Monday, December 05, 2022

Deal Them Off The Top, Brother, Deal Them Straight Off The Top--With Eric Holden’s “The Cincinnati Kid” In Mind

Deal Them Off The Top, Brother, Deal Them Straight Off The Top--With Eric Holden’s “The Cincinnati Kid” In Mind     






[Every once in a while a subject comes up, here gambling through the prism of  high stakes poker to be the top dog, that someone has written about previously, then gambling through the prism of high stakes pool to be the top dog, and did such a well thought of job at it that good sense requires that person to take a stab at the new subject which in this case is really a variation on the older subject-who and how to get to be number one, numbero uno, in your chosen profession when the guy at the top seems immovable, seems immortal. That was the case when Josh Breslin wrote when he was younger for the East Bay Eye in the late 1960s and which subsequently has been posted in this space with some additional editing about young, handsome and here is the fatal kicker impetuous “Fast Eddie” Felton’s rise in the world of cigarette-strewn and whiskey bottle smoky pool halls until he came up against the king of the hill a guy named Jackie “Tubby” Gleason and got his clock cleaned. Lost his angel girl too to some one-eyed pimp daddy whom she took around the world on the rebound once Fast Eddie had that “loser” tag tattooed on him, on his forehead although anybody even vaguely familiar with that sport didn’t need that identification mark to know he had tapped out, news in such circles moves fast. Yeah impetuous had to go against the tiger before he was ready, before he broke his “impetuous jones” lost everything until he faded and went back to cheap street just another guy hustling nickels and dimes from punk kid amateurs out in some Joe’s Pool Hall in Peoria who didn’t know he touched the big time before he became pimp meat.

So we, the soon to be retired administrator on this site, Pete Markin, and I, Greg Green, now the acting administrator to see how I like it and see if I can help reverse some narrowing of perspective on this site over the past several years when a lot of the action has centered on the turbulent 1960s and not much else, invited Josh to give us what film critic emeritus Sam Lowell loves to call the “skinny” on the biggest poker game, stud poker of course what else, that ever hit the wicked sun- drenched and fucking humid town of New Orleans back in the 1930s, the time of the great hunger among plenty of guys looking to be top dog on the sly. Just to set the stage this is a tale about the rise of another young, handsome and here is without making this thing a cautionary tale the fatal kicker impetuous in the world of stud poker, a guy named Steve McQueen although he went by a million names. I think Josh said at the time of this event Eric Holden, but everybody called him the Cincinnati Kid although as Josh mentioned this kid had never been to that Ohio River city, had never really been north of Memphis and probably couldn’t pinpoint the place if you gave him three chances for a buck.

The rise of the Kid until he hit the buzz saw of ancient Lance Robinson who like Tubby Gleason with Fast Eddie cleaned his clock and sent him back to cheap street to nurse his wounds is what interested Josh. Interested the same way young Eddie Felton interested him when he got the story from Georgie Boy Scott out in some sleazy back-water pool hall when Tubby Gleason finally cashed his check and Josh wanted to what had happened to guys who had taken a run at him when he was in his prime. So when we sent him on the trail after hearing that Lance Robinson had recently gone on to his just rewards as an ancient warrior king of the poker parlors he was almost as eager as when he first sniffed that cigarette-strewn whisky besotted pool hall back in his young reporting days (That changing of names by the way according to Josh pervasive in gambling circles since you never know when you have to skip town owing a million markers to some rough guys and have to head into a dive town where if you used your real name to grab a stake from the hotshot local amateurs they would tar and feather you-they would know how to do that little number no matter how bad they were at your profession.)-Greg Green]          

By Joshua Lawrence Breslin

I got this story straight from the “Shooter,” a guy whose real name or at least that is what I always knew him by when I got tipped that he was the guy to get whatever I needed to know about Lance and about his most famous challenger was Carl Malden. I had run into him around Jackson Square in New Orleans. Somebody from the now long faded Lafayette Hotel known more now for fast-hustling hookers paying room rent by the hour (or rather their Johns doing the honors) than poker-faced poker players had tipped me that Shooter might know where world historic defeated pool-player “Fast Eddie” Felton might be nursing his wounds and the Shooter told me that was old hat, Fast Eddie was working the steamboat tourist trade up and down the Mississippi since he got stripped naked by Tubby Gleason and was not story, zero in the pool hall world where it counted down in the human sink along with the whores, pimps and stone ass junkies. I got the Felton story almost despite the Shooter once he knew that I knew he, the Shooter, had taken his liberties like a lot of guys had with this kinky stone ass junkie Angelica who used to be Fast Eddie’s girl until he tanked out while she was riding high with Fast Eddie. I threatened Shooter with the hard ass fact that when I found Fast Eddie which I would do eventually I would lay that very juicy piece of information on him and the guy crumbled like a bent fender in the days when such things happened to fenders almost at the touch. (You already know from Greg Green’s thoughtful introduction that I did get the story, did get some awards for the piece, the coveted Globe for one, and that I did not tell Fast Eddie who had not aged gracefully what with a booze and jone habit stacked together that his angel girlfriend had taken Shooter around the world while Eddie was playing some rich Memphis banker downstairs in his hillside mansion. Fuck it he probably would not have cared one way or the other-yesterday’s news but Shooter was shaky to buy my line.)       

The story Shooter really wanted to tell was about a guy named Eric Holden, something like that who was the cat’s meow at poker, five card stud poker in case anybody was asking, the only kind, serious kind to get a man’s blood up and who knew Fast Eddie in passing since they both had hung out at Sam Levine’s pool hall over on the low rent end of Bourbon Street where the amateurs, the rising stars with no dough backing them up hung looking for attention and the guys on the run who kept a low profile in the smoking background. I don’t think from what I learned later that Eddie and Eric knew each all that well since they were running different sides of the street once this Eric figured he would end up in some back alley face down if he played any serious money pools but had this almost mathematically precise mind for stud poker (and nerves of steel a not unimportant attribute if you are going up against the king of the hill). The Shooter told a story about how Fast Eddie always the hustler told Eric that he would spot him three balls if he would “shoot pools” his favorite expression for a hundred bucks. Eric told him to fuck off that “it was not his game.” Yeah both young, from hunger, handsome, ladies handsome but both young men maybe a little bit too blue-eyed pretty boy for the serious aficionados of pool or poker and fatally flawed with those impetuous natures like they were gods, gods pure and simple.        

