When Hunks Like Robert Mitchum Lighted Up The Film Noir Heavens- Faith Domergue’s “Where Danger Lives” (1950)-A Review

When Hunks Like Robert Mitchum Lighted Up The Film Noir Heavens- Faith Domergue’s “Where Danger Lives” (1950)-A Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Where Danger Lives, starring Faith Domergue, Claude Rains, Robert Mitchum, directed by legendary film noir director John Farrow, 1950

The reader may wonder, no, may be in shock that young Sarah Lemoyne, me, is reviewing a 1950s film noir minor classic Where Danger Lives starring Robert Mitchum one of the half dozen or so best- known male noir leads rather than the expected “expert” on the genre Sam Lowell or at least a well-known reviewer like my mentor Seth Garth. Thank site manager Greg Green for that although after all that is what he gets paid for. Paid for putting out what he has termed “the fire.” The “fire” in this case the nondescript “dispute” if it can be said to rise to that level between the now slightly wizened Sam Lowell (my concession to Sam via Greg after consistent and provable accusations by me that he, Sam, has become both mentally and physically a shell of what his old-time legend bought and paid for by the studios and book publishers had been, had become wizened and senile from his rantings against a harmless young woman like me trying to learn her craft) and me over my so-called allegations about who actually wrote his film reviews after his breakthrough tome on film noir which is still considered by some of the diminishing clot of  older writers on the subject the definitive volume but which I made the “mistake” of saying was dated and left me cold, left me out in the cold in trying to understand the genre. Frankly should have been revised by him, or somebody about twenty years ago when neo-noir films like L.A. Confidential and Mullholland Drive took the genre in another direction. Also should have included at least a tip of the hat to the idea that most of the guys, private detectives, crooks, criminals and skirt-chasers were deeply misogynous. But that would have thrown his precious main theory about “man’s fate” into the trash heap and his book into the remainder bins.      

Although I have proof positive that mainly stringers, usually female stringers romantically involved with him if you can believe that , or believe that this mountebank has actually been married three times and has a bunch of nice kids, or young women looking to get up the professional male-dominated food chain he has muddied the waters so much that it is hard to believe that he did not do the deeds as noted. Worse of all personally were his insinuations, hurtful insinuation to both Seth Garth, allegedly his old school boy friend, and my partner Clara that Seth and I were in the throes of some intergenerational romance. Thoughts of a dirty old man who under other circumstances should have been relieved of his duties, except he had already been relieved of them through what was supposed to be his retirement. That “hanging around like Father Death,” Seth’s take on the matter is what has brought Seth to my defense and assistance much to Clara and my appreciation (although it was touchy for a while when she thought I was in my “man” interest stage after having gone to dinner with him alone one night since I have always been a “B” in the LGBTQ firmament while she is exclusively “L”).

All that is over now though, all the mutual mudslinging is over courtesy of Greg who did what most editors do when their writers start to wrangle to the detriment of the work. Called us in to walk the plank, for me to walk the plank or so I thought given Sam’s vast seniority. But no Greg the fount of wisdom just told Sam that Sarah should do a film noir review, a review of one of the examples that Sam used in that long-ago book everybody went crazy over. Not a major example but a sturdy one as this Where Danger Lives is. In return Sam is too do a musical or was to do a musical because when Greg suggested that he balked. Sam balked and said he would go back into cubbyhole retirement and leave the field to the younger writers. Thanks Sam but I still wanted to do this review to show my stuff so I too can climb up that cutthroat food chain you have withdrawn from with seeming good grace. So here we are.

After perusing Seth’s copy of Sam’s The Life And Times Of Film Noir:1940-1960 I noticed at least in the femme fatale section proper that Sam has made quite a case for some “going along minding his own business man,” usually a a professional man, being “mantrapped” by some vampish woman with evil designs on his time and happiness. (By the way, btw in Internet speak, perusing Sam’s book is all anybody could reasonably be expected to do since at 900 hundred long drawn out pages not even the most devoted besotted, book-wormish aficionado could wallow through the whole thing except those who have no other life and time on their hands than to wade through such things. Even Seth has told me and he has said it was okay to use his remarks here that he has never read the whole thing, never would have been able to so even as nighttime before bed reading. Especially as bedtime reading. Seth always said that Sam was a great reviewer but when he went beyond that put out the lights. Of course, Seth had the advantage, if it was an advantage, of having been present at the creation as he says while Sam was lumbering along on the volume and so knows exactly where Sam’s head was when he wrote the thing.                            

I will give you an example of what I mean by the so-call mantrap defense of the guy coming under the spell of some wayward femme fatale who takes no prisoners. In discussing the high classic Out of the Past starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas a section that goes on for some one hundred pages alone longer than the plot outline Sam gives the most useful for our purposes case for his dog-eared theory. Kirk, a minor gangster working out of Reno who would have been devoured alive by the sharks in Vegas, hired Jeff, Mitchum’s role, to seek Kathy, played by Jane, his errant girlfriend who has run off with a fistful of his dough and what amounted to the “finger.” Jeff, a professional detective, went to Mexico her last known whereabouts to find her, bring her back and collect his fee as any professional detective would have done and be done with it. Simply. Except once Jeff got down south, got to waiting around some off-beat cantina for her to appear once she did and he got his looks at her all his resolve vanished. I admit Jane Greer was a looker, would be a looker today too with that “come hither” look that men have found attractive in me when I am into listening to them sweet talk me which has not been for a while now. (They could learn something from Seth by the way who when he took Clara and me out to dinner, a dinner after the dinner we had alone which had upset Clara no end and got her yelling habits on, to ruffle things out she said to clear the air that if he was interested in me romantically that he would not beat about the bush about it. Said that he would have, as Clara had, taken dead aim at me. That made me feel good and hopefully satisfied Clara). 

