Groff Conklin (science fiction)

(1904-1968)
Wikipedia
Bud Webster's Index to Groff Conklin anthologies (click on the image to purchase)

At first, science fiction stories were ephemeral.  They appeared for a month in a pulp magazine, then were never seen again.  Until the 50s,  novels were few and far between, and were often "fix-ups" -- a group of previously published short stories set in the same universe (e.g., The Foundation Trilogy, The Martian Chronicles).  It's quite possible these works and authors would have just been forgotten if it weren't for Groff Conklin.

Conklin was not an author nor was he a magazine editor.  He was an anthologist.  From 1949 until his death in 1968, he gathered together the best of the magazine SF stories into over 40 anthologies that helped define the genre.

This was essential. I started reading SF in the early 60s, and didn't know about the pulps.  By that time, only a few were being published* and I didn't know what to look for at the newstands, especially since the era of pulp fiction had ended.  But I did haunt the bookstores and my school library, and the name Groff Conklin was everywhere.  You really couldn't look at a bookshelf without seeing a collection with his name on it.

Conklin knew the great stories.  He was fond of authors like Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Damon Knight, William Tenn, Arthur C. Clarke, Cordwainer Smith, and all the greats of the genre.  His books were the way to get a grounding in science fiction.

My favorite of his anthologies was something called Science Fiction Oddities, which includes such gems as Alan Arkin's "People Soup,"** Isaac Asmov's "What is This Thing Called Love?,"*** R.A. Lafferty's amazing "What Was the Name of That Town?," Charles Harness's "The Chessplayers," Fritz Lieber's Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-TAH-Tee," and several others.  All were off-beat stories that went into areas that few dared go and brought more smiles of pleasure than any other collection I have read.

Conklin continued to collect and publish anthologies until his death.  He was purely a labor of love:  the economics of such a book are pretty dismal even in the best of times.  He paid the authors low rates (not a big problem, since they had already been paid for the original publication), and didn't have a lot left over for him.  I doubt the books were his main source of income.

Of course, not only is Conklin forgotten, but the reprint SF anthology has gone the way of the passenger pigeon.  People far prefer novels these days, and if they want a reprint anthology, it'll be from a single author they've discovered through books.  That's too bad.  The real advantage of a reprint anthology was that it had great stories by authors you never saw before.  If someone impressed you, you could look for more of his work.  Now, with the exception of some anthologies edited by Martin H. Greenberg, it's much harder to have that sort of smorgasbord of authors to sample.****  But, alas, it's far too late to change that trend. 

Conklin's anthologies are long out of print, and are unlikely to be reprinted due to issues of getting the rights.*****  It's a loss to the field, especially since the stories may be forgotten.

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* Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analog, Amazing, Fantastic and one or two others.

**Made into a short film that was Adam Arkin's film debut.

***Asimov's preferred title, though I like the original one:  "Playboy and the Slime God."

****Martin H. Greenberg has stepped into Conklin's footsteps, with original and reprint anthologies.  He often works with other authors -- a big name to make the selection of stories, and, for reprints, someone to find stories for the anthologies (Charles G. Waugh had a self-made index of SF stories by theme and did a lot of the digging up of obscure works.  Greenberg actually just handled the business end in all these, getting the rights and selling the concept.

****It would take a Herculean effort to track down the authors and their estates.  The only one that seems to be available is one he co-edited with Isaac Asimov, which is around because of Asimov's name. 

The Naked Kiss

(1964)
Written and directed by Samuel Fuller
Starring Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante, Virginia Grey, Patsy Kelly
IMDB Entry

The woman is furious.  She's attacking a well-dressed man, screaming at him and pummeling him with her purse and a shoe.  In the battle, the man grabs for her hair; it comes off in his hand, revealing she's completely bald.  That doesn't slow her, as she attacks the man until he's lying on the floor, helpless.  Then she goes for his wallet, taking $75 and telling him she's only taking what he owes her, then tosses the rest back to him, kicking him in the side for good measure.  The woman goes to a mirror and starts to put her wig back on.

That's when the credits for The Naked Kiss begin.

As is obvious, this isn't a sedate and subtle movie.  Director Sam Fuller is praised as a great "primitive" director, meaning he dealt with pulp fiction plots and characters with energy and a brutal style. And there's more than enough of that in The Naked Kiss.

The scene switches to three years later the small town of Grantville, where the woman (Constance Towers), now a  blonde and with her own hair, shows up on the bus. Her name is Kelly, and she's a hooker.  There's no beating around the bush about this:  it's said right out, and one of the first things she does is take the sheriff (Anthony Eisley) as a john.  He tells her that she should go to join Candy (Virginia Grey) and her "bon bons" -- a bordello -- across the river in the next state. 

But Kelly stays, something happens and she decides to straighten out her life.  She gets a job at a local hospital, helping handicapped children and tries to leave her old life behind, attracting the attention of the J.L. Grant (Michael Dante), the son of one of town's richest citizens.

Of course, it doesn't work out as a fairy tale.

The film surprises with its blunt treatment of things like prostitution, bordellos, abortion, and even pedophilia.  This was in the early 60s, when film censorship was on its way out, but was still a force.  It's amazing to see these subjects being treated forthrightly*. 

Constance Towers plays Kelly as a tough girl who, of course, has a softer side.  She made quite a few movies, but was more successful in theater, where she played Anna opposite Yul Brynner in a 1977 revival of The King and I and she seems to still be acting in soaps today.

Eisley is a bit hard to follow as the sheriff, since the part requires change his feelings about Kelly every few minutes.  Dante is good as the rich man who truly loves Kelly -- but has a secret himself.

Fuller continued with his career through the 90s, working both in film and TV.  His stock has risen over the years, so much so that Criterion has added this film to its collection of notable films on DVD. 

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*And, yes, the opening scene is explained.

Laura Nyro (music)

(1947-1997)
Wikipedia Entry

Well, I see Laura Nyro's been nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  And it's about time -- though I fear that she won't be inducted.  Her greatness is indisputable, but popular success always eluded her, despite the fact that she is one of the three greatest female rock songwriters of her era.*

Nyro** grew up in the Bronx and was a child prodigy, teaching herself piano and writing songs starting at the age of eight.  In 1966, she sold her first song "And When I Die" to Peter Paul and Mary*** and started performing professionally.  Her first album, More than a New Discovery**** was recorded that year. It included "And When I Die," and "Wedding Bell Blues," which the 5th Dimension made into a solid hit.  The album did so-so, but Nyro wasn't happy with it, disliking some of the artistic decisions.

But Nyro had caught the eye of David Geffin, who took over her management and got her signed to a long-term contract with Columbia Records that gave her the artistic control she wanted. 

The results were spectacular.  Her first album for Columbia, Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, was a revelation, containing three hit singles -- for other artists.*****  She topped that with what is usually considered her best, New York Tendaberry.  Her next, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, spawned her only single to make the charts, "Up on the Roof" (ironically, a cover song by a talent who made her name writing songs for others to cover).

Nyro mixed pop, jazz, soul, R&B, spirituals, and everything she could find into a tuneful delight, all sung in her pure, soulful voice, which was a thing of beauty in itself.  She usually accompanied herself on solo piano, but was happy to use a band when necessary.  Critics and musicians raved about her, but she never found popular success.  Part of this was that she was a reluctant performer, and rarely appeared on television.  The click below is one of the few, a version of "Save the Country."

The next year, she recorded an album of cover songs with Labelle that was, in a way, treading water, and after it was done, she announced her retirement from music in 1971.  She was 24.