This Malden who got that Shooter moniker for always playing it straight, always telling the story true or as true as any guy who is around any gambling circles will tell the tale. This is the story of the rise and fall of his protégé, Eric, I will tell about how Eric  got his moniker in a minute and then if you have been around gambling circles you might recognize the name before he dropped down among the peons, con men and cutthroat artists back in the old days. Back in the hard-bitten wide open days after World War II where there was loose money around and plenty of hungry guys ready to scoop it up around drifter towns like New Orleans and a million other port cities. His protégé being none other than real name, fuck that Eric Holden con, Steve McQueen who always except when he was laying low in some dive town trying to work up a stake to get back in the action carried the moniker Cincinnati Kid. The Kid a real comer until one Lance Robinson took him gently to the cleaners and pushed him back to cheap street and the low rent dive town hustle. Happens every time to those impetuous fools.     

Before I retell the Shooter’s tale I had better give you his bone fides. Shooter like a lot of guys before World War II was pretty footloose, was from what later guys up my way in Olde Sacco in Maine would call “from hunger,” I know they were, I, was. Very early on he would hustle his friends for dimes and quarters playing card tricks to while away the time until he got his first stake. Maybe a hundred bucks which was real money then among the squares although before he hit bottom he was using hundred dollar bills as straws for his cocaine habit lines. He moved pretty quickly up the stud poker food chain, got a reputation as a tough guy to beat which is an excellent advertisement in that profession since it will draw all kind of guys to “prove” you are a one-shot wonder, just lucky with the rubes. Probably helped that build-up with about twenty shots of straight whisky. His aim all that time was to build a reputation in order to get a shot at the reigning king of the hill, guess who even back then, Lance Robinson. Well the long and short of it was that when that big match occurred in Memphis old King Lance kicked out the jams on the Shooter in less that twenty-four hours, something of a record in high stakes poker at the time among the top contenders.     

That experience left the Shooter very shaken, left him always working the percentages thereafter, win a little, lose a little, and keep your hand in until you find a guy who could beat this Lance. Now when the Shooter is telling me this story he is already an old man, is reliving some younger dreams about bringing the Kid along.  After his defeat at the hands of Lance the Shooter also began to toy with other gambling ventures which makes senses since win a little, lose a little makes for very tight budgets and screams from irate landlords and bill collectors. He took up horses, pool, and cock fights which is how his honey to be introduced in a minute got her sexual juices up watching those cocks go at it, strange bitch it seemed to me but the Shooter remained true blue to her even when she blew town on him the last time with a half a hundred thou. (On that barbarian cock fight stuff remember this is Louisiana, Cajun country where such “traditions” were still honored even though the sport was illegal in the state.)

Shooter would drift through the towns all up and down the Mississippi trying as he said “to do the best he could.” It was in Shreveport where he ran into the Kid the first time who was working in a pool hall. Shreveport is also where he met his first wife, this Maggie Ann, the cock fight frill, who was working in Madame LaRue’s whorehouse when he picked her out of the line-up and she took him around the world. This Maggie Ann is important to the story later when the big match comes around but every time the Shooter mentioned her name to me he added “that whore” so he was still hot under the collar about her whorish strutting ways even when they were married, maybe especially when they were married and he was out of town a lot trying hustle dough to keep her in clover. No dice in the end although not for the Shooter’s not trying since she led him a merry chase and that ain’t no lie.          

So the Shooter once the Kid hits New Orleans teams up with him, teaches him a few things and starts working to get him a bankroll in order to face down this Lance. Things were moving along well until the Kid ran into some country girl, Laura, whom the Kid always called Tuesday since that was the day that they met and he had had big night cleaning up five Gs off the big boys at the Lafayette Hotel weekly game, with blonde hair and doe-like eyes all blue and he fell, fell hard for her (this despite grabbing Maggie Ann’s free ass for getting his ashes hauled every time Shooter was out of town-and a couple of times when he was in town and Maggie Ann was testing her coquettish whorish ways to see if he would belt her one). Although Shooter didn’t know about the stuff between Maggie Ann and the Kid until she was ready to leave town and wanted to rub it in, rub salt in Shooter’s loveless wounds and told him every detail about every guy she had done, and a couple of girls too, told him she had blown all his friends for good measure, he knew that having a girl hanging over the Kid as he was trying to go for the brass ring was the kiss of death, would be an albatross around his neck. He wouldn’t listen, told Shooter he could beat Lance, beat the old man like a gong without working up a sweat. Almost broke the whole thing off when just before the big Lafayette Hotel game he snuck down to Cajun country to see this Tuesday and have some sex with her which would, no doubt in the Shooter’s mind, make him too loose, too unfocused on his mission.                

So the big day comes and everybody who is anybody around Louisiana gambling circles showed up for the Kid-Lance show-down. The Shooter could tell after about fifteen seconds that the Kid had had his way with this Tuesday and that his energies would be sapped. Jesus. Now the way these games, this high stakes stud poker works is a lot different from some back room at Mick’s gin mill where Mick has paid off the coppers for the amateurs to play for a few bucks and he gets a cut off the top for his services. They have certain protocol or they did until guys like Reno Red build a casino on up in the mountains just short of California and Bugsy Segal built Xanadu out in the Los Vegas deserts. A big game would take place in an up-scale hotel where the manager paid off the coppers to keep away and the gamblers would rent out a suite of rooms to do their business in.

High stakes stud poker was, is, played to the death, played until somebody cries “uncle” and can’t or won’t raise anymore dough to stay in the game. So the whole process can take hours, days and a suite with bedrooms and the like is a bare minimum requirement. Besides a high stakes game will draw many interested spectators to see if the champ will be dethroned but more likely to bet on the oncome, bet big. (One of the fastest pieces of action on the sidelines which would put those who bet today on each play in a football or basketball game to shame is to bet on every turn of the card for say $100 a shot-the money changes hands very quickly and somebody can get very rich very fast-or tap out the same way.

