect that the carnage had on the flower of the European youth especially the cultural worker, the writers, artists, poets, musicians, and occasional dancers who were engaged in this conflict along with the rest of their generation. He worked, is working still, on retrospectives for the extraordinary number of cultural figured killed or maimed in the war. And of those who maimed or not survived the war and as a result produced a very different kind of work, noticeably different than either their own pre-war work or that of the leading schools and academies in the various disciplines. The reason I got this review of the classic French film King of Hearts though, even though Seth very much wanted the assignment as part of his take on World War I, was that way back when, back in 1973 if I recall I had reviewed the film for The East Bay Other. I had actually seen the film in Cambridge where it played continuously for many years at the now long-gone Central Square Cinema to usually sold-out crowds and became a local cult classic which people would have contests over how many times they had seen the film or cite various lines from the film off the cuff for fun. Greg’s idea was for me to compare that first review with my recent re-watching (along with Seth and our respective companions) and do a comparison. Genesis over here goes.         

There are many quotes, many of them by military figures who should know the hard face of war and have opinions on its futility even if they cannot go the distance and in effect become conscientious objectors to war after the fact. Famously key Union Army General U. S. Grant said “war was hell,” bemedaled Marine Corp General Smedley Butler said “war was a racket,” Colonel James Johnson said after Vietnam that war was not a fit occupation for human endeavor and those who profess otherwise should be in an insane asylum, a mental hospital, a nut house is what he actually said but I wanted to soften the blow for today’s sensibilities about the mentally challenged. That latter comment gives me a segue into the film under review where the metaphor, and the reality of that statement meet.

We have all heard about the inmates running the asylum and in this case not only are they running the asylum but are running amok, harmlessly running amok during the catastrophe of war and who is to say that they are not better off for their troubles, Certainly compared with the inmates who are running the war which has come to their door. Let’s set the stage (Sam Lowell, good old, what did one young reviewer here call him, oh yes, wizened, Sam Lowell used to harp on giving the ‘skinny” but Greg Green has frowned on that expression since none of the younger writers and stringers know what the damn thing means) for this beauty of an anti-war film which stops everybody in his or her tracks when you see the very visceral comparison between the mentally ill asylum patients in their harmless splendor and the mentally ill guys running the rack on French soil toward the end attempting to kill every last enemy and a few extra if necessary in the fog of war, October 1918 to be more specific, tidying up the loose ends of the war machine, of the war that would end all wars if I recall somebody rashly said in defense of starting the whole thing at all.     

The Germans, facing defeat, facing mutiny in their navy and in some army units and unrest back home in the factories in dear Berlin, are in the last throes of their military activities in northern occupied France. As a parting gift they are setting up enough explosives to blow the whole town to kingdom come. Nice gesture toward armistice, right. The British who are in front of the town and who have been there for years it seems in the stalemated trench warfare that defined that conflict are informed of that provocation and are prepared to take measures to ensure that when they retake the town for their French brethren they too are not blown to bits. Fair enough. Those measures, rather that measure is to send an explosives expert, played by Alan Bates, to disarm the whole munitions dump. Problem, problem number one, really this private soldier doesn’t know thing number one about explosives being part of the messenger pigeon unit. From there it is one escapade after another as he tries, as any “good” soldier would to do as ordered. No luck, none really since he can’t decode the information headquarters has received about its location. Don’t worry in the end that dump will be neutralized. That’s the subplot anyway and would make this film a snorer with the silly antics around disarming the dump if there wasn’t a stronger message.

Here is the real deal. Since the Germans have left as have all sane citizens once they know the place is ready to blow the only ones who are clueless, who don’t know what is about to happen are the inmates, are the cuckoos in the insane asylum. Since the good Sisters in charge have scrammed the inmates open the door and walk into town where they make the place a playground for fun and amusement. Meanwhile that earnest private is trying to do his best to disarm the munitions-and is drawn into their doings-drawn in as their very own king of hearts for whom they have been waiting. Nice.