But Jeff was a pro, was supposed to do his business and forget it. Instead he got hung up on some vagrant jasmine   scent, something in the sultry air, something about the way she turned her head just so and bought into some evil plot she had hatched up to get him to od her bidding, to get her to forget to bring her back to Kirk. And who knows what madness since not only did she grab Kirk’s dough but winged him with a couple of slugs in her girlish gun-simple way. In the end he will be betrayed by her, will be left holding the bag for a killing of another detective, will be forced to duck out and hide his identity in some two-bit California town and in the end wind up in some un-mourned ditch bleeding like a sieve. I could say more but the reader gets the picture of a man who can’t get out of the spider-like clutches of a woman. We, Sam wants us to believe, should bleed for Jeff just because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants on a job. Couldn’t say no. Yeah, right.

I suggest that Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon turning over the faithless Bridget and her stuff of dreams when she tried to have him take her place in the big step-off and Phil Marlowe in The Big Sleep when he foiled Carmen’s “come hither” advances and took gangster Eddie Mars down for the count had the better professional attitude when the deal went down. So much for Sam’s silly idea that the guy is just victim, just a patsy for whatever any stray good-looking woman has in store for him. That whole bogus sentiment will come into play when I set up the plotline and theory behind the film under review.

There is always one moment of no turning back in each film noir I have seen but except for what book reviewer Josh Breslin calls “holy goofs,” guys a la Jack Kerouac’s characterization who could not talk and chew gum at the same time, a moment when the guy makes the wrong turn. Except that wrong turn is not without volition on the part of the male and is not some Calvinistic predestination gambit where free choice either doesn’t matter or can’t be bought for love or money since he is not one of the elect and a doomed soul. Take the good doctor here Jeff, Mitchum’s role, funny Jeff was also the name of the wayward private detective in Out of the Past who wound up with a couple of slugs in him via a gun-simple femme in a graven ditch out in nowhere. He had a promising career in front of him, good bedside manner, a good if not outstanding resume and a girlfriend nurse who if not startingly beautiful like sultry Margo, Faith’s role, at least would be a good life partner and bedmate. He could have had it all and had no complains.       

Enter exotic flower mysterious Margo via a suicide attempt into the emergency room while Jeff was on duty. Margo, admittedly the clinging type set off something in him beyond his desire to make sure she did not attempt another end to her life especially when she “did the dixie,” a term via Seth via Sam, on him and set him on a search for her. Right there he should have, could have dropped the whole thing. No, this good doctor actually made a house call for crying out loud. What doctor this side of Nick Adams’ father in the Hemingway series of the same name made house calls once the AMA pulled the brakes on that practice citing too much wasted time and too few billable hours.         

           

Okay, sometimes a guy, a gal too I know I did with a couple of partners before Clara, will get infatuated and then sober up. Will let the thing die on the vine because things don’t add up. This is where Sam is all wrong in his wrong-headed theory. One night at some gin mill rendezvous dear sweet Margo tried to brush Jeff off claiming her father, her rich as Midas but demanding father, needed her to go on a vacation with him. False flag, red flag for any sane guy. What does the big broad-shouldered, jut-jawed lug do. Run out to her house to confront her father, to give him the real deal that he wanted to marry his daughter. Except that her “father” was really her husband and this was a non-incestuous relationship because she lied to Jeff, admitted she lied to Jeff right in front of hubby and her fall guy. Jeff could have walked, sort of did walk, except a sudden scream from Margo from inside the house sent him back in. Yeah, yeah, Sam like she forced him back. He wanted to on his hands and knees and with a smile- for his own desires.    

That walk back through those un-pearly gates led to his demise, led to his willing demise, his big step off when after fighting hubby, a much older man, who fell down after beating Jeff about his witless head. It turned out that he had killed the old man-and was at the same time subject to the trauma of a concussion in his medical self-examination world. Groggy, he accepted responsibility for the killing despite the old man still breathing while he was injured. He wanted to report the accident after all that was what it to the cops but against all good sense, against his still substantial ability to make decisions despite his head injury Margo talked him out of it. From there it is nothing but a run south to the border and freedom for the pair. Naturally to juice up the plot they run into plenty of hassles before they get to that precious Mexican border and the good life, the free life. All the while Margo was acting very weird, acting like she has something to hide. Which she did. I hope I offend nobody in the mentally-challenged community but she was a very disturbed woman who moreover had actually killed her hubby with a pillow which Jeff was clueless about. Clueless about until he stopped being of use to her as his head injury condition made him less useful for the final fateful getaway.

It was not until dear Margo gave him her patented old pillow treatment that he finally wised up, finally knew she had a screw loose. Confronting her with his so-called newfound wisdom right at the border and freedom fence she did the Kathy on him, fed him a couple of slugs for his efforts. Another gun-simple woman. Not so strange the coppers who have been hounding the pair from out in the desert somewhere to the border threw some slugs into her. She did do something Kathy never would have done, a gesture for love as Rick of Rick’s Café Americain would have said, twisted love maybe, and gave a deathbed confession absolving Jeff. Jeff, undeservedly lived to doctor on, lived to go back to that ordinary sweetie nurse and to avoid another walk on the wild side.        

Sam Lowell may not like it but his she-devil noise about the women, the femme fatales is all smoke and mirrors, all is now pricked like some kid’s balloon. Even Seth, as devoted if not as well known a film noir aficionado as Sam, paid me the compliment of saying that I had put a searchlight on something that had bothered him for a long time about Sam’s silly theory. That helpless male victim part by grown men of the world. He still is not totally convinced of my take on the matter but he respects it and if I give some more proofs he, unlike Sam, is willing to jump ship. Welcome aboard, mate.