Of course, such things never stick, and she was back recording in 1976, and she released four originals, plus a live album, from then until 1996, when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.  Her final album was put on hold and finally released in 2001.  Several compilation albums have come out, choosing the best of her work.

Nyro never got the success she deserved.  Some of it was due to her own idiosyncrasies.§ But part of it was that she just was out of step with the popular mind.  It would be wonderful if the Hall sees fit to reward excellence.

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*The other two:  Joni Mitchell and Carole King.

**Born Lauro Nigro, so you can see why she took a stage name.  She pronounced it like the Roman emperor.

***It later became a success for Blood Sweat and Tears.

****Later retitled Laura Nyro, and still later, The First Songs.

*****"Eli's Coming" for Three Dog Night and "Stoned Soul Picnic" and "Sweet Blindness" for the 5th Dimension, who owed their career to her.

§ the record company wanted to retitle Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, fearing people would think it was a Christmas album, but Nyro refused.  The record company was right.

Jackie Vernon (comedy)

(1924-1987)
Wikipedia Entry

As a kid, I used to watch The Ed Sullivan Show every Sunday.  I was no fan of the highbrow and the circus stuff, and the musical acts ranged from great to uninteresting.  But the one thing I always looked forward to were the comedians, and my favorite of them was Jackie Vernon*.

Vernon worked his way up from strip clubs to becoming a TV headliner with by creating a persona that always brought laughs.  He was a short, dumpy man, and Vernon worked off that by using the deadest of deadpan styles.  His voice was always a monotone, and he would do his routines without showing any noticeable expression other than hangdog.

My favorite was his "vacation slides" routine. Vernon would come on with just a little clicker and would pretend to be doing a slide show of his trip to the Everglades:

• <click>Here's the guide I got. His name was Guido. Very famous guide, in fact he was known as Guido the Guide.
• <click>Here's Guido the Guide leading me around a bed of quicksand.
• <click>Here's Guido the Guide from the waist up.
• <click>That's his hat right there.
• <click>Here's the rescue party rushing to his aid.
• <click>Here's the rescue party from the waist up.
• <click>And here we have a lot of hats and ropes and things.
• <click>Here's my next guide, Son of Guido the Guide.
• <click>
• <click>
• <click>That's his hat.

This was all delivered without the slightest expression with Vernon's high-pitched voice.  I also loved the way he'd imply what was going on without saying it.

Vernon did record a couple of albums, A Wet Bird Never Flies at Night and A Man and His Watermelon, which sold adequately but didn't make a big splash.  He also never managed to break into films, other than a few bit parts.

But he did make one indelible mark.  The team of Rankin/Bass chose him to do the voice of the main characters in one of their perennial Christmas classics: Frosty the Snowman.  I'm not a big fan of Frosty,** so I rarely watch it, and it is hardly representative of Vernon's comedy.

Vernon was very successful on the various "Celebrity Roasts" of the 70s, his style making the most out of all his material. 

Vernon continued his career in clubs and nightclubs, but by the 70s, with the death of the variety show, he was seen less and less on television.  He died in 1987, leaving behind memories of great comedy.

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*Not to be confused with Jackie Mason, who was banned from the show, supposedly for giving Ed the finger on air, though he denies it.

**Rankin/Bass were very uneven and usually awful, with the exceptions of Rudolph and The Last Unicorn.

Ebinger's Chocolate Blackout Cake (food)

(1898-1972)

I grew up on the eastern end of Long Island, but my mother and grandmother came from Brooklyn. As a kid, it was a big deal when my grandmother drove out to visit. Certainly it was great seeing her, but one thing made ever visit special:  she always brought cakes from Ebinger's. I don't think I ever set foot in any of their stores, and if you weren't from the New York City area, you've never heard of them, but they were bakery perfection.

The chain was founded in 1898 by George and Catherine Ebinger and quickly thrived. What I remember most are three cakes that no one has ever duplicated:

• A yellow cake with a hard, dark chocolate icing, the two layers separated by a milk chocolate buttercream.
• A chocolate cake, much like a torte in a small loaf, with the hard, dark chocolate icing. It had a pattern of green lines running over the top, dividing it into squares.  My brothers and I used to fight over who got the end pieces (with more of the delectable icing).
• The chocolate blackout cake.

The latter is what people remember today. It was a dark devil's food cake, with dark chocolate icing between layers and on the top. But icing was sprinkled with crumbs of the cake, turning the smoothness into a great texture.  It was a chocolate addict's dream and called by many "the best cake on Earth."

I think the key to all the Ebingers cakes were their chocolate icing. It was relatively thin and made of dark chocolate, and were thin and hard, more like candy than cake.  I've never found anything like it on any cake since. The Chocolate Blackout Cake's crumbs of cake only made it even better.

In 1972, Ebingers went bankrupt and the recipe for the cake was lost.* There have been attempts at recreating it, but I'm not sure anyone has gotten it right.**

I haven't tried them.  I'm not sure if I want to, since I doubt they would measure up to my memories.

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*Word has it that the heirs have it, but refuse to sell.

**The cake on the link looks very close, and only misses by having too much cake sprinkled on the frosting.  The true Ebinger's Chocolate Blackout Cake had only a thin sprinkling that let the gloss of the icing come through. It's from a recipe at CooksCountry.com.  The picture on the Cooks County website looks less like the real cake than this one.

Half a Sinner

(1940)
Directed by Al Christie
Written by Frederick J. Jackson, story by Dalton Trumbo
Starring Heather Angel, John "Dusty" King, Constance Collier, Tom Dugan, Clem Evans
IMDB Entry

Readers of this blog may not be surprised to hear that for the past year or so I've been slowly going through a set of DVDs of old, public domain movies.  It was billed as a set of mysteries, and it's a mixed bag of film noir, detectives, comic book heroes, and many other dramas, some very good, some terrible, others impossible to hear because of the poor prints. That's why I was surprised to come across Half a Sinner, a pure comedy adventure that's very fast and funny.

Heather Angel plays schoolteacher Anne Gladden, who realizes that she needs to break free and for once in her life forget about responsibilities and just have fun.  She buys a new dress, lets down her hair and stops wearing her glasses* and sets out for a day of adventure.  But it's more than what she expected.  When a masher makes a pass at her, she jumps into his car and drives away.

Unfortunately, she doesn't realize there's a dead body in the back seat.

She soon is being chased by the cops (who think the car is stolen) and by gangsters (who want the body and the incriminating evidence).  Along the way, she gives a lift to a mysterious and charming stranger (John King) and crosses path with a rich dowager with a little larceny in her heart (Constance Collier).

The film is fast paced (it runs 59 minutes), and quite funny.  There is a lot of understated black humor and the plot twists around and back and even when you can guess some of them, they're played with such charm that you don't mind.  The skill of Dalton Trumbo** may be one reason why the story keeps you wanting to watch.

Heather Angel was trying to establish herself as a leading lady after being primarily known as Bulldog Drummond's long-suffering fiancee*** and she is a charming presence.  Alas, here career didn't take off, though she kept on working in small parts.  John King also was a veteran of B movies and later made a name for himself as a cowboy star.

Director Al Christie produced and directed over 400 films, primarily shorts and B pictures.

The movie fell into the public domain, but seems to be marketed primarily as a film noir and mystery (the DVD cover certainly makes it seem much more dramatic than it every dreamed of being). Don't be fooled. What you have is a fast, charming little comedy that a B movie gem.

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*Of course.