To make a long story short because both the antics of the “simple-minded” who somehow seem very sane and made me wonder why they were the ones locked up and the soldiery trying to disarm the dump need not detain us let’s get to the point, points rather which are drawn from this film. On the war front the Germans find out that the British have disarmed the munitions dump and march back into town and the British in turn assuming the coast is clear are ready to march in and do so. Enemies again they square off-not in the trenches of yore, none are around but each side going back to some bizarre and arcane 19^th century drill formation set up firing lines against each other. Bang, bang every freaking soldier is uselessly dead over this pratfall. Except our King of Hearts who was elsewhere hanging around a beautiful butterfly of a young woman, one of the inmates, one too delicate for the real world, played by Guinevere Bujold who many guys, maybe gals too, would lose sleep over. As the townspeople return and the King of Hearts sullenly goes back to his regiment, or what is left of it, the inmates seeing that reality is far from what it cracked up to be if what they witnessed with the combative soldierly was any example return to the asylum and lock themselves back in. Beautiful. Better, better still the King of Hearts torn maybe between two duties heads back up the road to the asylum. Desertion yes, but another beautiful scene.              

All Quiet on the Western Front, The Grand Illusion, Johnny Got His Gun may all be extremely good examples of cinematic excellence around the madness of World War I. Throw this one in the mix too and you will not be too far off.

Train Smoke And Dreams-The Film Adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ “The Girl On The Train”-(2016)

Train Smoke And Dreams-The Film Adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ “The Girl On The Train”-(2016)   

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

The Girl On The Train, starring Emily Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, directed by Tate Taylor, from the thriller novel by Paula Hawkins, 2016

A tale of three women, three smart up and coming but troubled women, suburban women, suburban New York City women and that makes a difference, is an interesting way to introduce this cinematic thriller, Girl On The Train, adapted for the screen from the best-selling novel by Paula Hawkins. Especially since their lives, the lives of Rachael, Anna and Megan to give them names right at the start, are intertwined one way or another by the same man, Tom, a man who as one of the minor characters in the film stated rather succinctly if crudely could not “keep his dick in his pants.” That statement, made on the suburban commuter train from New York City, the train a symbolic metaphor for lots of what goes down along the way, toward the end of the film goes a long way to explaining why this well-done and suspenseful thriller ends the way it does.       

Here’s the scoop. Woman number one, Rachel, played by Emily Blunt, smart, artistic but emotionally fragile and unsure of herself, had as a result of her spiraling alcoholism brought on by her failure to bear a child (and by the nefarious manipulations of philandering Tom) been unceremoniously dumped by her philandering husband, Tom, for another woman, woman number two, Anna, who had borne him a child.  Rachel was a dreamer, a romantic, had some almost child-like idea of what a leafy suburban perfect marriage might look like despite her alcoholic haze which during her binges had left her with big blank spaces in her memory, left her with blackouts. It is in trying to retrace the steps of her life that will finally aid her-and get her and other into a hell of a lot of trouble.

The romantic dreamer about some ideal marriage part for Rachel came when she passed her old neighborhood on the train she took every day supposedly going to and from work (she had been fired for her over-the-top alcoholic behavior and had been fired so the trips back and forth to New York City were trips to nowhere). A few houses from where she lived she spied a couple who look like they were the consummate expression of everything she still longed for-including reuniting with her husband.

Enter woman number three, Megan, played by Haley Bennett, young, neurotic and sexually promiscuous, who was the woman Rachel had seen from the train. Megan rather than the ideal suburban wife was seeing a psychiatrist about her problems (while trying to seduce him). And about the secret guilt she had felt ever since she had neglected her out-of-wedlock baby when she was a teenager. Megan had worked for Tom and Anna, who had her own set of emotional problems around having the child and having a philandering husband, as a nanny to complete the scene (a job that it turned out Tom had insisted she take).

Here is where things got dicey. Megan one night went missing, and would be found after some time dead in the woods along the nearby Hudson River, an obvious homicide. Rachel, in one of her less lucid and less sober moments witnessed a scene from one end of a tunnel where Megan, who had disillusioned Rachel from the train by apparently taking another lover, and somebody had been seen together the night she disappeared. The rest of the film unwinds around Rachel’s increased clarity and confidence in herself about what had happened that night, who had killed Megan and why. Naturally there is plenty of misdirection as in any good thriller. Rachel herself had come under suspicion due to her erratic and at times near hysterical behavior. As had, naturally given the statistics on such matters, Megan’s overbearing and overwrought husband (with a little help from trying to be helpful Rachel). Hell, even the shrink, Megan’s shrink, based on Rachel’s faulty foggy memory, was under a cloud for a time. But as the film winds down and the possible candidates with the motive to do the foul deed dwindle Rachel’s sense of what happened that night and who might have committed the foul deed improved.