A Salute To The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-The Sam And Ralph Stories - In The 157th Anniversary Year-Karl Marx On The American Civil War

A Salute To The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-The Sam And Ralph Stories - In The 157^th Anniversary Year-Karl Marx On The American Civil War  

[In early 2018, shortly after I had taken over the reins as site manager at this on-line publication I “saw the light” and bowed to the wisdom of a number of older writers who balked at my idea of reaching younger and newer audiences by having them review films like Marvel/DC Comics productions, write about various video games and books that would not offend a flea unlike the flaming red books previously reviewed here centered on the now aging 1960s baby-boomer demographic which had sustained the publication through good times and bad as a hard copy and then on-line proposition. One senior writer, who shall remain nameless in case some stray millennial sees this introduction and spreads some viral social media hate campaign his way, made the very telling observation that the younger set, his term, don’t read film reviews or hard copy books as a rule and those hardy Generation of ’68 partisans who still support this publication in the transition from the old Allan Jackson leadership to mine don’t give a fuck about comics, video games or graphic novels. I stand humbled.

Not only stand humbled though but in a valiant and seemingly successful attempt to stabilize this operation decided to give an encore presentation to some of the most important series produced and edited by Allan Jackson-without Allan. That too proved to be an error when I had Frank Jackman introduce the first few sections of The Roots Is The Toots Rock And Roll series which Allan had sweated his ass over to bring out over a couple of years. Writers, and not only senior writers who had supported Allan in the vote of no confidence fight challenging his leadership after he went overboard attempting to cash in on the hoopla over the commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the Summer of Love in 1967 but also my younger writer partisans, balked at this subterfuge. What one called it a travesty. Backing off after finding Allan, not an easy task since he had fled to the safer waters of the West looking for work and had been rumored to be any place from Salt Lake City to some mountainous last hippie commune in the hills of Northern California doing anything from pimping as press agent for Mitt Romney’s U.S. Senate campaign in Utah to running a whorehouse with Madame La Rue in Frisco or shacking up with drag queen Miss Judy Garland in that same city, we brought Allan back to do the introductions to the remaining sections. That we, me and the Editorial Board established after Allan’s demise and as a guard against one-person rule, had compromised on that gesture with the last of the series being the termination of Allan’s association with the publication except possibly as an occasional writer, a stringer really, when some nostalgia event needed some attention.       

That is the way things went and not too badly when we finished up the series in the early summer of 2018. But that is not the end of the Allan story. While looking through the on-line archives I noticed that Allan had also seriously edited another 1960s-related series, the Sam and Ralph Stories, a series centered on the trials and tribulations of two working-class guys who had been radicalized in different ways by the 1960s upheavals and have never lost the faith in what Allan called from Tennyson “seeking a newer world” would resurface in this wicked old world, somebody’s term.

I once again attempted to make the mistake of having someone else, in this case Josh Breslin, introduce the series (after my introduction here) but the Editorial Board bucked me even before I could set that idea in motion. I claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that Allan was probably out in Utah looking for some residual work for Mitt Romney now that he is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator for Utah or running back to Madame La Rue, an old flame, and that high- end whorehouse or hanging with Miss Judy Garland at her successful drag queen tourist attraction cabaret. No such luck since he was up in Maine working on a book about his life as an editor. To be published in hard cop y by well-known Wheeler Press whenever he gets the proofs done. So hereafter former editor and site manager Allan will handle the introductions on this encore presentation of this excellent series. Greg Green]                   

By Bart Webber

Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris met on May Day 1971 under unusual circumstances to say the least. May Day might spring to mind for the politically attuned, left-wing politically attuned more likely, as an international workers’ holiday celebrated in many countries but not in the United States as anything but an unofficial day of commemoration by the high heaven left-wing native remnant who remember the mass marches on that day in the 1930s in places like New York City and San Francisco and the immigrants used to celebrating the day in their countries of origin. That day though Sam Eaton, who had become an anti-war activist a couple of years before when in reaction to his closest friend from high school corner boy days, Jeff Mullins, being blown away in some God forsaken village near Pleiku in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and Ralph Morris, an ex-Army veteran who had served eighteen months in that same Central Highlands area and after being discharged had also become an anti-war activist in reaction to what he called “the U. S. government making animals, nothing less” out of him and the fellow soldiers he served with in Vietnam had met on the football field at then RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.

They, respectively, had been arrested along with thousands of others while trying to “capture” the White House and to surround the Pentagon and symbolically shut it down. Those were heady days and although they did not effectively shut down the government that day and all the collective actions for years by the anti-war movement did not beat the American government out of Vietnam (it would take a concerted effort by the North Vietnamese Army/South Vietnamese Liberation Front offensive to sweep away the old regime and sent the United States desperately packing to the helicopter pads on the roof of the embassy as the famous photograph had it which right-wing aficionados still call “a stab in the back” for not staying the course even longer, not providing that admittedly corrupt Saigon  regime yet more weapons, dough and legitimacy) the friendship between the two men has lasted until this day (with some periodic lapses while both men moved back from total 24/7 political commitment to get jobs and raise families, nicely done). More importantly they remained true to their anti-war youth even as the high tide of the 1960s turned to ashes. They kept the faith, although in attenuated form.

One of the things that resulted directly from that May Day 1971 defeat of their slim forces by the rapacious government which launched a massive counter-offensive, counter-revolution to hear Sam say it which has lasted in some form, most recently around the so-called cultural wars, was the need felt by both of them to have a better handle on how to actually bring down a government bend on war, and continuation of war, by mass actions (including, if necessary as strange as it may seem to a reader today revolution so Sam word then not so off-beat). So they in the summer of 1972, like many thousands of other young radicals looking for some answers since what they had been doing previously was stalled began to read a lot of leftist literature from the past, including the works of Karl Marx, a name that previously meant the “enemy” in their red scare Cold War upbringing in the very working class towns of Carver, Massachusetts and Troy, New York respectively. Moreover Sam, who had been living in a commune in Cambridge with some other free-lance radicals invited Ralph to come over from Troy for that summer and take part in a study group which was being formed by one of the many “red collectives” that were sprouting up around the town.