**Later to be blacklisted, but at this point learning his trade as a screenwriter.

**Every Bulldog Drummond episode seemed to begin with she and Drummond just about to tie the knot when all hell breaks loose.  She spent a lot of time as a hostage, too, but was usually fairly capable.

Ellery Queen (author)

(1905-1971) & (1905-1982)

He was probably the most influential and popular of all American detective story writers and editors in the 1930s until the 1970s, yet, Ellery Queen seems to be only live on in the name of one magazine, where many of its readers may not even have read any of his work.

"Ellery Queen" was the pen name of two cousins, Manfred Lee and Frederick Dannay, who started writing together in the late 1920s.  Their first novel, The Roman Hat Mystery, introduced a new star to the lineup of detective sleuths:  Ellery Queen.

It was a cute conceit* as were several others.  Queen the writer was a strong advocate of the "fair" detective story -- where all the evidence is laid before the reader so that you had a chance at guessing the solution.  Queen took it even further by stopping the narrative for a "Challenge to the Reader," where he would say that you now had all the facts you needed to solve the crime and would dare you to guess.  These gimmicks helped make the Ellery Queen novels stand out from the many being published at the time.

The early novels -- all of which were titled "The <nationality> <noun> Mystery"** -- used this gimmick to great effect and worked because the solutions were all difficult to guess, but clear once Queen explained it all.

That the big thing they had going for them, since the character of Queen was not well defined.  He was introduced as a sort of a upper class snob, son of Police Inspector Richard Queen, who wore a pince nez and quoted Latin aphorisms without bothering to translate.***  He is more mannerisms than a character, and probably would not have lasted long once the gimmick got tired.

Lee and Dannay realized that.  Their tenth novel, Halfway House, dropped the nationality in the title (even though the introduction shows they could easily have stuck with it) and had the final "Challenge to the Reader."  The title not only fit the mystery, but it also signified that the book would be a "halfway house" into a different form of mystery. 

The later books made Ellery more human, the mysteries more than just puzzles.  Lee and Dannay set a group of books in Hollywood, but were more successful with several more in the fictional small town of Wrightsville, which he joked had more murders per capita than any other town in the US. 

Toward the end, Lee and Danny hired other writers like Theodore Sturgeon and Avram Davidson to flesh out their outlines. My favorite Queen mystery, The Player on the Other Side, was actually written by Sturgeon, and the Davidson title, And on the Eighth Day, is memorable in its portrayal of real-life evil and how it can come up even when we think it's defeated.

In addition to the novels, Queen wrote many short stories, often based upon a "dying clue" -- something the victim did in his last moments that identified the killer, but which is not clear until Ellery Queen shows up.

But Queen was more than a writer; he was an editor (or rather, Dannay was).  In 1941, he founded Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine as a place to showcase mystery fiction, and it quickly became the top magazine in the field, and is still being published today.  Queen's anthology, 101 Years' Entertainment, was essential reading to familiarize readers with the best of the genre (no Sherlock Holmes, though -- but that's because it was easy to find Holmes stories, but difficult to find detectives like the Old Man in the Corner, Arsene Lupin, Dr. Thorndyke, Father Brown, Philip Trent, Professor Poggioli, or Ruth Kelstern.****

Lee died in 1971, and Dannay continued his editorship.  There were few Ellery Queen stories now and they were strictly puzzles.*****  The partnership seemed to work with Dannay coming up with the plots and puzzles and Lee fleshing out the characterization, so the stories after Lee's death were puzzle stories.  Danney died in 1982.

So why is Queen not remembered today?  Of course, there is the change of taste in mysteries; Queen was too old-fashioned to work in a Raymond Chandler mystery universe.  In addition, the Ellery Queen stories never had the type of popular success that someone like Agatha Christie did when translated to other media.  There were several movies, but none were major hits and the last US film was back in 1942.  In the mid-70s, there was a TV series starring Jim Hutton (and run as a period piece, with Hutton stopping the story to give the "Challenge to the Reader" each show) that ran for one season, but to mediocre ratings.

Without a presence in other media, the novels lost their appeal, especially the earlier ones that were based on gimmicks and sometimes clues that are now badly dated.****** 

But the books are still fun to read as puzzles and as detective stories.  And Queen's work as an editor and anthologist have cast a long shadow on the field.

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*Though why they did it is a mystery.  The stories were written in the third person, and Ellery Queen the detective was clearly not Ellery Queen the author.  But it did make thing memorable, and maybe that was the point.

** The Roman Hat Mystery, The French Powder Mystery, The Dutch Show Mystery, etc.

***In the first book, he is said to be retired, married, and living in Italy after the events of the mystery, but that bit of background vanished away.

****It might be easier now, with the Gutenberg Project.

*****It is generally thought that Dannay wrote the plots and puzzles, while Lee handled the characterizations.  With Lee gone, the stories were all plots and dying clues.

******The resolution to one book, for instance, is based on the assumption that no man would appear in public without a tie.

The Lovin' Spoonful (music)

(1965-69)
Members:  John Sebastian (guitar, harmonica, autoharp, vocals), Zal Yanovsky (guitar), Steve Boone (bass), Joe Butler (drums)
All Music Guide

After Sgt. Pepper, most rock musicians turned away from hit singles and toward albums.  Many of this period talked at the time about how they lost interest in top 40 radio, that they didn't really care for it and preferred to listen to albums.  But there was one group that they always said was an exception:  The Lovin' Spoonful.

The group had its origins in New York's Greenwich Village.  Guitarist Zal Yanovsky had become a member of the Mugwumps with Cass Eliott and Denny Doherty, who soon gained pop fame as half of the Mamas and the Papas.*  After the Mugwumps broke up, Yanovsky started working with Sebastian.  The added Boone and Butler and started recording.

Their first single, Sebastian's "Do You Believe in Magic," went to number 9, and they followed up with a series of classic singles, with  "Daydream," "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?," "Summer in the City," "Rain on the Roof," "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice," and "Nashville Cats" hitting the top ten.

The hits were all written by Sebastian.  He was able to take a combination of folk music, jug band music, and rock and turn it into a cheery new hybrid, usually called "good time music."  Which described it well:  there was a joyousness in every song and a sense of fun throughout.  It started a trend**.  

In addition to their singles and albums, they recorded two movie soundtracks:  "What Up Tiger Lily?" for Woody Allen, and "You're a Big Boy Now" for a young Francis Ford Coppola.

Things were going well, but trouble struck in an unexpected way.  Zal was arrested for possession of marijuana.  Not unusual, but the police pressured him to name his supplier, threatening him with deportation (he was Canadian).  The music community didn't forgive him and put pressure on him so much that he quit the group and moved to Canada anyway. 

He was replaced with an old friend of the group, Jerry Yester.  The group's sound changed and, though they had a couple of hits,*** things were ending.  Sebastian decided it was time to go solo.  The group continued and even had some minor hits, but it just wasn't the same.  They broke up in 1969.

Sebastian went on to a successful solo career****, starting with the album John B. Sebastian***** and hitting the charts a few years later with "Welcome Back," written as the theme song for the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter.  Yanovsky released a quirky album called Alive and Well in Argentina, which was quickly forgotten.  Yester, Boone, and Butler eventually reunited and are playing as the Lovin Spoonful even now.

While they were not a group known for their albums, their singles still have the power to make you smile.

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* Their song "Creeque Alley" includes references to Sebastian ("In a coffee house Sebastian sat") and Yanovsky ("Zal and Denny, working for a penny").