Although this film (and the book it is based on) is predicated on solving the murder mystery which sets up the plot I was struck by how much these three very different women had been thrown together by an odd fate and reacted to things in very ways. The acting by the trio, particularly Emily Blunt whose very complicated role drove the action but also drove the psychological aspects of the film, was excellent as the three women went through their respective paces. As for whodunit check it out for yourself if you have not already read the book. A way better than average thriller.             

Out In The B-Film Noir Night Where The Slippery Slide Sideways- Richard Basehart And Barry Sullivan’s “Tension” (1949)- A Film Review

Out In The B-Film Noir Night Where The Slippery Slide Sideways- Richard Basehart And Barry Sullivan’s “Tension” (1949)- A Film Review

DVD Review throat

By Sarah Lemoyne

Tension,   

I am feeling sky high today, feeling like I belong to the fraternity today, to the film critic circle (although my mentor the legendary journalist and reviewer Seth Garth has always made me painfully aware that in this cutthroat business you are only as good as your last review while your competitors sharpen their knives getting ready to take that big back stab if you stumble). As a cautionary tale Seth eternally mentions his old friend Sam Lowell, who I have locked horns with under his guidance, as the avatar of what he is talking about. Sam, when the deal went down, cast the deciding vote against retaining his old friend, their old friend, Allan Jackson as site manager on the simple idea that the place needed new blood. And this a guy whom Allan loves, and Sam loves him so Sam says. Point taken.

The reason I believe I belong, can give as good as I get is that in my last review, Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell’s noir-ish His Kind Of Woman, I was able to take a leaf from the film critic’s playbook for use when you have no “hook” to lure the reader in and came up smelling like roses. I went on my own to the old tried and true “boy meets girl” ploy which has saved a million movies and not a few reviewers. Seth was happy to read the review and texted congratulations since he was out of town trying to coax Allan Jackson to come back and do another set of Encore Introductions for a series he edited several years ago and so I was on my own. Even curmudgeon Sam Lowell let up for a minute, put away his saber and acknowledged that for a young gal, his term of endearment, what I did was pretty smart and savvy. Most of all Greg Green the site manager liked what I did and granted my request to do more film noir reviews and here I am reviewing another minor B-noir classic Tension. (I did not expect after only two reviews to get a crack at the major classics like Out Of The Past or L.A. Confidential but I am on my way up the challenging and ruthless food chain-watch your backs.)

During my on-going battles with Sam Lowell, helped as I have gladly expressed on more than one occasion by Seth, I have come to realize that my true calling is to be the 21^st century film noir diva (and other stuff too but that is enough for right now). Part of that realization was that Sam’s definitive The Life and Times of Film Noir:1940-1960 which the older writers bow down to does not stand up under 21^st century conditions. (Seth made me laugh one time when I asked him if he had actually read all 900 plus pages of the Lowell tome and he said with a smirk, his trademark smirk, was I kidding the thing as impossible to finish, a real snorer. Then he let the cat out of the bag and told me he had probably written half of it and he had mulled over the other half with Sam so he felt no compulsion to ever read the thing-to even consul it like half the other film critics did who wanted to crib some stuff with no heavy lifting). There are major flaws in the analysis, again for a modern audience too familiar with real life drama. Moreover, Sam never revised or updated after 1960 so there was, is plenty of room for me to make my nuggets with what is missing for the last half century.          

But now to B-noir-dom circa Sam’s volume time. In a funny way this is a police procedural which I think is the weakest link to the noir genre. The weakest part of Sam’s work as well since I will admit that he knows his noir private detectives but I don’t think he really had any sympathy for coppers, and neither did Seth, and so they both underplay any smart public coppers skills. The overriding premise of noir including obviously police procedurals is that crime does not pay and that the villains will get their just desserts, will face the eternal slammer or the big step-off, Seth and Sam’s term for state-sanctioned executions, even if the good guys don’t always fare that well. Naturally coppers, public coppers, would have you believe that they have solved every big case, every murder, one case with stealth, determination and perseverance. Baloney (courtesy of Seth). Most cases go to the deep cold case storage bin and only resurface as exploitative television series (and then are rarely solved there as well except when the perp in moral quandary and remorse shows up at the police station bleeding from all pores with guilt ready to face her or his maker-bullshit, me).  