And they did so, did study although they both confessed since they were not well-versed or deeply interested in history, did find out what May Day and lots of other things meant in the old days. Part of that study included a close study of Karl Marx’s relationship with America, a fact that they were both totally unaware of from the conventional histories they had been taught in high school. Particularly important were the efforts by Marx and the First International that he in effect led to support the Northern side in the American Civil War under the imperative of the abolishment of slavery in the Marxist scheme a progressive step for human progress and an unfettering of the capitalism system, then on a progressive historical curve by the dead weight of slave labor. And they had very kind words to say of one Abraham Lincoln who acted as a serious agent for change whatever his personal views on the black liberation question (in those old days every issue came forth as a question, the women question, the gay question, the Russian revolution question and so on).

So that is why today as Americans commemorate the 157^th anniversary of the start of a bloody civil war Sam Eaton and Ralph can draw inspiration from what Karl Marx tried with might and main to support. Sam, the writer of the two, although Ralph has put in more than his fair share of ideas, wrote a little piece on the subject as an introduction to articles by Marx on the subject. Here is what he had to say:                  

I am always amazed when I run into some younger leftists, or even older radicals who may have not read much Marx and Engels, and find that they are surprised, very surprised to see that Marx and Engels were avid partisans of the Abraham Lincoln-led Union side in the American Civil War. In the age of advanced imperialism, of which the United States is currently the prime example, and villain, we are almost always negative about capitalism’s role in world politics. And are always harping on the need to overthrow the system one way or another in order, peacefully if possible, but by any means necessary as Malcolm X used to say, if necessary, to bring forth a new socialist reconstruction of society. Thus one could be excused for forgetting that at earlier points in history capitalism played a progressive role. A role that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Marxists, if not applauded, then at least understood represented human progress.

Of course, one does not expect everyone to be a historical materialist and therefore know that in the Marxist scheme of things both the struggle to bring America under a unitary state that would create a national capitalist market by virtue of a Union victory and the historically more important struggle to abolish slavery that turned out to a necessary outcome of that Union struggle were progressive in our eyes. Read on.

Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton a couple of old-time radicals, old-time now in the  2010s unlike in their youth not being the Great Depression labor radicals who had been their models after a fashion and who helped built the now seemingly moribund unions, (or unions now rather consciously led by union leaders who have no or only attenuated links to past militant labor actions like strikes, plant sit-downs, hot-cargo struck goods, general strikes and such and would go into a dead faint if such actions were forced upon them and are so weakened as to be merely dues paying organizations forwarding monies to the Democratic “friends of labor” Party). They had come of political age as anti-war radicals from the hell-bent street in-your-face 1960s confrontations with the American beast during the Vietnam War reign of hell. Ralph from the hard-shell experience of having fought for the beast in the Central Highlands in that benighted country and who became disgusted with what he had done, his buddies had done, and his government had done to make animals out of them destroying simple peasants catch in a vicious cross-fire and Sam, having lost his closest high school hang around guy, Jeff Mullin, blown away in some unnamed field near some hamlet that he could not pronounce or spell correctly. The glue that brought them together, brought them together for a lifetime friendship and political comity (with some periods of statutory neglect to bring up families in Carver, Massachusetts and Troy, New York respectively) the ill-fated actions on May Day 1971 In Washington when they attempted along with several thousand others to shut down the government if it did not shut down the war. All those efforts got them a few days detention in RFK stadium where they had met almost accidently and steel-strong bonds of brotherhood from then on.     

They had seen high times and ebbs, mostly ebbs once the 1960s waves receded before the dramatic events of 9/11 and more particularly the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 called off what they had termed the “armed truce” with the United States government over the previous couple of decades. So Ralph and Sam were beside themselves when the powder-puff uprising of the Occupy movement brought a fresh breeze to the tiny American left-wing landscape in the latter part of 2011.  That term “powder puff” not expressing the heft of the movement which was not inconsiderable for a couple of months especially in hotbeds like New York, Boston, L.A. and above all the flagship home away from home of radical politics, San Francisco but the fact that it disappeared almost before it got started giving up the huge long-term fight it was expected to wage to break the banks, break the corporate grip on the world and, try to seek “newer world”). Ralph and Sam were not members in good standing of any labor unions, both having after their furtive anti-war street fights and the ebbing of the movement by about the mid-1970s returned to “normalcy,” Ralph having taken over his father’s electrical shop in Troy when his father retired and Sam had gone back to Carver to expand a print shop that he had started in the late 1960s that had been run by a hometown friend in his many absences. However having come from respectable working-class backgrounds in strictly working-class towns, Carver about thirty miles from Boston and the cranberry bog capital of the world and Ralph in Troy near where General Electric ruled the roost, had taken to heart the advice of their respective grandfathers about not forgetting those left behind, that an injury to one of their own in this wicked old world was an injury to all as the old Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) motto had it. Moreover despite their backing away from the street confrontations of their youth when that proved futile after a time as the Vietnam War finally wound down and yesterday’s big name radicals left for parts unknown they had always kept an inner longing for the “newer world,” the more equitable world where the people who actually made stuff and kept the wheels of society running and their down-pressed allies ruled.   

So Ralph and Sam would during most of the fall of 2011   travel down to the Wall Street “private” plaza (and site of many conflicts and stand-offs between the Occupy forces on the ground and then Mayor Blumberg and his itchy cops) which was the center of the movement on weekends, long weekends usually, to take part in the action after the long drought of such activity both for them personally and for their kind of politics. They were crestfallen to say the least when the thing exploded after Mayor Blumberg and the NYPD the police pulled down the hammer and forcibly disbanded the place (and other city administrations across the country and across the world and police departments doing likewise acting in some concert as it turned out once the dust settled and “freedom of information” acts were invoked to see what the bastards were up to).