**The Turtles, for instance, who had a couple of minor hits with Dylan covers and who thought of themselves as a protest band, heard "Do You Believe in Magic?" and decided they'd rather be cheerful than Mr. Alienation, and recorded "Happy Together."  The Grateful Dead reportedly saw the Spoonful and decided to switch from acoustic jug band to rock.

***Including "Money" (not the song the Beatles covered), which is a loving paean to the capitalism and the banking system.

****He was an extremely likeable live performer.  I saw him live at the Union College Memorial Chapel in the early 70s.  Sebastian came on and, with wonder in his voice said, "I've never played in a chapel before," then broke into a few bars of "Chapel of Love."  Great show.

*****Probably the only record to ever be bootlegged by a major recording company.  Sebastian signed with Reprise Records for the album, but MGM Records (the parent company of the Spoonful's label) claimed he owed them an album, so they pirated the tapes and sold it.  MGM lost the ensuing legal battle.  They tried again by releasing a live John Sebastian album the next year, but again, they were told to cut it out, and Sebastian released his own live album in response.

Hollywood Shuffle

(1987)
Directed by Robert Townsend
Written by Robert Townsend and Keenan Ivory Wayans
Starring Robert Townsend, Starletta DuPois, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Anne-Marie Johnson
IMDB Entry

We always like it when a director makes a big splash with his first film.  And it's an especially good story if he does it on his own, in a small independent movie. People like Spike Lee (She's Gotta Have It*), Kevin Smith (Clerks), and Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi) were able to make critically acclaimed low-budget debuts, and have them picked up by studios and move on to solid careers.

Robert Townsend started out that way.  His first film, Hollywood Shuffle, was shot on a budget of $100,000,** $40,000 of which he raised while maxing out his credit cards and working as a bit player in a handful of movie. And he hit the jackpot:  critical acclaim, a studio distribution, and a foot in the door.

Hollywood Shuffle is the story of Bobby Taylor (Townsend), an aspiring Hollywood actor.  But he has a problem:  as a black man, he keeps coming face to face with stereotyping.

Now, Hollywood was always about stereotypes.  They may have become less offensive of the years (especially the racial ones), but even now characters learn to play a type.  And at the time the film was made in 1987, roles for Black actors were still limited:  pimps, Eddie Murphy types, and other roles that, while better than the demeaning stereotypes of the pre-Civil-Rights days, were still pretty limiting.

The movie hits the whole issue with a biting satire and Bobby keeps trying to get a role that doesn't require him to portray what he hates.  It's somewhat hit or miss*** but very likeable.

The ending is what makes the movie stand out.  It's something of a twist that turns Bobby's seeming failure into a real success, letting him do what he's been wanting to do in a surprising way.

Townsend was able to pay off his credit card bills and establish himself as a director to watch.  Alas, it didn't pan out.  He directed Eddie Murphy Raw, not the type of film that gets and director noticed, then had a series of flips:  The Five Heartbeats, The Meteor Man, and BAPS, none of which made more than $9 million in the box office.****  He moved to TV, but still hasn't done anything of particular note.

Hollywood Shuffle may be a bit dated, but the issues it raises still exist, and it's final message is something everyone can take to heart.

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*He also did several student films, but She's Gotta Have It was his first film on his own.

**Remember, this was still the film era, where the cost of shooting was greater.

***There's a overly long section with Keenan Ivory Wayans (pre In Living Color) portraying one of a Black "Siskel and Ebert" pair of movie critics that isn't all that funny and really clouds Townsend's point.

****Though they did make more money than Hollywood Shuffle.  Still, they also cost far more than $100,000 and were a loss in real accounting, not just the Hollywood version.

Baroness Orczy (author)

(1865-1947)
Wikipedia Page

European nobles are not known for their contributions to the arts. Oh, there's Lord Byron, of course, but other than that, it's hard to think of anyone who was successful in the arts, where their bloodlines and money does them no good. But Baroness Emmuska Orczy managed to become an extremely popular writer in the early years of the 20th century.

Orczy was the daughter of a Hungarian baron who moved to London when she was twelve to escape a revolution in his home country. In the late 1890s, she began to write as a way to bring in money, and, after a few fits and starts, ended up establishing herself as a writer of mysteries and adventure stories.

She made her name as a writer of swashbucklers, starting with The Scarlet Pimpernel.  Though the name is pretty much forgotten except as a joke,* it was a major success when the character first appeared in short stories and finally a play in 1903.  The stories were set during the days of the French Revolution as the Pimpernel**, one of the first characters to have a secret identity, fought to rescue nobles from the madness of the Terror.  The Pimpernel was really a precursor to superheroes like Batman and the Shadow, and both better-known heroes had similarities to him.

It is interesting that Orczy, who was uprooted by revolution as a noblewoman, chose as a hero a man who fought against revolutionaries to save noblemen.

But the Pimpernel wasn't Orczy's only literary creations.  She also wrote a series of mystery stories featuring the Old Man in the Corner.

The Old Man -- his real name unrevealed -- was one of the first armchair detectives.  He sits in the ABC Tea Shop and engages reporter Polly Burton*** in conversations discussing the mysteries of the day, all the while fidgeting with a piece of string.  The Old Man does get around -- to visit the scenes of the crime or to watch the trial -- but each story has him staying entirely in his chair.  Like he does with the knots in his string, he unravels mysteries, and finds the solution.  But he never arrests anyone, and often the murderer remains free.  The stories are first class mysteries.

Orczy also had another series about the adventures of Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, the police's only woman detective, who manages to solve crimes by using a woman's eye to see what men have missed. 

With these and other series, Orczy was one of the most popular writers of the early 20th century.  Alas, her stories slowly lost favor and the type of swashbuckling adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel is out of date****

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* Looney Tunes parodied it in their classic cartoon, The Scarlet Pumpernickel.

**One of the first characters to have a secret identity -- Sir Percy Blakeney

***Whose function is to put forth questions to challenge the Old Man, only to have them shot down.

****Except when they use lightsabers.

Magic

(1978)
Directed by Richard Attenborough
Written by William Goldman
Starring Anthony Hopkins, Burgess Meredith, Ann-Margaret.
IMDB Entry

Ever since The Great Gabbo, ventriloquists in film* always seem to have the same problem:  the dummy becoming a representative of their own multiple personalities.  Magic is one take on the genre, overcoming the cliche with good writing and an excellent cast.

In the film, Corky Withers (Anthony Hopkins) is an aspiring stage comic who comes up with ventriloquism as a gimmick for his career.  His dummy, Fats, is foul mouthed and rude, and makes Corky into a star.  But just as his agent Ben (Burgess Meredith) lines up a prime time TV show for him, he vanished into the Catskills.

The reason is that he keeps hearing Fats talking to him, even when he's not holding the dummy.  Corky fears he's on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  Meeting an old girlfriend (Ann-Margaret) seems to help at first, but soon things get worse.  Very much worse.

The interesting part about the film is that it's never entirely clear whether Fats is part of Corky's personality, or some sort of supernatural being. Except for one shot, he is being manipulated by Corky, but that one shot -- where Fats appears to move -- hints that maybe it's something else.**

This was the first American starring role for Anthony Hopkins, and he does a fine job showing Corky and a man on the edge.  Ann-Margaret was at the peak of her career, and great to watch as the woman who inadvertently sets the tragedy in motion.