In the old days the once elegant now faded Lafayette Hotel down near the breakwaters of the Mississippi River was the stop for high rollers coming to play in New Orleans. Every half decent stud poker player dreamed of showing his (or occasionally her) stuff in those large well-provisioned rooms against all-comers. Up and coming guys would say “I’m heading to the Lafayette” even when they were stumbling around to get stakes to play in Riley’s Pub back room dollar limit games. That included the Kid when he was coming up, when the Shooter was bringing him along and wanted to entice him with that glitter. So the big game was played up in Suite 606, a suite specifically reserved for poker players who chipped into pay the freight, to pay the room rate.                    

Like I said these events would draw a crowd from all over, all over the East sometimes all the way up to Boston. I mentioned the side bettors but as well in most games others beside in this case the young Kid and the old Lance opted for a seat in the game to see if that day maybe their luck would change and they could by default become king of the hill. Such dreams keep certain men (and occasionally women) afloat in a tough and grimy world. This day would find a few guys who had been “gutted” somehow that inelegant word used to describe cutting up fish or livestock was the term of art for those thrown on the scrapheap by either the Kid or Lance. 

There was Pig, a low rent guy who made his money from chiseling cheapjack guys in those back alley games enough to grab a stake and take his chances. Pig that day very early on sweating like a pig would fall early since he always worried about whether his stake would last long enough. Lance made toast of him. There was Doc who kept his numbers book, his lined drawn tables which showed him the percentages with each upturned card. He faded without a whimper once his figures went south on him as they naturally would when one is betting on whether a guy is bluffing or really has that down card to complete some combination that looked promising. Gone.

Then there was “Yella,” a name from a term familiar in race-conscious New Orleans which meant that somewhere along the way he had white blood in him which made him acceptable in white society somewhat, that somewhat being good enough to get “gutted” by both the Kid and Lance at the poker table in his time. Although Doc and Pig were pretty non-descript second-rate actors in this game Yella had an interesting past having gone to New York City when he was younger and set the town on fire at the Cotton Club when he had his own jazz band back in the 1920s Age of Jazz that the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald endlessly wrote about and coined the term. A New Orleans guy like Louie Armstrong was just too black for the white upper-crust crowd which frequented that uptown Harlem establishment but Yella fit right in. Then the Great Depression set in and jazz and jazz bands took a back seat. When he saw the writing on the wall the resourceful Yella won a handful of dough in a game at the Plaza Hotel against a bunch of Mayfair swells and returned to New Orleans and first pimped on Bourbon Street and the teamed with Madame LaRue to set up a high end bordello complete with girls for every kind of taste from a trip around the world to a quick blow-job when the latter was kind of an exotic treat unlike later when high school girls were doing it as a rite of passage in some places to keep some car freak lover at bay down in some Squaw Rock lovers’ lane.  (As it turned out although nobody talked about it Yella had pimped for Maggie Ann when she first hit town from Podunk down in the bayou and he would later get Tuesday as a favor to the Kid going down that road although not before as he said “sampling the wares” in both cases.) Despite that interesting background when the deal went down Yella tapped out early. Gone too. 

Taking up the last seat, usually six was the maximum number at the table at any one time, was the Shooter who was in for a while as a player until things settled out and he just dealt them out, dealt them from the top. We know Shooter’s story or enough to get us by once we know that he had been “gutted” by the old man and once we know his trials and tribulations trying to keep Maggie Ann in style and away from every stray dog of a man who caught her eye. Tough work which made dealing high stakes poker games to get some dough like child’s play. Shooter would fold after the first day and so deep into the second day it was Lance against the Kid, one on one.

Of course these high stakes games, actually even those back room ones, had a certain rhythm, a certain protocol. One was since the games were long, could be days long, any player could call himself out for a while and not lose his play at the table. Another was that if a player tapped out he or she had half an hour to raise additional cash. For known players, markers, IOUs, were acceptable and many times the only way to keep players going until they had to lay low and pay some dough toward the markers was to take markers or they would be shut out of games. Players, if they agreed, could deal themselves if there was no back-up dealer available that any players trusted enough. The dealer could also call himself out and that is why in most games a back-up dealer was hanging around.

In this meet they back up was none other than Missouri Moll who just then had tapped out having had a bad run at blackjack. She like Yella was interesting being one of the few high stakes female players. They say Moll had gotten her start in the famous Mrs. McCabe’s whorehouse up in the Klondike, up in gold country before that panned out where the girls in that girl-starved country charged (or rather Mrs. McCabe charged) five hundred dollars cash or gold for their “favors,”  a quaint term of the times before World War II. This Mrs. McCabe (she was not married but having the Mrs. kept the men away from her door-mostly) is reputed to be the “inventor” of “going under the table,” of giving guys playing cards blowjobs, head, whatever you call oral sex in your neighborhood without having to leave the table to keep up their spirits so to speak (she did not do missionary sex just the blow-jobs although more than one guy would be willing to give her a fistful of gold when she was younger for the pleasure).

Whatever the truth of Mrs. McCabe’s invention Moll learned that little trick as she rose in the ranks of high stakes poker players. Any time she tapped out and needed to raise cash fast she would go to work (not always “under the table” giving new meaning to that expression but in an adjacent bedroom) and within a half hour would have five hundred or a thousand just like that. (Many guys would hope for her to tap out including Lance when he was younger just to keep their “spirits” up.). Now older and maybe wiser she was just backing up the action although she still had enough looks for the older guys to maybe take a run at her if she needed some dough.