Of more concern since they had already known about what the government could do when it decided to pull down the hammer having learned a painfully hard lesson on May Day 1971 and on a number of other occasions later when Ralph and Sam and their comrades decided to get “uppity” and been slapped down more than once although they at least had gone into those actions with their eyes wide open had been the reaction of the “leadership” in folding up the tents (literally and figuratively). Thereafter the movement had imploded from its own contradictions, caught up not wanting to step on toes, to let everybody do their own thing, do their own identity politics which as they also painfully knew had done   much to defang the old movements, refusing out of hand to cohere a collective leadership that might give some direction to the damn thing but also earnestly wanting to bring the monster down.

Ralph and Sam in the aftermath, after things had settled down and they had time to think decided to put together a proposal, a program if you like, outlining some of the basic political tasks ahead to be led by somebody. Certainly not by them since radical politics, street politics is a young person’s game and they admittedly had gotten rather long in the tooth. Besides they had learned long ago, had talked about it over drinks at Jack Higgins’ Grille in Boston more than once in their periodic reunions when Ralph came to town, how each generation had to face its tasks in its own way so they would be content to be “elder” tribal leaders and provide whatever wisdom they could, if asked.  Working under the drumbeat of Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up something of a “national anthem” for what went on among the better elements of Occupy are some points that any movement for social change has to address these days and fight for and about as well. Sam, more interested in writing than Ralph who liked to think more than write but who contributed his fair share of ideas to the “program,” wrote the material up and had it posted on various site which elicited a respectable amount of comment at the time. They also got into the old time spirit by participating in the latest up and coming struggle- the fight for a minimum wage of $15 an hour although even that seems paltry for the needs of today’s working people to move up in the world.       

From The Veterans For Peace Archives-Slugging It Out Against The War Economy Monster In Good Times And Bad

Veterans For Peace Grand Peace Army Of The Republic National Encampment For The Poor People's Campaign -Boston Common- 2018-Arrest Veterans On Memorial Day If You Dare

By Josh Breslin

I have already mentioned that sometimes in this profession you get assignments that you are clueless about or don’t care about. That is not the case here as I asked, no begged editor Greg Green for the assignment after I had already attended a few meetings of the National Committee that was putting together a 50^th anniversary edition of the Poor Peoples Campaign which was either stillborn or destroyed in 1968 after Doctor King, the originator of the ideas and program had been killed. Sadly, poverty, poverty among blacks and poor whites is still with us and a national disgrace in such a well-fixed country and so those 50 years ago ideas still had some echo power in 2018.  

I should say that it was not by happenstance that I had attended the first National meetings down in Washington. I had been tipped off that a movement was aborning by my friends from Veterans Peace Action Sam and Ralph who had been delegated by their National organization to represent that group in the preliminary meetings to see what actions if any VPA would take in support of the efforts. As a result of those first meetings and wondering about the first PPC’s fate I had done a far among of research about 1968 and why the terms “stillborn” and “destroyed” were the only ones I had been able to find to describe what had happened back then. Although I had heard about some of the stuff, mainly the constant rainy weather that swamped the camps and made life miserable for the refugees there I had been in California with others living off the glow of the Summer of Love, 1967 on Captain Crunch’s converted yellow school bus zooming up and down the Pacific Coast Highway under a very different sign-drug, sex and rock and roll.

The 2018 PPC set its sights at a higher level at least on paper with the understanding that this was a long-term hard ass project with plenty of chances to succeed-and fail. The main thing though was to get some major coverage of the six weeks of actions planned for the May-June period. That is what Sam and Ralph tried to hammer home to VPA and other organizations like Code Pink who had bought into the idea, bought into the first stage of the campaign. Once people were committed to organizing around specific issues related to poverty and why then the planned events made sense, made sense to me as well standing on the sidelines. I wish things had gone as easily as the ease with which the plan was set up with that finale in Washington bring home “the bacon.”        

Ralph and Sam and other cadre from Veterans Peace Action and Veterans for Peace had been assigned to coordinate week three of the themed actions-the war economy and by extension its harmful and neglectful effects on the struggle against poverty. Taking a ton of material and social resources away to be pissed away on wasteful military junk. Both VPA and VFP had already signed onto a long-term project on the MIC led by Code Pink among others beyond the PPC goals so this was right from the get go. Since by design the actions were to take place in major cities over Memorial Day weekend extending into the following Tuesday by state capital actions from gathering petitions to acts of civil disobedience the natural event that came to mind almost automatically was an encampment, encampments.

Encampments had been a way of life for many political movements involving veterans from the old day national encampments of the Grand Army of the Republic which fought and bled to keep the Republic and abolish slavery to boot to the Bonus marchers in the early Great Depression days of the 1930s suppressed by General “Dug-Out Doug” MacArthur to the various veteran actions against the madness of the Vietnam War which almost ripped the country apart. Ralph and Sam, some of the cadre had cut their teeth on such events. Although this cohort was charged with coordinating the national actions they personally were to set up camp on Boston Common on Memorial Day along with whoever else wanted to go tenting. Such events on the historic Common require a permit and one of the lawyers arranged to get the permission to stage the event from noon until about 6PM.

What the lawyers, what nobody knew except the group around Sam and Ralph and those who had volunteered to stay was that they planned to stay overnight in order to both make their war economy message points and to be ready to “storm” the State House just up the road with petitions calling on the Massachusetts government to break with the MIC, particularly locally based Raytheon. Needless to say, staying in a major public space in downtown Boston overnight was a no-no. What Ralph in particular wanted was a “confrontation” over the issue on Memorial Day pitting veterans, many of them having seen the face of war, and the city officials although in reality the police. And they almost got their wish as some lower police commander had ordered paddy wagons and extra cops to take the encampment down like they had done several years previously at Occupy over on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Swish, that commander was gone and cooler heads prevailed by a decision to ignore the transgression as long as there was nothing disorderly to have to do something about. But it was a close thing, very close indeed.      
Ralph was pissed off a little since he saw the publicity value in the exercise. Still the next day he got his action, arrested for civil disobedience for “overstaying” the visit to the State House when the police wanted to close the doors.