This lead cop, Collier, who the hell came pronounce his last name and everybody called him Collier so that is what I will use, since he made lieutenant thought he had everything under control, could sweat the truth out of any situation by some ring around rosy strategy of putting the big squeeze, putting elastic-like tension on the whole operation until somebody cracks. Told us all how he had it wrapped up and delivered no sweat in the cameo intro all braggadocio and assorted bullshit. To prime us, to justify the camera look he took us through the notorious Quimby case, the subject of this noir (notorious since the wrong person went to the gas chamber, a woman, Claire, Quimby’s unfaithful wife, took the big step-off when Collier tricked her weak head playing on her weak knees for men into confessing after some lame ruse which we will get to below). Trouble was that Collier was long gone, had taken to the ashes, better had gone to sleep with the fishes from what I heard when some Claire hometown high school sweetie with more guts than good sense gutted him and dumped him in the briny Pacific near La Jolla to be washed clean by the Japan currents, before the information came out via Quimby’s girlfriend Mary, played by Cyd Charisse who was no mean dancer but did not go through her steps here, about who and who did not do what. The “did not” was that Claire had not killed her lover but was set up by Collier to play the patsy since she seemed the logical choice justified by his well-advertised introduction.   

No question Claire was no lady, was a tramp, was what even young women of my generation call any man’s woman, a woman of easy virtue by Seth’s, always looking for the main chance, always looking for the best next thing as long as it was male and had money, lots of it. But that craven desire is no reason tramps, the hell with it lets call a thing by its real name whores, have to take the fall for some background dangler. The set-up was a beauty I have to admit. Everything worked out according to plan once Quimby, played by nerdish Richard Basehart, figured out how to commit the perfect murder. How to do murder, one and walk away. According to my sources this blonde as sin Claire, played by notorious femme, maybe better wannabe femme, Audrey Totter in the film, was working the docks in San Diego looking for some red hot sailors with plenty of dough from their exertions and no women for a while (we will not even get into the “girlfriend” stuff at sea as the sailors paired up in those seaborne bunks something Sam would not even dare mention when he was a reviewing All Aboard and totally missed the obvious guy who killed the “fairy,” the word used in the film, his shipside lover being of that prissy pre-Stonewall generation that took forever to speak about the “love that dare not speak its name,” speak of sodomy and the like).

Bingo along comes Walter Mitty, oops, sailor boy Quimby, with dough and big plans. She reeled him in, reeled him in good and made the cardinal mistake every tram makes-see what he has besides the bulging wallet (and bulging pants I thought I would put in to show I can be as salacious as the guys when I want to be even though I have my girlfriend Clara keeping me warm in other ways). Didn’t know that he had no jack, had big plans but no dough as they migrated north, married if you can believe that, to L.A. and Collier’s bailiwick. That was like lemmings to the sea for Claire once she got wise as she tried to make every man in town while humble pie Quimby was working like seven dervishes as manager of an all-night drugstore to make his scratch. To give her my grandparents’ post-World War II dream of a nice suburban home on a little space lot with maybe a garden, quiet and maybe kids and dogs galore, galore the kids part.                

Claire balked, balked and once she knew Quimby’s score grabbed every man in town until she hustled Barney with a Malibu address, nice suits and a big ass Buick which my grandfather said in his Nash Rambler world was the ticket to paradise. Took a hike on Walter, no, Warren sorry got mixed up on my too clever Walter Mitty description and never looked back, blew the stinking apartment hovel they lived in with a suitcase in hand and whatever sex toys would keep things interesting. (This is another thing guys like Sam, even Seth for that matter, balked on talking about when they were denigrating tramps, whores, refused to talk about the tools of the trade.) Naturally Warren took it hard, had many sleepless nights wondering how to get his dame back. Made the big, very big ninety-eight pound weakling mistake of cruising to that Malibu hideaway and confronting Claire and Barney out in their turf. All he got for his efforts was sand in his mouth from a Barney punch and a good laugh from kiss-off Claire.