The script is by William Goldman, a purveyor of first-class movie scripts, and best known for The Princess Bride and Marathon Man.  Director Attenborough took the job partially to raise money for his bigger project:  Gandhi. The film also started getting Hopkins noticed in the US, and his next starring role, in The Elephant Man, put his career into high gear.

Though the story is a bit old hat, the great talents involved make it a solid psychological horror film.

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*Except for Edgar Bergan

** My feeling is that there's no supernatural explanation and the movement is merely gravity doing its thing.

Bent Fabric (music)

(1924- )
Official Website

There are, of course, many one-hit wonders, groups that had a single hit and were never heard from again. Usually, you remember the name of the group when you hear the song, but in the case of Bent Fabric, his name has been completely forgotten, despite the fact that his one hit is still played around the US -- just not on the radio.

Though it sounds like the name of a group, Bent Fabric was the stage name of Danish pianist Bent Fabricius-Bjerre.*  Fabric started a jazz group after World War II and even founded his own record label.  And, in 1961, he recorded "Omkring et Flygel," a simple but sprightly little piano tune that was released in the US and was an immediate hit, reaching #2 on the charts and winning him a Grammy for Best Instrumental.

But the song didn't stop there.  It took on a life of its own, especially when a simple but fun dance was created for it.  Whenever there was a happy gathering -- wedding, anniversary party, etc.  -- in the 60s, 70s, and beyond, with live music, you could bet that at some point the band would play it.  You probably danced to it yourself.  Lyrics were added at one point for those who wanted to sing along.

Never heard of it?  Of course not.  With a name like "Omkring et Flygel,**" the US record company knew it stood no chance.  Since it was an instrumental, however, they were perfectly free to choose a new name for it.

The name they chose was "Alley Cat."

Bent Fabric continued to release albums, usually given animal-themed names like The Happy Puppy***, but never struck gold again.  It didn't matter.  Back in Denmark he became a respected film composer and TV host.

But somewhere this weekend, you can bet that there's a wedding where the band is getting everyone up to dance to the Alley Cat.

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*"Bent" evidently was not uncommon as a first name in Denmark. A friend of the family who was Danish was named "Bente," the female version.

**"Around a Piano" in Danish.

***The first I saw his name.  It took me awhile to realize it was a single person.He also did an album with another instrumentalist of the time, Mr. Acker Bilk.

Inki and the Mynah Bird

Created by Chuck Jones
The Little Lion Hunter (1939)
Inki and the Lion (1941)
Inki and the Minah Bird (1943)
Inki at the Circus (1947)
Caveman Inki (1950)

Chuck Jones is a legend in the world of animation.  Ten of his cartoons listed in the book The Fifty Greatest Cartoons, including four of the top five. But in the early years, he was feeling his way and his creations were of characters that are not part of the Warner Brothers canon any more.  And while Sniffles the Mouse is pretty forgettable, one of his creations is a forgotten touch of absurd greatness.  That character is the Mynah Bird.*

The bird first appeared in The Little Lion Hunter, as something of a supporting character.  The title character -- later named Inki -- is an African boy who is sort of an Elmer Fudd wannabe.  The plot of the cartoon involves Inki's encounters with a lion (and other creatures), but what makes it work is the presence of the Mynah Bird.

The Bird is introduced with Inki following his tracks into some bushes, which begin to wave violently.  He retreats, thinking it's a larger animal, but out of the storm** comes a small, black bird, like a crow only rounder, and with a yellow beak and legs.  The bird walks across the forest to the time of Mendelssohn's "Fingal's Cave/Hebredes Overture"*** in a peculiar gait that part walking, part hopping, moving in a perfectly straight line until he vanished into a hole or another bush.  He ignored everything going on around him -- until the right moment, when he would wreck havoc on those who got in his way (usually a lion that was out to get Inki). 

Inki usually started hunting the Mynah Bird, who was always two steps (and hops) ahead of him, but, at the end, the bird would come to his aid. They were friends, in a way, though the Bird refused to acknowledge that.

Jones continued the series sporadically as he moved on to other things.  For awhile, it was regularly shown on Saturday morning TV, but then vanished.

The reason was simple:  Inki.

As our racial attitudes changed in the 60s, the character became an embarasment.  Jones was one of the nicest guys in show business**** and Inki was never ridiculed due to his race.  He acted just the way he was:  a young boy playing at hunting.  But the character design was unacceptable, with the typical traits of the comic Negro that were offensive in so many other contexts.  It was impossible to look at Inki without seeing the racism (not to mention the racism in his name).

By the 70s, it was impossible to find the cartoons.  Though they have made something of a comeback (some are on youtube), the long gap has made them forgotten.

It's too bad.  The Mynah Bird is one of Jones's great creations; it's a shame he only appeared with Inki.

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*Sometimes spelled "Minah Bird."

**Which got bigger in subsequent adventures.

***You can get a great familiarity with classical music by watching Warner Brothers cartoons.  Carl Stalling, their musical director, seemed to think they worked well -- and he was right.  In addition to "Fingal's Cave," he also loved using "The William Tell Overture," "Poet and Peasant," and, of course, the work of Raymond Scott.

****Read his autobiography, Chuck Amuck.

Smokey Stover (Comic Strip)

(1935-1973)
By Bill Holman
Official Site

Back when I was growing up, you usually had a selection of newspapers. And that meant a selection of comics.  We grew up on Newsday,* but on Sunday there were choices.  We got the Times, but they had no comics and I much preferred visiting our neighbors who got the Long Island Press (with a strip we had never seen called Peanuts) and, occasionally, the newspaper with the best Sunday comics around:  The Daily News.

The News had Dick Tracy; it had Terry and the Pirates**; and it had Smokey Stover, one of the wildest strips ever written.

The strip was created by Bill Holman.  Holman evidently loved firemen, and, after working on several newspapers as a spot cartoonist, managed to sell the concept of Smokey Stover to the Chicago Tribune Syndicate -- the big league of any cartoonist of the day.

Smokey was a fireman, working for his Chief Cash U. Nutt and living with his wife Cookie and son Earl.***  But that didn't really matter.  This was a gag strip and Holman was never content with one gag.  Or two.  Or five.  There was one central gag but every panel was filled with visual puns and off-the-wall jokes.**** 

The gags were groaners, as were the puns and wordplay, but I loved them.

As was appropriate, the strip was drawn in a very cartoony style.  Smokey wore a fireman's hat with a hinge in it, and drove in a two-wheeled vehicle called the Foo Mobile.  "Foo" was an all-purpose word in the strip, showing up all over the the place.*****  Even more mysterious to me was the phrase "Notary Sojak," which no one really understood, but everyone noticed.§  Another of his phrases was "1506 Nix Nix."§§

Holman continued with the strip until his retirement in 1973, and when he retired, the strip went with him.§§§ 

It has rarely been reprinted, but no one has ever matched its combination of screwy humor, dumb jokes, and puns that made you groan.

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*And for a short time, with The Suffolk Sun, an attempt to start a new paper for eastern Long Island, but which had little to recommend it other than the fact that it was the first newspaper to have color comics on weekdays.

**The George Wunder version.  I hated his art simply because all the faces looked the same.  Men, women, and children all had the same face with different hair or maybe some freckles.

***By the  time I saw the strip, Cookie and Earl were rarely seen, and they never bothered mentioning the name of the Chief.

****I'm mostly familiar with the Sunday strips; the dailies probably had fewer.

*****Holman gave various explanations of where he got the term; the most common was that he found it at the bottom of a Chinese statuette.  The word was appropriated for cartoons, and to the military (posibly as "fubar"), and to UFOlogy, where "foo fighter" (used in the strip, too) was used as a name for UFO and eventually a rock band.