For those in the know, maybe the clueless, no, non-observant, this war economy and its tentacles is a massive monster many years in the making. Groups like VFP and VPA are batting their heads against some very strong and entrenched interests like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed just to name the big guns. You battle as best you can on any front that makes sense from politely asking Congresspeople to stop voting for the endless war budgets to standing out in some desolate rain-swept corner drawing attention to what is happening inside some defense plant to acts of civil disobedience to make a point either at some State House or as the brethren up in Bath Maine have been doing blocking entrances on the increasing number of days when new ultra-weapon laden destroyers are christened.

All the way arguing for the conversion of those facilities into some more environmentally, socially and economically useful purposes to keep those workers more gainfully employed.  

The “Cold” Civil War Rages In America-In The Third Year Of The Torquemada (Oops!) Trump Regime- Immigrants, Trans-genders, DACAs, TPSers, Media People, Leftists, Hell, Liberals Know Your Constitutional Rights-It May Save Your Life

The “Cold” Civil War Rages In America-In The Third Year Of The Torquemada (Oops!) Trump Regime- Immigrants, Trans-genders, DACAs, TPSers, Media People, Leftists, Hell, Liberals Know Your Constitutional Rights-It May Save Your Life     

By Frank Jackman

Over the first year of the Trump regime as this massive control freak regime has plundered right after right, made old Hobbes’ “life is short, brutish and nasty” idea seem all too true for a vast swath  of people residing in America (and not just America either) I have startled many of my friends, radical and liberal alike. Reason? For almost all of my long adult life I have been as likely to call, one way or another, for the overthrow of the government as not. This Republic if you like for a much more equitable society than provided under it aegis. This year I have been as they say in media-speak “walking that notion back a bit.” Obviously even if you only get your news from social media or twitter feeds there have been gigantic attempts by Trump, his cronies and his allies in Congress to radically limit and cut back many of the things we have come to see as our rights in ordinary course of the business of daily life. This year I have expressed deep concerns about the fate of the Republic and what those in charge these days are hell-bend of trying to put over our eyes.

Hey, I like the idea, an idea that was not really challenged even by the likes of Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes in their respective times that I did not have to watch my back every time I made a political move. Now maybe just every move. This assault, this conscious assault on the lives and prospects of immigrants, DACAs, TPSers. Trans-genders, blacks, anti-fascists, Medicaid recipients, the poor, the outspoken media, uppity liberals, rash leftist radicals and many others has me wondering what protections we can count on, use to try to protect ourselves from the onslaught.

I, unlike some others, have not Cassandra-cried about the incipient fascist regime in Washington. If we were at that jackboot stage I would not be writing, and the reader would not be reading, this screed. Make no mistake about that. However there is no longer a question in my mind that the “cold” civil war that has been brewing beneath the surface of American society for the past decade or more has been ratchetted up many notches. Aside from preparing politically for that clash we should also be aware, much more aware than in the past, about our rights as we are confronted more and more by a hostile government, its hangers-on and the agents who carry out its mandates.

I have been brushing up on my own rights and had come across a small pamphlet put out by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a good source for such information in these times. I have placed that information below.

As the ACLU disclaimer states this information is basic, should be checked periodically for updating especially the way the federal courts up to and including the U.S. Supreme  Court have staked the deck against us of late. In any case these days if you are in legal difficulties you best have a good lawyer. The other side, the government has infinite resources, so you better get your best legal help available even if it cost some serious dough which tends to be the case these days with the way the judicial system works.

Most importantly when confronted by any governmental agents from the locals to the F.B.I. be cool, be very cool.  

Happy Birthday Jim Kweskin-The Max Daddy Of Jug- In The Beginning Was The Jug- The 1960s Jim Kweskin Jug Band-Wasn't That A Time, Wasn't That A Time

In The Beginning Was The Jug- The Jim Kweskin Jug Band

By Sam Lowell

No question I was, am, a central figure in the still on-going fallout over the purge, and that is exactly the right term although half the writers here who were down and dirty in the fight prefer to tell the tale that the previous site manger “retired.” Like Allan Jackson, yes, I am using his given name despite the notice from new site manager Greg Green that we were in the future in the interest of “moving on” not to mention him by name or speak of his accomplishments (presumably Allan’s down sides are still fair game), would voluntarily retire from something he helped create and loved. I also acknowledge here that although I was Allan closest and longest known friend going back to elementary school that I sided with the young rebel writers, the self-styled “Young Turks” although I hate that term when it came to choosing sides.

Allan was getting more and more wrapped into some 1960s and forget the rest thing that disturbed me no end as I continually told him especially when he went over the edge in that overkill of the 50^th Anniversary of the Summer of Love, 1967 stuff. So when I “conspired” with the younger writers (some of who had before Allan went hog wild over the situation never heard of the event, were to young to give fuck about the legendary in the mist 1960s) I told everyone straight up that this would have to be a purge-no quotation marks needed. We, he and I, had come up in the rough and tumble of radical 1960s politics so Allan knew that my defection meant only one thing if we were to be successful. He would be out, in exile, although don’t believe all that stuff about him being holed up Utah sucking up to Mitt Romney and that white underwear Mormon crowd or Kansas with the hard-shell flat-landers that is just urban legend stuff he, or somebody at his direction, made up to make this whole thing seem like a Stalinist coup and he, Leon Trotsky-like suffered defeat and exile in some American Siberia for his efforts. I know my Allan and I would not be surprised that a counterattack against me and the blog will come any day.