Not all the action as I pointed out was around the table. Money is a magnet for the pure bettor and the interested parties with cash to wager on any outcomes. A couple of guys, Mack from Detroit (don’t ask for any other part of his moniker you might wind up floating down the Mississippi) and Ruby Red, can be seen here betting on every flip of the card, on every  hand just like today’s sports junkies   which as I mentioned before is a tough dollar, is very wearying. The guy though that is important to this part of the story is a guy named Varner, Jody Varner, who father Will left him 28,000 acres of the best bottom land in Mississippi and a company town to feed what he wanted to feed off of. This Jody Varner though was not present by happenstance but because he desperately wants to see Lance fall down. All I have to say is that he had been gutted by Lance and you by now know what the deal is. This Jody seems ready to go through Will’s lifetime of struggle fortune in as short a time as he could between his mulatto mistress and his sporting habits. (As an equal opportunity sexual partner he had his way with the very white Maggie Ann on more than one occasion and would later after the Kid’s fall have his way with that Tuesday when the Kid needed a stake and needed it quickly).

Jody wants Lance beaten so badly that he did not want to leave anything to chance. He has conned the Shooter who after-all only had his reputation for fair-dealing on the line to send a few off-hand high cards the Kid’s way. The Shooter balked but being vain about Maggie Ann and her tramp-like ways which were not generally known he succumbed when Jody told him he was going to send her back to some backwater whorehouse going down on Cajun boys if he did not do as told.

In the end it didn’t do Shooter any good since the Kid spotted what he was doing from the first hand he tried to do it. In the end it didn’t matter for Shooter either since that Maggie Ann ran off with some travelling salesman who promised her the world. More importantly in the end it didn’t matter as well since ancient Lance played the Kid like a fiddle. See the Kid never having played the old man and had only stories about how he gutted one guy or another the Kid had no clue, no clue at all about how Lance played out the play. About how without saying a word he would stand up and seem in pain over a back spasm. How he would after a couple of hours call for a rest while the Kid was hot and in the meantime went crazy waiting for Lance to return. Worse of all he was clueless when he mistook a few false hands that Lance let him win and left him suspecting Lance of senility. That was the real action leading up to the “kill”-that last hand when everything matter and the Kid was like putty in Lance’s hands.   

Even though the Kid gave Lance the battle of his life he forgot the first rule of high stakes stud poker when two or more savvy guys are playing. If a guy keeps calling and raising, calling and raising at thousand dollar increments then you best fold and wait for a change of luck because as sure as shooting a guy like Lance has the goods. When he throws a check for five thou and takes your marker it is way too late-you are a goner. The Kid found out $5000 in the hole hard way when Lance turned over a Jack to complete a flush. Yeah, back to cheap street until Lance retired or kicked the bucket. It would never happen. Maybe he should have checked out where Fast Eddie Felton was hanging and take him up on that three ball handicap for a hundred bucks because he was finished as a big daddy stud poker player now that everybody knew he could be rattled. The only thing for certain after the Kid fell down was that sweet girlfriend Tuesday was going to wear out a few beds and maybe her knees getting that dough for the Kid when Lance called in that marker. (Jody even before she and the Kid  left the room gave her his calling card and said he expected to see her soon-the bastard.)         

   

Sunday, December 04, 2022

“Wasn’t That A Mighty Flood, Lord, That Blew All The People All Away”-The The Galveston Flood Of 1900 In Mind

“Wasn’t That A Mighty Flood, Lord, That Blew All The People All Away”-The The Galveston Flood Of 1900 In Mind




By Greg Green

[Greg Green has come over from a similar job at the on-line American Film Gazette website to act as administrator of the American Left History and its associated blog sites. Welcome aboard.]


After a 2017 summer season of extraordinary hurricane actions and destruction in the Southeastern part of the United States, the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean, one would at least think, that those who do not see anything in this overwhelming climate change evidence would give pause. Those events have brought other earlier massive floods and storms in the Americas to the fore if only by comparison. On can think of the famous Johnston flood of 1927 and of the big bad one that blew over Galveston town 1900 that literally blew all the people all away, over 6000 of them. In those days there were climate deniers of a different sort, people in Galveston who did not believe that because they lived a little bit upland, a few feet above sea level that they would not get swept away. Just like the people and the Army Corps of Engineers believed that the levees would hold along the Mississippi when the big blow Hurricane Katrina came through in 2005 and turned them to sink mud.    

We all now know plenty about individual stories during these modern horrific storms from acts of heroism to acts of ingenuity to dastardly acts of cowards taking advantage of the chaos to loot and create mayhem but I would have assumed that we would not be able to know what happened first hand in that 1900 Galveston. But I would have been fortunately wrong because the Rosenberg Library in Galveston commissioned an oral history of the survivors not at the time since there was no way to record such information but later when most of the survivors who had been young children in 1900 were themselves in old age.

Recently NPR’s Morning Edition had a segment highlighting that oral history and I provide a link here:   


Not every person around today except maybe those in the Galveston area would be aware of the fury of that storm but I have known about its destruction for about thirty years now although not from an expected history source. I learned about it from a song, a folk song. My parents were both very early folkies in the late 1950s just a shade bit before the folk music revival exploded onto the scene in certain towns and on many college campuses. (My parents actually meet at a small folk concert in a small coffeehouse in Boston, Bailey’s, where they heard the legendary folk singer/songwriter Eric Saint Jean, who has been mentioned on this site on  occasion when that folk minute comes up, strut his stuff.) I, like a lot of kids rebelling against their parents hated folk music with a passion.