§ Holman said it was Gaelic for "Merry Christmas."  Maybe.

§§The explanation of this was consistent, if strange:  it referred to room 1506 in a hotel; the "nix nix" mean "no."  The story was that someone told him to stay clear of the hotel using the phrase.

§§§ Highly unusual for a comic in that time.  Once a creator stopped, the standard practice with a successful strip was to hire a new artist and continue with it.  The only exception back then was Krazy Kat.  Of course, more recently, Bill Waterston was able to quit Calvin and Hobbes and Gary Larsen discontinued The Far Side.  The feeling today is that the public won't accept a strip from a new artist.

Kansas City Confidential

(1952)
Directed by Phil Karlson
Screenplay by George Bruce and Harry Essex from a story by Harold Greene and Rowland Brown.
Starring John Payne, Helen Foster, Preston Foster, Neville Brand, Lee Van Cleef, and Jack Elam
IMDB Entry
Download from Archive.org

I like caper films, where a group of criminals get together to pull off the perfect crime.  Sometimes they succeed, other times the fail, but watching the crime unfold and fall apart can be gripping.  Kansas City Confidential is a strong but obscure member of the genre.*

The film shows a mastermind (Preston Foster) gathering together a group of three henchmen, Pete Harris (Jack Elam), Tony Romano (Lee Van Cleef), and Boyd Kane (Neville Brand).  The three all are scuttling away from the law and are enticed to take part in a million dollar bank robbery in Kansas City.  The mastermind wears a mask, and insists everyone else does, too, so they can't squeal on each other. 

The robbery goes off like clockwork, but an innocent delivery driver, Joe Rolfe (John Payne), gets arrested for it.  He's quickly released, but the notoriety loses him his job and he realizes the only way to clear his name is to go after the crooks.  So he goes off to Mexico to try to track them down.

The film is definitely dark, with a lot of tough talk, and Rolfe singleminded in his revenge (even if he does get sidetracked by a young law student, Helen Foster (Colleen Gray).  But it's more than just talk.  Rolfe can dish it out and, when necessary, take it. 

The film does feature three of the 50s greatest heavies. Jack Elam**, with his Frankenstein face, plays Pete as twitchy and violent and clearly a coward.  Lee Van Cleef's Tony is a ladies' man who can turn dangerous in an instant, while Brand's Boyd is a more plodding form of danger.  They all make the most of their roles.***

John Payne is interesting as Joe.  I remember him best as the idealistic lawyer in Miracle on 34th Street who makes Santa Claus real.  I've seen him in that role dozens of times and it's quite a change to see him as a desperate character who isn't afraid to beat up others to get what he wants. Payne, like Dick Powell before him, managed to make the switch from light comic actor to tough guy, and did it more convincingly.

The film did not impress critics upon its release, as they found it too brutal.**** Still, Payne and Karlson collaborated on other, similar films afterwards (some sources say they also worked on the screenplay).  It also seems to be a big influence on Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.

In any case, the film slipped into public domain and can be downloaded from archive.org.  It's still an entertaining and dark look at the underbelly of crime.

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*Many categorize it as a film noir, but that term has been devalued. I prefer the original concept as a dark tragedy in which a good man is tempted into crime, often by a two-timing woman.  Double Indemnity is a classic example.  The ending of Kansas City Confidential, plus the fact that Joe is not enticed into crime, puts it outside the category.

**Elam had two careers, starting out as a menacing heavy in the 1950s.  In the 60s, he grew a beard, which softened his angular face and which made him into a lovable comic sidekick in such films as Support Your Local Sheriff.

***Although, as the script has it, they're particularly inept whenever they want to do something other than just threaten.  Rolfe gets the drop on them nearly every time.

****Though it hardly seems that way today.  What that says about modern society I leave as an exercise for the reader.  It was also interesting to read the New York Times review, which condemned what it thought was a "crime does pay" ending -- Joe commits no crime and is rewarded by the insurance company for finding the real robbers.

Gorgo

(1961)
Directed by Eugène Lourié
Screenplay by Robert L. Richards and Daniel James
Screen Story by Eugène Lourié and Daniel James*
Starring Bill Travers, William Sylvester, Vincent Winter
IMDB Entry

The 1950s was the heyday of the giant monster movie. You had things like Them!, Tarantula, The Giant Mantis, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Dinosarus,** and, of course, the Japanese monster films starting with Godzilla. Even the Danish got into the act with Reptilicus.  The British also rode the trend with The Giant Behemoth and, their best monster film, Gorgo. 

It follows the usual template. A volcano eruption off the coast of Ireland leads to mysterious doings, all eventually shown to be the work of a 65-foot-tall prehistoric beast that has awakened.  Joe Ryan (Bill Travers) manage to capture the monster and take it back to London where he sells it to a circus.  Dubbed "Gorgo" after the Gorgons of myth, the creature is put on display.  But Gorgo is only a baby, and his 200-foot-tall mother soon comes to rescue her child, laying waste to London in the process.

What makes this all stand out is the ending (if you don't want a spoiler, stop reading now). 

Unique among monster movies, in this case the monster wins.  Mama finds Gorgo and takes him back to the sea, leaving London in shambles and the characters to wonder about the wisdom of playing with things you don't understand.

The special effects were high class for the time.  They used the techniques pioneered in Japan -- monster suits and miniatures -- but with fine attention to detail.  Gorgo was smaller than most movie monsters and thus required a different scale, and slow motion was used to enhance the effect.

Director Lourie knew his stuff:  he had previously helmed The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and The Giant Behemoth***.  Alas, the market for giant monster movies dried up and he didn't direct again, though he remained in films as an art director.

The movie has been obscured by other films of the genre.  It even showed up on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which really isn't fair**** -- it's still a good example of the genre. 

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*The IMDB is wrong on this.  The credits clearly show Lourie credited for the story with James (who used the name "Daniel Hyatt"; Richards was billed as screenwriter).

**Which scared the hell out of me as a kid -- it was probably the scariest movie I'd seen (of course, I was eight), though I doubt it would have that effect now.

***One of the more redundant film titles.  Could there ever be a tiny behemoth?

****I think they knew they were showing a film that was much better than their usual fare, since they had Leonard Maltin show up to say he personally liked the film.

Raymond Griffith

(1895-1957)
IMDB Entry

On September 3, 1949, James Agee wrote a critical piece for Life Magazine which was one of their most popular articles ever, and probably the single most influential piece of film criticism every written.  Titled "Comedy's Greatest Era," it was a love note to silent comedy, and the the four giants of that time:  Chaplin, Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon.  This was written at a time when few had access to older films -- no video or TV, of course, and silent films were only shown in college film series and not to the general public.  It introduced a new generation to these talents.

But there was one omission.  In 1975, Walter Kerr pointed it out,  championing the cause of one who may have deserved to be up there*: Raymond Griffith.

Griffith was born in a theatrical family and appeared on stage at the age of 15 months.  By eight he was starring.  He worked in a circus, joined the navy at 15, and in 1916, started acting in films.**  Mack Sennett thought he was more valuable as a writer, so he started doing that until he could find a studio willing to put in in front of the camera.

Griffith's persona was of the upper class:  top hat, white tie, and tails.*** It's an interesting choice; the other big names did not have this sort of persona:  Chaplin was generally poor; Keaton and Langdon, lower middle; and Lloyd, fully middle class.  But he managed to make it work (even in incongruous situations) and became one of the biggest comedy stars of his day.