As part of the change in course and presumably as a safeguard against things going haywire like they began to do under the Jackson regime Greg initiated on his own a seven member Editorial Board to filter ideas and motions through. Some people, some opponents have called the board a group of toadies and “yes” people for whatever Greg has in mind. That is their opinion. In any case I was asked to sit on the board and I have along with several younger writers and one of the older writers who had abstained on the Jackson removal vote (there were several abstentions by older writers which makes me think I was not alone in thinking Allan had gone over the edge but didn’t want to buck him for any number of reasons. I would argue that had any one of them voted for Allan then my “desertion” would have meant nothing except I might have been the guy rumored to be in Utah or Kansas. Such is life.)

Although the board is up and running for a few months now it has only been asked to approve one item-the “erasing” of Allan’s name from this site in the interest of whatever Greg thought that served. I have been around enough to know that it is beyond poor form to “erase” the past especially on a site dedicated to putting a big shining light on that past particularly the parts that get short shrift in the history books and mainstream media. I voted “no,” the lone dissenter with that one older writer’s abstention which may be his mode of operation on tough questions. Maybe that dissent will put me in better grace with Allan. 

I took this jug band, Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band assignment because I am still crazy about this kind of music and because at least three of the original members of the band, Jim, Geoff, Maria are still performing occasionally together but usually individually and over the past several years I have seen them in various admittedly small venues around Greater Boston. I was surprised though when Greg mentioned to me that he no longer wanted to see pieces about “f—king” jug band music in the future and that this would be the last time he would let it pass since nobody under about the age of sixty gave a damn about this kind of music anymore.

Since Greg is considerable younger than I am I could see where it did not mean anything to him when he was growing up in Westchester County in New York but to cancel out in advance any reference to an important part of Americana in the 1920s and the revival in the 1960s seems short-sighted. Allan who also was crazy for jug music and who turned me onto the stuff in high school when he took me and our dates to the Unicorn Coffeehouse in Back Bay Boston to hear the legendary Harper Valley Boys do their jug, washtub, wringer magic. I will be bucking Greg a little on this one if I can find a spot to sneak a jug piece in.

Finally, and this part has nothing directly to do with jug music or anything else that has been presented here over the past almost fifteen years of this blog’s existence and prior to that the hard copy of it and it predecessors. I, like a number of irritated readers and a not a few writers have grown tired of seeing more than enough coverage of the internal crisis of the past few months here leading to the new regime. This new mandate by Greg with the majority of the Ed Board’s approval of “erasing” Allan Jackson’s name and work is kind of a watershed making me think the whole public airing has gone too far. Moreover the story is all over the place depending on who has their hackles up. This must stop and a return to ordinary commentary and reviews is in order.  

As a decisive member of the Editorial Board I have been able to negotiate with Greg a truce, an “armed truce” as one older wag put it which seems strange since the majority of personnel here have some very strong anti-war views. The “truce” has two parts. The first- all articles now in the pipeline, about fifteen, can carry whatever commentary about the internal dispute the writer wants to talk about. In return after that amnesty lot is posted there will be no overt references to the previous site manager or his achievements or failures. The second is that I will write as probably the most knowledgeable person around about all aspects of this publication and its personnel a full history of the site and of the internal dispute to be after it completion referenced in the archives as such for anybody to cite and refer others to -either writer or scholar. No guidance was given about how to do this task but I have decided to cut it up among the various parts of the American Songbook series which the jug band piece below is one example and then post the whole thing with comments from the two Ed Board members Greg has assigned to me for this work.              

********

Who knows how it happened maybe somebody in the band looked up some songs in the album archives, or found some gem in some record store, an institution that sustained many for hours back then in the cusp of the 1960s folk revival when there were record stores on almost every corner in places like Harvard Square and you could find some gems if you searched long enough and found Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music (although sometimes the search was barren or, maybe worse, something by Miss Patti Page or Tennessee Ernie Ford stared you in the face). From there they found, maybe Cannon’s Stompers, the Mississippi Sheiks or the Memphis Jug Band, saw they could prosper going back to those days if they kept the arrangements simple, and that was that.

See, everybody then was looking for roots, American music roots, old country roots, roots of some ancient thoughts of a democratic America before the robber barons and their progeny grabbed everything with every hand. And that search was no accident, at least from the oral history evidence having grown up with rock and roll and found in that minute that genre wanting.  Some went reaching South to the homeland of much roots music and found some grizzled old geezers who had made a small name for themselves in the 1920s when labels like RCA and Paramount went out looking for talent in the hinterlands.

So there was history there, certainly for the individual members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Jim, Geoff Muldaur, Mel Lymon, Maria Muldaur, Fritz Richmond , all well-versed in many aspects of the American Songbook (hell, I would say so, even old tacky Irving Berlin got a hearing), history there for the taking. All they needed was a jug, a good old boy homemade corn liquor jug giving the best sound and so they were off, off to conquer places like Harvard Square, like the Village, like almost any place in the Bay area. And for a while they did, picking up chimes, kazoos, harmonicas, what the heck, even standard guitars and they made great music, great entertainment music, not heavy with social messages but just evoking those long lost spirits from the 1920s when jug music would sustain a crowd on a Saturday night. Yeah, in the beginning was the jug…    

From The World Cross-Country Championship Archives- The Day Boomer Cadger Hit The High White Note

From The World Cross-Country Championship Archives- The Day Boomer Cadger Hit The High White Note  

By Bart Webber

Yes, I am once again going back to the old days, the old track and cross-country running days which probably saved me from landing in some godforsaken jail like a few other North Adamsville corner boys or down in some ditch, some nameless potter’s field early grave last hurrah. At the very least it blew off enough steam when I could not take the anger which was blowing up my family home that I survived in one piece, although that too was a close thing, very close. But this stuff, these memories pings are not about me, although I wish they were, but about a guy who I ran against who ran like the wind, Boomer Cadger.