My parents as long as they lived they were strong devotees of folk singer/songwriter Tom Rush whom they knew from his Club 47 days in Harvard Square. One of his signature songs from the time was his robust cover of Wasn’t That A Mighty Flood a tradition folk song. I first hear the song, kicking and screaming, when I was young and well after Tom Rush’s big folk time when he started doing yearly concerts around New Year at Symphony Hall in Boston. The rousing song now is one of the few that I actually know all the words too and can bear to listen to. Here are the lyrics and they express very concisely what went down in that terrible time:


WASN'T THAT A MIGHTY STORM
Chorus:
Wasn't that a mighty storm
Wasn't that a mighty storm in the morning, well
Wasn't that a mighty storm
That blew all the people all away.
You know, the year of 1900, children,
Many years ago
Death came howling on the ocean
Death calls, you got to go
Now Galveston had a seawall
To keep the water down,
And a high tide from the ocean
Spread the water all over the town.
You know the trumpets give them warning
You'd better leave this place
Now, no one thought of leaving
'til death stared them in the face
And the trains they all were loaded
The people were all leaving town
The trestle gave way to the water
And the trains they went on down.
Rain it was a-falling
thunder began to roll
Lightning flashed like hellfire
The wind began to blow
Death, the cruel master
When the wind began to blow
Rode in on a team of horses
I cried, "Death, won't you let me go"
Hey, now trees fell on the island
And the houses give away
Some they strained and drowned
Some died in most every way
And the sea began to rolling
And the ships they could not stand
And I heard a captain crying
"God save a drowning man."
Death, your hands are clammy
You got them on my knee
You come and took my mother
Won't you come back after me
And the flood it took my neighbor
Took my brother, too
I thought I heard my father calling
And I watched my mother go.
You know, the year of 1900, children,
Many years ago
Death came howling on the ocean
Death calls, you got to go
"Wasn’t That a Mighty Storm" / "Galveston Flood"
It was the year of 1900
that was 80 years ago
Death come'd a howling on the ocean
and when death calls you've got to go
Galveston had a sea wall
just to keep the water down
But a high tide from the ocean
blew the water all over the town
Chorus
Wasn't that a mighty storm
Wasn't that a mighty storm in the morning
Wasn't that a mighty storm
It blew all the people away
The sea began to rolling
the ships they could not land
I heard a captain crying
Oh God save a drowning man
The rain it was a falling
and the thunder began to roll
The lightning flashed like Hell-fire
and the wind began to blow
The trees fell on the island
and the houses gave away
Some they strived and drowned
others died every way
The trains at the station were loaded
with the people all leaving town
But the trestle gave way with the water
and the trains they went on down
Old death the cruel master
when the winds began to blow
Rode in on a team of horses
and cried death won't you let me go
The flood it took my mother
it took my brother too
I thought I heard my father cry
as I watched my mother go
Old death your hands are clammy
when you've got them on my knee
You come and took my mother
won't you come back after me?
          






From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-Their Struggles To Build Communist Organizations-The Early Days

From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-Their Struggles To Build Communist Organizations-The Early Days





Click below to link to the Marx-Engels Internet Archives.

Greg Green comment:

The foundation article by Marx or Engels listed in the headline goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space. Just below is a thumbnail sketch of the first tentative proceedings to form a communist organization that would become a way-station on the road to building a Bolshevik-type organization in order fight for the socialist revolution we so desperately need and have since Marx and Engels first put pen to ink.

*************

Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League

A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.)

Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization stands as the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels anti-utopian socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

Engels: "In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'."

The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847.

Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League: "The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property."

The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism -- in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand.

The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor.

The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary.


Friedrich Lessner: "I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress.Karl Marx and Frederick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..."

The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.

Engels: "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would, of course, become the Communist Manifesto.

************

Markin comment on this series:

No question that today at least the figures of 19th century communist revolutionaries, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, are honored more for their “academic” work than their efforts to build political organizations to fight for democratic and socialist revolutions, respectively, as part of their new worldview. Titles like Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, The Peasants Wars In Germany, and the like are more likely to be linked to their names than Cologne Communist League or Workingmen’s International (First International).

While the theoretical and historical materialist works have their honored place in the pantheon of revolutionary literature it would be wrong to neglect that hard fact that both Marx and Engels for most of their lives were not “arm chair" revolutionaries or, in Engels case, merely smitten by late Victorian fox hunts with the upper crust. These men were revolutionary politicians who worked at revolution in high times and low. Those of us who follow their traditions can, or should, understand that sometimes, a frustratingly long sometimes, the objective circumstances do not allow for fruitful revolutionary work. We push on as we can. Part of that pushing on is to become immersed in the work of our predecessors and in this series specifically the work of Marx and Engels to create a new form of revolutionary organization to fight the fights of their time, the time from about the Revolutions of 1848 to the founding of various socialist parties in Europe in the latter part of the 19th century.


History of the Paris Commune, Prosper Olivier Lissagaray, translated by Eleanor Marx, Black and Red Press, St. Petersburg, Florida, 2007

When one studies the history of the Paris Commune of 1871 one learns something new from it even though from the perspective of revolutionary strategy the Communards made virtually every mistake in the book. This book by a participant and survivor of the Commune has historically been the starting point for any pro-Commune analysis. The original English translation by Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx, has given the imprimatur of the Marx family to that view.

Through a close study of the Paris Commune one learn its lessons and measure it against the experience acquired by later revolutionary struggles and above all by later revolutions, not only the successful Russian Revolution of October 1917 but the failed German, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Chinese and Spanish revolutions in the immediate aftermath of World War I. More contemporaneously we have the experiences of the partial victories of the later Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions.

Notwithstanding the contradictory nature of these later experiences, as if to show that history is not always totally a history of horrors against the fate of the masses we honor the Paris Commune as a beacon of the coming world proletarian revolution. It is just for that reason that Karl Marx fought tooth and nail in the First International to defend it against the rage of capitalist Europe. It is one of our peaks. The Commune also presented in embryo the first post-1848 Revolution instance of what was later characterized by Lenin at the beginning of World War I as the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the international labor movement. So this question that after Lenin’s death preoccupied Trotsky for much of the later part of his life really has a much longer lineage that I had previously recognized. Unfortunately, as we are too painfully aware that question is still to be resolved. Therefore, even at this great remove, it is necessary to learn the lessons of that experience in facing today’s crisis of leadership in the international labor movement.

As a final thought, I note that in the preface to this edition that the editors have given their own view about the lessons to be learned from the experience of the Paris Commune. Although virtually every page of Lissagaray’s account drips with examples of the necessity of a vanguard party their view negates that necessity. While we can argue until hell freezes over, and should, about the form that a future socialist state will take one would think that there should be no dispute on that necessity at this late date in history. In any case read this important work (including the above-mentioned provocative preface) as it tells the tale of an important part of our working class history.
 