I admit this is where I got a lot more respect for Warren when he responded to that series of insults with an idea-with a perfect plan to murder Barney for making him look like some cheapjack punk in front of his two-timing, at least two, wife. Decided to go the fake identity route that had worked plenty of times before when he researched the matter. Changed his appearance, name, occupation, address to Paul something, does a last name really matter since it was all smoke and mirrors anyway, and was off. What he intended to do was by stealth some dark moonless high tide night when Claire was at the movies or shacking up with her next best thing once Barney wouldn’t give her every fucking thing she wanted was to head to Malibu and do the dirty deed.

Warren went out there but just then things were kind of murky, said he had passed out and wasn’t sure what happened. He was relating this to his new girlfriend, that Mary mentioned before, whom he took up with as part of his cover. Had met her at the apartment complex where he was known as Paul, Paul something. Like I said this Mary was a looker, was nice. What Paul didn’t know, didn’t find out about until later was that behind that angelic smile Mary was running a high-end pornography “club” for rich clients with kinky tastes and the money to indulge them out of the apartment complex. With the landlady’s, Ma Geiger’s, blessing. Mary had taken over for Ma, whose husband Arthur had started the business in Bay City but had been wasted by his boyfriend on the orders of Eddie Mars the gangster who ran the operations, when she got too old to act as a front for the eye-candy hungry clientele.

Enter the police, enter bozo Collier, or first enter Claire who came back home to Warren and his dull night manager of the something out of Edward Hopper Nighthawk lame drugstore since her Barney had been killed, murdered. Now enter the cops who have already put a target on Claire’s back and give her the third degree. Claire “lived” out there nobody else had been seen around, Claire had a gun permit and so they wrapped that baby up no problem. Until Mary looking for her man, looking for missing Paul, yeah, Paul somebody went to the coppers and they really do put two and two together once they get a photograph of him from Mary (not naked, okay remember this was 1940s Hollywood in uptight 1940s Cold War America) and realize, wow, the two guys are one. Immediately Warren was targeted as the fall guy, the patsy.

Collier had put a big bull’s eye on Warren’s photograph although he never gave up hope that he could snag Claire for the crime since she would not give him a tumble even when he had threatened to have her locked up for prostitution. Old Barney had been killed by a gun and he had no gun, had asked Warren if he owned a gun and he said no. Satisfied with that answer he went back to Claire, Claire and her missing gun. Played her like a violin telling her that without a gun he would not be able to nail Warren. That got her thinking, thinking wrongly but thinking that she could get out from under the murder wrap by framing Warren with a big frame. See Claire had had an argument with Barney that night Warren had showed up earlier and had been in a fog, really overwrought nerves from the idea of killing a man. He had threatened her over her weak knees for men-other men and she had shot him, had thought she had shot him, shot him dead, very dead as Seth would say. Collier figured that she was guilty of something and if he ever expected to make captain he had better have a collar on this case. Claire was built for the frame and it fit, fit snugly when he pulled the tense elastic on her feeble brain.

Yeah, Claire took the big step-off for no other reason that her whole freaking rotten but murder-free life led her down that back alley. Collier did make captain although little good it did him when that hometown Claire sweetheart found out the real story. Warren never got over Claire’s execution despite all of Mary’s charms-and the dough rolling in from the “dirty pictures” clubs once Eddie Mars gave her the franchises for Southern California. Warren wound up a homeless junkie over in the Bunker Hill district of L.A. and died a few years after that. Mary on her own deathbed told her confessor, her priest what had happened. The night Warren, Claire and she were in Barney’s Malibu digs she noticed that Warren was too chicken, was too much the ninety-eight pound weakling to crush Barney and he had fled the scene in panic and lightheadedness. Claire had that altercation with Barney and went bang-bang. Claire had fled as well, panicked, dropping the gun. All Mary did was provide the extra bang before Claire regained her wits and went back for the vagrant gun. So sweet and nice Mary walked. When the dust settled the only one still standing beside Mary was public copper I think his name was Conrad something who just chuckled a knowing cop chuckle.