I have mentioned previously that I have running this stuff, running his photos too in the hope, the forlorn hope maybe that he would respond. So far all I have been able to find out about him, about his fate, is earlier stuff from his high school friend John Franklin whom I have been in contact with through social media, the place where I thought I might get a draw from Boomer. Without exaggeration pound for pound Boomer was the greatest runner, cross-country runner, running like a deer, of our generation and if a few things had gone slightly differently Boomer would have a much larger place in the archives of the world junior cross-country championships, the place where such skills were seriously recognized.            

An event I had not heard about since I had obviously lost contact with Boomer’s career after we graduated from high school and he no longer could beat my ass to the ground was the NYU Invitational Cross-Country Championship held in Van Cortlandt Park out Bronx-way (I think) in the summer after graduation. As far as I knew at the time from what I had heard about his homelife filled with drunken father and doped-up mother was he had enlisted in the Navy, half expecting to run for that outfit after no colleges offered him anything like a scholarship in the days when road running was seen as a perversion of nature. John Franklin filled me in on this event and I will weave that exploit into my story below and see if this lures the Boomer out.   

***********

Boomer Cadger ran like the wind, was like the wind. Maybe today you can see guys and gals too who run like gazelles, deer animals like that loping along to your almost jogging like beat but back then if you were looking it was mostly guys like me beating the pavement to some pedestrian beat. I have tried to emphasize that in the various archival captions I have presented of late surrounding my own youth as a cross-country runner running up against my rival from North Quincy High School about twenty miles from North Adamsville where I grew up. I have also tried to cut him down to size a bit although not too much I hope since for most of my career I bit his dust. The only reason all of this even came up initially was that a few of us from the old days were having drinks one night at Jimmy Jack’s Pub and we got into the inevitable “who was the best you ever saw” in various high school sports in our time. In the early 1960s before sports even at the high school level became major money-makers and the aim of sports outfits. (For example, the so-called track shoes of the day today would have the manufacturers in court to explain their role in the rate of increase in knee replacements by those looking for legal recourse. Yes, they were that flimsy maybe worse)         

Most of those present were “real” sports players like Tiger McPhee a football player who naturally picked our own run over everything that moved fullback Thunder Thornton from our high school who led the Warriors to a state divisional championship. Others like Bees Devine picked scoring machine Slim Davis who played for the Knicks for a while before they got Earl “the Pearl” Monroe to carry them from Reading High in basketball. I, of course, picked Boomer Cadger from main rival North Quincy even if with some still present resentment. When I went into the reasons the others were surprised about what I had learned about Boomer recently from his high school friend John Franklin who was something like the class historian at his school. John had told me that Boomer (real name William, Bill only recently learned by me from John) had been training on the sand at Adamsville Beach in the summer. This technique learned from the great mile world record-holder of the time Australian Herb Elliott and his monster of a coach, Percy something but a monster is all you need to really know. It only gets more testing-apparently Boomer also subscribed to the great triple gold medal long distance Olympic champion Emil Zatopek’s regime of interval sprint runs, many of them to build up speed and endurance.              

According to Franklin Boomer did this on his own since his coach was some old wino, some bag of bad humor who knew somebody in the school department who got him in  and who was just serving his teaching time grabbed since he was a World War II veteran with preference hanging around bothering young girls looking up their dresses and who knows what else. Connected to but clueless about training track and cross-country runners. (For example, he knew nada about running shoes but had a friend who owned Sammy’s Sports and so all the team had to buy their worthless shoes from him or run in cumbersome Chuck Taylor’s.) John said Boomer was always reading sports magazines so must have picked it up then when track and running got more play than today.

This is what I do know having raced against Boomer in both cross-country and track. Whatever drove him to excellent (or just to get out of what was a horrible home life) happened after eighth grade. You see I beat Boomer in the mile (the longest junior high school kids could go in sanctioned events) that year in a regional meet. Whipped his ass. Then the next fall in a regional cross-country meet he blew me away; I ate his dust. Thereafter he improved always more than I did and so  

this residual moan and groan. He would go on to a fifth-place finish in the world junior cross-country championships and then not much else. But he was like the wind in his prime. I wonder now whether that time I beat him in eighth grade didn’t spur him on, didn’t get him to the training magazines.    

Maybe yes, maybe no but what Franklin told me recently only makes it so obvious that with some serious coaching, maybe a trip to boarding school if somebody had taken an interest, maybe if he had gotten some tutoring or had been driven by the books as much as by the running he could have been a college wind, who knows in those days the Olympics could have loomed. If you had asked me when I started this so-called tribune to an opponent if that was in the cards I would have said no. But after Franklin told me about that race in New York, the NYU Invitational who knows. All I know is that only the best around get invited or dare to show up as in the case of Boomer.  

This is the race guys, college guys like skinny from hunger Ireland’s Emmett Riley from Villanova, well-trained guys like Jack Raines from NYU and Miles Archer from Saint Joseph’s have won. All those guys if I recall would go to the Olympics although I don’t think any won gold. So Boomer showed up on his way to Naval boot camp out in Lake Michigan I think it was. Showed up wearing his high school dead beat uniform and his tacky coach’s buddy Sammy suicidal track shoes. Showed up, paid his fee and meandered around waiting for the race to start keeping away from the big names he knew from his sports newspapers, Lenny Dodge, Carson Dorry, Lorn Davis. At the start of the race he was in maybe the third fourth row to keep from going out too fast with the speed boys from college. Smart move because that was a hot day. A hot day for Boomer too as he beat the whole freaking field by about sixty yards with one of his greatest sprint finishes. And you thought I was kidding when I compared him to the wind, picked him as the best ever in my sport in high school  

Yeah what old Boomer did that day was what I would later find out in jazz, in any music it seemed had hit that high white note everybody reached for.