Thursday, December 01, 2022

In Commemoration Of The 50th Anniversary Of The Passing Of Legendary Soul Singer Otis Redding (2017)

In Commemoration Of The 50th Anniversary Of The Passing Of Legendary Soul Singer Otis Redding (2017)




By Zack James (with serious help from oldest brother Alex)

I have been this year, the year of the 50th anniversary of the famous Summer Of Love, centered mainly in and around San Francisco, probably the number one writer in this space commemorating that event. Prodded unto perdition by my oldest brother Alex who had actually taken part in many aspects of the Summer of Love, 1967 and a couple of years beyond before he settled down to his quiet and lucrative law practice. Quickly the genesis of that prodding and the subsequent over-the-top commemoration of that event was Alex’s business trip out to San Francisco in the spring combined with his viewing of a special exhibition The Summer of Love Experience put on by the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park the scene of much of the activity during that time. When Alex got back he gathered his old high school friends together who had also gone out that year and they commissioned me to write, edit and see to the publication of a small collective memoir book on their experiences.

One of those high school friends was the site administrator here, the soon to be retired Pete Markin, who beyond contributing to the memoir went crazy to have his stable of writers, including me, young and old, acquainted with that time or not, to go all out to commemorate the event. That whirling dervish fury is the main reason that Pete lost a vote of confidence initiated by the so-called “Young Turks” (although all of us are thinking 50 something) and supported decisively by his old friend and colleague old-timer Sam Lowell which has ushered in his retirement and replacement by Greg Green from the on-line American Film Gazette website. (The details of that internal fight will be addressed by others in the future since I was not privy to most of what happened to give Peter the boot. And also not privy to whether the whole affair was not some purge like in the old radical days disguised as a retirement. If Peter goes to the Gulag we will know which one it was) But enough of genesis.         

One of the assignments that Pete in his frenzy ordered up was a review by film critic Sandy Salmon of a documentary by the famed filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker about the first Monterey Pops Festival in June of that same Summer of Love year. That review centered on the explosive appearance of Little Girl Blues Janis Joplin at the Festival. That subsequently led to a review by younger writer Alden Riley ordered by Peter over Sandy’s head when he found out that Alden did not know who Janis Joplin was. All well and good as Ms. Joplin deserved plenty of attention for her short burning star rise and fall too young. What got short shrift in all of this worthy commemoration was the equally explosive entrance of king the essence of soul Otis Redding on that same Monterey stage. Maybe it was that Otis’ music did not fit in with the “acid” rock very much associated with that Summer of Love stuff. Maybe it had something to do with a “white bread” lack of appreciation for the emergence of soul. Maybe a Martin Luther King passive resistance generational “post-racial” break from a serious understanding of the continuing racial sores that mark this country’s landscape.  Maybe it was combination.

Nevertheless not only was Otis Redding worthy of a better representation on this site but in his short, too short, appearance on the wider music stage he had an outsized influence on the subsequent evolution of soulful music. His most famous song, the lonesome hobo Sitting on the Dock of the Bay an instant classic released shortly before his death in a plane crash in the Midwest in late 1967 showed a glimmer of where he was going.

In this 50th anniversary year for the song and Otis’ death the well-known NPR commentator Christopher Lydon on his Open Source radio show featured the life, work and influence of the great recording artist on one program. Maybe a link here to that program makes up one tiny bit for the previous neglect on this site.

Click here to link to the Open Source program:

http://radioopensource.org/afterlife-otis-redding/




What Goes Around Comes Around-The Coen Brothers’ Remake Of “The Ladykillers” (2004)-A Film Review

What Goes Around Comes Around-The Coen Brothers’ Remake Of “The Ladykillers” (2004)-A Film Review




DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

The Ladykillers, starring Tom Hanks, Irma P. Hall, based on the 1955 British film of the same name, produced and directed by the Coen Brothers, 2004

You never know why a particular film will spawn (nice word right) a retread at some later period. Maybe it is a classic like Jane Austen’s novels which have had several cinematic reincarnations reflecting different views of her work. Maybe some director or producer decides that his or her take on whatever the original subject was will put that beauty in the shade, will make people yawn even thinking about the old one. Maybe some production company is on the ropes and needs a quick boost with a plotline that can still speak to an audience. Who knows. In any case the Coen Brothers famous for hair-raising films like Raising Arizona and Blood Simple have gloomed out a 1955 British film Ladykillers which starred Alex Guinness and brought the story-line stateside and more up to date although with the same relentlessly fateful ending-bloody ending.

Here’s a quick scoop on what drove the Coens to revive this one. The Professor, played by Tom Hanks in one of his less satisfactory roles since he went over the top with his outer drawling gentile demeanor wants to rent a particular room in a particular house owned by an older religious widowed black woman Mrs. Munson played by Irma P. Hall for what appeared gentile but in reality nefarious activities. No, not some lustful sexual tryst which everybody could pardon but to use her basement as a holding area in order to dig a tunnel into a nearby river casino and grab the dough. Another example of what the famous, or infamous depending on your druthers, bank robber Willie Sutton is reported to have answered when asked why he robbed banks. That was where the money was. Ditto cash-rich riverboat casinos under the same principle.

Naturally since this black comedy as originally written by William Rose the gang of criminals the Professor recruits is something out of Jimmy Breslin’s gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Nevertheless by hook or by crook they were able to pull the caper off, grab the dough and easy street.  By that same hook or by crook Mrs. Munson catches on to the robbery and threatens the good professor with John Law unless he returns his ill-gotten gains.


Here is where the lady killers of the title comes into play. This gang that couldn’t shoot straight collectively decided to kill the old hag, put her underground, six feet under. Apparently all that church-going and singing hosannas to the Lord put Mrs. Munson in good with the right deities and one by one, including the too clever professor, they bite the dust, they go that six feet under. But what about the dough. Well the good Mrs. Munson found it and tried to return it to John Law. No go. They didn’t believe her cock-eyed story and told her to keep it. Being a good Christian women she decided to donate the whole sum to her favorite charity Bob Jones University (a place which at one time did not and maybe still does not allow blacks in as students). End of story. Other than the excessive blood and gore I don’t know why the Coens remade this one, The original was better in every way, more cheeky as they say in England.            