His best film is usually considered Hands Up!, where he plays a confederate spy during the civil war.****  It has been over 30 years since I've seen it, so I'm fuzzy on the details, but I do remember a very funny film, with good gags and a fine performance.  I would love to see it again.

Griffith's career was doomed when sound came in.  There are legends of movie stars whose voices weren't adequate for sound, but most are exaggerations and only a handful really were hurt by that in particular.***** 

But Griffith knew that once the movies began to talk, his career was over.  He was unable to speak above a whisper.  He told the story of how he gave a terribly loud scream on stage as a boy and lost his voice at that instant, but others have said it was caused by diphtheria.  In any case, his career onscreen came to an abrupt halt.  He appeared in only one film (a dying soldier in All Quiet on the Western Front, a role that required that the actor speak in a whisper) and switched to writing and producing.

Why did Agee leave him off the list?  Well, certainly the fact that he had been off the screen for twenty years was a factor.  Chaplin was still making films (albeit slowly) and Lloyd had appeared in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock a couple of years before.  By coincidence, Keaton had a small role in In the Good Old Summertime just before Agee wrote the article, and Langdon actually made quite a few films in the sound era, though mostly as short subjects.  But Griffith had nothing to remind Agee.  He may have thought of him and discarded him, or he may had forgotten.

The result is sad. Not only is Griffith forgotten, but his films have been lost. There was no reason to save them and no Walter Kerr to point out he was better than the run-of-the-mill film comedian.  Right now, it's next to impossible to evaluate how good or bad he was other than with Hands Up! and one or two others.

We may never know how great he really was, but it is clear that he is worthy of consideration.

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*Perhaps even replacing Langdon, who seems now to be dependent on Frank Capra and Harry Edwards to put in a good performance.

**At least, according to Griffith, who is not a trustworthy source.

***No word on if he polished up his nails.

****There are some interesting similarities to Keaton's The General.

***** John Gilbert used to be listed as an example, but most film historians now agree that the problem was less his voice than the florid dialog he was required to utter.

Victor Sjöström

(1879-1960)
IMDB Entry

I could do this entire blog on great but forgotten silent films. All but the very greatest have been forgotten (and often lost) and audiences these days don't seem to have much interest in them. The lack of sound, plus the acting style, just put people off.*  But silent films hold up well, if you're willing to put in the effort. 

Silent filmmakers were  far more international that films today.  It was fairly easy to shoot new intertitles for a silent film, and the audience didn't have to watch action on the screen while reading the subtitles.  That led to strong film industries in Europe, especially in Germany and Sweden.  And the greatest Swedish film director of the era was probably Victor Sjöström.

He grew up in Sweden and Brooklyn, NY, and broke into films as an actor and director around 1912, after a establishing a career in the theater in both areas.  Sjöström developed his craft and soon began making films with a psychological depth that was unusual for his time.  Around the time he had mastered filmmaking, he started adapting screenplays of books by Swedish Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf.  Lagerlöf distrusted what filmmakers might do to her work, but Sjöström seemed to find the formula to make both her and the audiences happy.  It was part of this series when, in 1921, he adapted her novel Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! (Körkarlen) as The Phantom Carriage.

In it, Sjöström starred as a man doomed to drive the carriage the took the souls of the dead to heaven. The film's effects involved some very good double exposures, and were quite advanced for the time.**  Its dark mood seemed to strike a chord in the post-World-War-I world.   It was probably the masterpiece of the silent Swedish cinema.

It raised enough notice for Hollywood to beckon and, in 1924, he went to work for MGM.  Using the name of Victor Seastrom,*** he eventually hooked up with Lon Chaney for another great film, He Who Gets Slapped.  Chaney starred as a circus clown, who was crying not only on in the inside, but on the outside as well.  His act consisted of having people slap him and knock him down.  He (the clown's name) has, of course, been betrayed in the past, and in the course of the film he gains some happiness.  It's a dark film, and Cheney is, as usual, riveting.

Sjöström was on a roll and when a few years later, Lillian Gish wanted to make a movie of The Scarlett Letter,**** she asked for Sjöström, feeling his dark attitude was just what the film needed.  She was right.  The film is an excellent adaptation and Gish was perfect as Hester.

Evidently, they liked the experience, because two years later, Gish insisted she and Sjöström reteam to make  The Wind, his masterpiece.

The Wind in an intense film of loneliness and madness.  Gish is a young woman who moves to the West Texas to live with relatives.  But there is tension between her and her cousin's wife and she is forced to leave.  With no place to go, she agrees to marry their neighbor, even though she finds him repulsive.  But she soon finds out that the constant wind is even worse and slowly begins to go insane.

The film is a claustrophobic look at the difficulty of living on the frontier.  Gish is magnificent and Sjöström captures her feeling of helplessness in the face of relentless force.

Alas, the silent era was ending.  The Wind was one of the last silent films MGM released; they moved quickly into talkies.

But Sjöström did not.  He didn't like the restrictions the new sound equipment put on what he could do. He did the talkie A Lady to Love in 1930, then moved back to Sweden for three more films, after which he returned to the theater, acting and directing there. 

He also acted occasionally in films.  In 1950, Ingmar Bergman, who had loved The Phantom Carriage so much that he watched it every year, cast him in his film To Joy.  But Bergman saved his best role for Sjöström in 1957, when he cast him in the lead of Wild Strawberries, a movie that was filled with homages to The Phantom Carriage.

Sjöström died in 1960, known for the Bergman film, but forgotten as one of the pioneers of the silent film.  Anyone who loves the medium needs to seek him out.

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* I'm appalled at comments about how actors in other film eras are called "bad," simply because their style is different than what people are used to.  Our current acting styles may look just as foolish to people in another 90 year, but they're treated as though that's the only way of acting.

**It may have been the source of the standard movie image of the see-through ghost. 

***I guess Americans didn't like umlauts.  This was before heavy metal music, of course.

****Over studio objections, who didn't want to make a movie about an unwed mother.  Gish argued the book was an American classic and taught in the schools, so there was no point to shying away from it. 

Tall Tale

(1995)
Directed by Jeremiah Chechik
Written by Steve Bloom & Robert Rodat
Starring Patrick Swayze, Oliver Platt, Roger Alan Brown, Nick Stahl, Scott Glenn, Stephen Lang, Catherine O'Hara.
IMDB Entry

Sometimes you can spot a promising young director after a film or two, and think he has the chance for a long and successful career.  But that's not always the way it works out.  That the case for Jeremiah Chechik.

Chechik grew up in Montreal and made a splash with his first film:  National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.  While not as good as the first National Lampoon film, it was a solid hit, enough for him to get a little bit of clout.  His next film, Benny and Joon got critical raves and showed that Johnny Depp was more than just a pretty face.  And he continued this artistic success when Disney hired him to direct Tall Tale.

Subtitled The Unbelievable Adventures of Pecos Bill, the movie is exactly what it says it is:  a tall tale.  In it, Daniel Hackett (Nick Stahl) is a preteen boy who feels he has outgrown his father's (Stephen Lang) stories of Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, and other American legends.* But a mine operator, J. P.Styles (Scott Glenn) wants to buy the Hackett farm in Paradise Valley, and shoots and wounds Daniel's father.  Daniel runs away and finds himself in the Texas desert where he meets up with Pecos Bill (Patrick Swayze).  Bill goes to help out, and Paul Bunyan (Oliver Platt), John Henry (Roger Allen Brown), and Calamity Jane (Catherine O'Hara) soon take up the quest.