Sunday, November 27, 2022

Art As The Highest Accumulation Of Human Culture-With George Clooney’s “The Monument Men” (2014) In Mind

Art As The Highest Accumulation Of Human Culture-With George Clooney’s “The Monument Men” (2014) In Mind




DVD Review

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

The Monument Men, starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murry,  Cate Blanchett, 2014     

My old friend from back in the “from hunger” North Adamsville neighborhood days, the late James Jackson, was crazy for art, was crazy to see works of art in art museums large and small right up until his somewhat recent passing, a passing which left the world shorter by a lot more than a single individual passing. James (nobody ever called him Jim or Jimmy he was not that kind of guy) from very early on was fascinated by works of art probably at least from the time when in 5th grade, maybe 6th, grade we have her for two years, Miss Winot brought in photographs she had taken during summer vacation on a trip to Egypt to see the Pyramids and all of that.

One Saturday he and his brother Kenny took the bus over to Boston and spent the day at the Museum of Fine Arts looking at the extension collection of Pharaonic artifacts which several teams of Harvard University archeologists had uncovered. More importantly he went crazy for the Impressionists like Monet, the Renaissance artists like Bellini and such. (Kenny just went along because their mother would not have let James go alone at that age and James did not want to hassle with her over that and so Kenny tagged along although more than once when James would go on and on about some work of art “discovered” that day Kenny would say he “didn’t give a fuck about any of it.”

Here is the surprising part about James though. In those days he, along with the late Pete Markin, was knee-deep in every kind of scam, con, or midnight creep (you can figure out where that creep led) to make dough to survive on since he was (we were) not likely to get anything extra from hard-pressed parents. I asked him one time, a time when a Van Gogh had been sold at auction for several million dollars (yes, it was a long time ago at that price which seemed astronomical then) whether he would consider stealing a work of art to sell. Jesus did he rear up on his high horse and practically punch me for saying such a blasphemous thing. He said, and I paraphrase here, art, all of it from ancient drawing on caves to Pop Art (then emerging as the next big turn in the already saturated art world) represented the collective accumulation of human culture, something to gauge how far we have come from the slime and the caves. The next day I vividly recall he and Markin went into a department store and “clipped” a record player, two radios, a television, a set of golf clubs and a couple of  other items to sell to a “fence.” Yes, James had those build-in contradictions, hey, Markin too come to think of it although his thing was literature not art.                    

All of this as foreplay as to my purpose for grabbing a review of this film, Monument Men, from Alden Riley who would normally draw this assignment. These “monument men,” played by George Clooney, John Goodman, Matt Damon, Bill Murry and a couple of other guys were all professional artists or architects who were assigned, as soldiers during the later stages of World War II, the momentous task of retrieving the vast array of art treasures that Hitler and his minions vandalized and stole from every source in their Occupied European domains. Stole it from hapless Jewish private collector and other such collectors and whatever public museums they could loot. This to the ever larcenous James Jackson would have been unbelievable and cause enough if he had been alive then to have volunteered to run the rails right into Berlin to retrieve those ill-gotten gains. Moreover he would have gone apoplectic if he had known that the German’s as they were losing the war, as the Russians were coming from the East and the Allies from the West, had a scorched earth policy about all the art that they could not take with them. Burned, vandalized, and committed every other travesty to who knows how many great art works of European history. Moreover the Nazis were known, in fact made a public spectacle out of, destroying in those public places all “degenerate art” meaning almost all modern art during their regime.  Yes, James would have been chomping at the bit to get on the road to Germany to tell those bastards what was what.         

To their credit in dicey retreat and burn times while serious military actions were going on around them the Monument Men were able to save an extraordinary amount of art through perseverance, through pluck, through help from the French Resistance and through capturing some German officers who were charged with transporting and/or destroying those works. As in all wars though they were not able to escape casualties and deaths during the mission. So this was no cakewalk, especially when from high places in Washington to field commanders in Europe there was concern that military men should not be sacrificed for works of art no matter how valuable.      

James Jackson would have had a no holds bar answer to those parties- “art, all of it from ancient drawing on caves to modern masters represented the collective accumulation of human culture, something to gauge how far we have come from the slime and the caves.” I think after watching this film I finally agree with him.


“First Let’s Kill All The Lawyers”-Maybe Shakespeare Was On To Something Back In The Day-Ross MacDonald’s “The Galton Case” (1959) -A Book Review

“First Let’s Kill All The Lawyers”-Maybe Shakespeare Was On To Something Back In The Day-Ross MacDonald’s “The Galton Case” (1959) -A Book Review




Book Review

By Ronan Saint James

The Galton Case, written by Ross MacDonald, 1959

Lew Archer, the somewhat famous private eye out on the West Coast, was impotent. That is at least the opinion of a well-known lawyer who should know and whom I met when I was just starting out as a journalist at the East Bay Other, a place where a few other writers here did some free-lance work. Hell, it was all free-lance or free then since you never knew if you would get paid or not, paid enough at least to keep the wolves from your door. I had been sitting with that lawyer having drinks at the notorious KitKat Club in San Francisco in the days when “drag queen” culture was very much underground and I was on assignment to write about it for the Eye and he was defending the establishment and the entertainers against the city and against various violations of the health moral codes then existing. Somehow the subject of great private detectives came up, probably I brought it up since I knew that he had defended a number of famous private eyes, famous California ones anyway when they got into legal trouble.

Got Phillip Marlowe, yes that Phillip Marlowe from the Sternwood case P.I.s still talk about, still do case studies on in those matchbox cover ads touting how to be a detective in ten or so easy lessons-for hard cash and no refunds, buddy- out from under the big step off when they tried to wrap old-time gangster Eddie Mars’ murder, murder by his own bodyguards on Marlowe when he was allegedly doing a burglary of one of Eddie’s properties. Got Phil off in a million other cases too like the time he wasted some doctor, some pill-pusher who filled him ot up with junk to get him to spill where a guy named Moose Malone, no relation to Dorothy below, was to stop him from finding some femme who did not want to be found-by giant Moose anyway. From a million other cases and who I had found out at that time had been married to Dorothy Malone, the famous screenwriter who just died this year at 98 and was the last living link to the great Marlowe legacy. Got Nick Charles into a 12- Step program on the QT after a million DUIs without his wife Nora or any Frisco cops who had an interest knowing about it. Got one Samuel Spade out from under about six felonies and the loss of his license when some twist named Brigit, Mary, who knew in the end what her real name was pointed the finger at him. That was the one where that Brigit femme walked to the big house and took some gaff that she had attempted to tie to our boy Sam. So that lawyer and if you don’t know who he is by now then you just don’t lawyers who make their kale off the troubles of private detectives and giving the name would mean nothing to you knows from whence he speaks.

What would mean something, name or no name, was that lawyer’s theory about private detectives, and here he zeroed in specifically on Lew Archer and how he blew the Galton case, a few others too but the Galton case is pure fuck-up and makes his point. What that big-time lawyer said was that any P.I. who wasn’t half crazy trying to get under the silky sheets with some femme is strictly impotent, can’t get it up. Not gay, asexual, intersexual, bi-sexual or anything like that that stuff is okay, was okay for him back then since he was hanging around such people in the KitKat Club before Timmy Riley, aka Miss Judy Garland, took over and made the place a Mecca for tourists who wanted to take a quick walk on the wild side.

The funny thing as our lawyer described it was that Lew had about five opportunities to bed some dame starting when he first got on the case with Mrs. gallons of oil money Galton’s home companion, Ava, who was a knockout from the photos of her in a swimsuit when the case went to court (the case of officially adopting her lost grandson as her sole heir not the murder case of her son which some lawyer forced her to look into and which was a cold case, a frozen solid cold case when Lew put his grimy paws on the thing and screwed almost everything up before he was done and the public coppers had to come in and solve the damn thing, a rare occasion indeed). Then there was the guy who fingered Mrs. gallons of oil money son back in the 1930s whose wife, remarried, practically threw herself at him to avoid her second husband, a good man according to all parties including Lew, finding out she was married to a shiftless bum, a con artist and accessory to murder of that Galton son. Passed her by. We won’t even speak of the easy pickings he would have had, could have had if he had paid the least bit of attention to the wife, the second wife of the lawyer who hired Lew to find Mrs. Galton’s son (I won’t continue with that “gallons of oil money” gag you know who I mean now). Not only was she drugged to the gills, half naked at least half of the time in his presence at the nursing home she was placed in after she had a nervous breakdown over her role in the murder of that guy who fingered Galton’s son for the executioner’s ax back in the 1930s but she believed, when her lawyerly husband brainwashed her to perdition, she had killed that ex-lover. A piece of cake.

It doesn’t end there, and maybe I will miss a few other opportunities today when I think about the long ago case but I will give you enough examples that my lawyer friend gave me to condemn Lew to strictly third-rate private detective-dom. There was the grandson’s college time, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan girlfriend who had enough dough to sink a ship, was ready to give the kid cars, and whatever else he wanted. The kid walked way, went to greener pastures. When Lew interviewed the twist, trying to find out what she knew about the kid’s whereabouts, what made him tick, and why he was the pawn in some nefarious scheme to dupe Mrs. Galton into believing that he was really her grandson, she was as ready to have a soft shoulder to cry on as anybody in the world. Lew walked. Wouldn’t give her the time of day, made some excuse up about his time of the month, male version. (My lawyer checking into her fate just because he was interested, maybe grab her on the rebound told me she already had a new boyfriend about five days after Lew talked to her although he still was able to get a date with her since she and the new lover were not “exclusive,” whatever that meant.  

Now I think that the next women Lew passed on maybe he wasn’t wrong to not take a run at although my lawyer was infuriated that I would say such a stupid journalist kind of thing. This was a dame, an older dame but not that old who frankly didn’t keep up her appearances as they used to say in the days before body-shaming became taboo, vert taboo whether for good or evil. She would have been easy pickings too, maybe a one-night stand but here is what she was about. She had actually been married to Mrs. Galton’s son, has seen him killed out on the coast south of Frisco where they were staying, had had an affair or two with the finger man and her husband’s murderer before under threat of murder to her son, that Galton heir grandson she had married the guy and fled to Canada with him. Stayed with him trying to protect her son she said-likely story. No go for Lew though.
Here is the one I don’t figure, the one he should have taken a run at with all hands. Once Mrs. Galton found out that her son had been murdered but that she had a grandson who had been missing for years and who turned up during Lew’s tenure as her private investigator that case was over. Still there were plenty of people who for their own reasons believed the kid, John was the name he used but as usual any name will do since they are all aliases, was an impostor, was in it for the big payoff when Granny croaked. One was Mrs. Galton’s doctor who had a young daughter whose was at just that age when she was as flirtatious to older guys as young guys. The doctor wasn’t happy when he found out that said daughter was having an affair with John after Lew basically frosted up on her. Jesus how many chances can a guy have and flub everyone.

My lawyer friend also had a theory about the cause of Lew’s impotency which led to his royally screwing up the case so badly. It is tough being third or fourth fiddle in the private detective game (and that was only in California we won’t even discuss the whole country). Lew tried I think, maybe to be a lady’s man but it didn’t work, so he tried a different route, the no sex with clients or persons of interest. It didn’t work but that is that. It now makes perfect sense that he didn’t believe John was the real deal, that the lawyer who hired him played him like a yo-yo. That everybody lied through their teeth to him and he bought it, or at least followed more false flag leads than you could shake a stick at. The funny thing was that all the loose ends got collected up without him. The Galton son murderer hung himself rather than going back to jail. The finger-man’s ex-wife got redemption from her second husband. John got his girl and his mother’s forgiveness. Mrs. Galton got her real heir, despite the murderous machinations of her scoundrel lawyer and his bedazzled wife got a clear conscience. Lew, well, Lew got egg on his face, lots of egg and a lonely roll-away bed in his low rent rooming house.