All the character are larger than life (often figuratively) and the film uses a broad acting style and a west where Pecos Bill can shoot off the trigger fingers of two desperados from a mile away, with only a trickle of blood. If you want to nitpick the film, you shouldn't be watching:  the point is that it's deliberately unrealistic**. The movie doesn't try for any fancy twists, but just the delights of a good story.

Patrick Swayze is perfectly cast as Pecos Bill; you can really believe he's a epic hero and he gets the modest strength of a western stereotypical hero just perfectly.  Nick Stahl makes for a very convincing Daniel, and it's always a joy to see Oliver Platt and Catherine O'Hara (especially when she's not playing a mom).

Despite some critical raves, though, the film flopped badly.  It had an anemic box office results.  It may just not have been flashy enough for modern audiences.  Plus, I'm sure few kids have heard about about Pecos Bill.  He probably didn't mean much to most of their parents; it was not something that really takes front and center as a story.

Of course, a film director can continue a career with a flop, but Chechik followed this with the pure disaster that was Diabolique.***  He then went on to the pointless film of The Avengers, another high-profile disaster.  Chechik has not directed a movie since.****

It's too bad.  He was far more promising in films when he started out.  Maybe with his TV success, he can return to projects like those he started out with.  Just keep him away from blockbusters.

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*Actually, both Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan are "fakelore" -- stories that were created and passed off as authentic American folklore.  Bunyan was actually the mascot of an insurance company (there is some debate as to whether he was made up from actual logging tales, or out of thin air, but it's clear that the ad campaign is what popularized him with the general public).

**The IMDB counts as a goof that no one ever reloads their gun, a gold medalist for Missing the Point

***A complete and utter mess.  It was a mistake to remake Clouzot's Les Diaboliques in the first place, and the change in the ending not only trashed the original, but also trashed itself.

****He has worked successfully in TV, most notably as director and producer of the Great but Forgotten TV series, The Middleman, which shares a lot of the the philosophy of Tall Tale.  Currently, he's also directing episodes of Burn Notice.

Picket Fences (TV)

(1992-1996)
Created by (and most episodes written by) David E. Kelley
Starring Tom Skerritt, Kathy Baker, Costas Mandylor, Lauren Holly, Holly Marie Combs, Justin Shenkerow, Adam Wylie, Fyvush Finkle, Ray Walston, Kelly Connell, Zelda Rubenstein, Don Cheedle, Dabs Greer, Roy Dotrice, Marlee Matlin, Robert Cornthwaite
IMDB Entry
Episodes on Hulu

You'd think that a show that won 14 Emmys and was nominated for another 14 would be familiar to TV viewers.  But, other than during the Emmy season, Picket Fences was terribly underappreciated, even when it was on the air.

The show was an early series by the prolific David E. Kelley.  At the time, Khe had made a name for himself writing for L.A. Law, and he had joined up with Stephen Bochco to create the hit show Doogie Howser, M.D.  That success allowed Kelley to create Picket Fences.

The show was set in the fictional Rome, Wisconsin, a place where weird things happened.*  People were found murdered in household appliances, the town is terrorized (well, weirdly annoyed ) by a serial bather, cows give birth to human babies, the Pope testifies in a murder trial, the town's mayors had all the job security as a drummer for Spinal Tap -- these were the weekly events that made Rome so fascinating.

The story centered on the Brock family.  Jimmy Brock (Tom Skerritt) is the town sheriff, married to Jill (Kathy Baker), who's a doctor.  They have to juggle their careers as well as their three kids, Kimberly (Holly Marie Combs), Matthew (Justin Shankerow), and Zach (Adam Wylie).  Kenny Lacos (Costas Mandylor) and Maxine Stewart (Lauren Holly) make up the sheriff's department, along with their dispatcher Ginny (Zelda Rubenstein).

One of the nice things about the setup is that it combines two of the most common types of TV settings:  the cop show and the medical drama.  This gave Kelley a chance to be able to use either or both as a basis for his plots.  The only thing missing would be a courtroom show . . . .

And it was that, too (Kelley had started as a lawyer).  Most of the issues brought in Rome's irrepressible lawyer Douglas Wambaugh (Fyvish Finkle) to defend -- in startling ways -- the various people arrested, all in front of the irascible Judge Henry Bone (Ray Walston), who is not impressed by Wambaugh's showboating or the bizarre cases he is forced to contend with.

Kelley's writing was funny, but it also dealt with some serious legal and moral issues, often involving the cutting edge of technology.  It was also one of the few mainstream TV dramas where religion played an important role -- the Brocks attended church** and the town clergy were often involved in the issues.

The acting was absolutely first class. Tom Skerritt's*** easy charm made him the sanest and calmest person in Rome.  His relationship with Jill is one of the better TV marriages, and Kathy Baker was perfect.  Holly Marie Combs played the world's most together teenager**** and her brothers were realistically portrayed.  In addition, Finkel's Wambaugh was one of TV's greatest characters -- a P.T. Barnum with a law degree.  Ray Walston as Henry Bone more than managed to hold his own with him.*****

The show had a stock company of actors, so if they needed to write in a Catholic priest, for example, it would always be the same actor, giving the impression that Rome was a real community.  And if someone did a particularly good job (like Marlee Matlin, as the dancing bandit), they were often brought back.

The show cleaned up at the Emmys its first season, getting eight nominations and winning Best Dramatic Series, and Best Acting for Skerritt§ and Baker.  The next year it got four more, again winning Dramatic series and giving Finkle, a veteran of the Yiddish theater in New York, a supporting nod.

But all the critical acclaim faded.  Partly it was because David Kelley became involved in other projects.  He had written at least part of nearly every show, and the quality of Picket Fences slowly suffered.  It was run on a Friday night -- not a good night for TV -- and struggled with numbers its entire run.  The Emmys and acclaim kept it on the air, but once the numbers continued to drop as the show began to show its age. 

Kelley went on to further success with shows such as Ally McBeal, Boston Public, The Practice, and Boston Legal. Most of the cast were able to use it as a springboard to success in TV. Since relatively few people watched during its run, relatively few missed it and, to tell the truth, there was only so much weirdness you could keep coming up with every week.

In any case, it's a show worthy of rediscovery.  Luckily, the first season is on Hulu, so you can rediscover the delights of Rome, Wisconsin.

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*While not as weird as the great Eerie, Indiana, the show did have the same actor as school principal, and also starred Justin Shenkerow.  In addition, Eerie's weatherman was Rome's coroner.  Hmmmn.

**And not just a generic TV church -- they were Congregationalists.

***Skerritt's most visible role prior to this was as one of the co-leads in the movie M*A*S*H, something few people remember since the character, Duke Forrest, did not make it into the TV series.

****A rare breed.  The only other one I can think of in series TV is Molly Quinn in Castle.

***** Walston was supposed to be a one-shot guest star, but he quickly became a regular.

§ Skerritt's look of surprise when his name was called was one of Emmy's most delightful moments.

Gods and Monsters

(1998)
Directed by Bill Condon
Written by Bill Condon, from a novel by Christopher Bram
Starring Ian McKellan, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave, Lolita Davidovich
IMDB Entry

Some actors make good movies.  Some actors make stinkers.  Brendan Fraser manages to do both.  Frasier has made such flops and mindless entertainment as George of the Jungle, Dudley Do-Right, Bedazzled, Monkeybone, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Journey to the Center of the Earth, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and Furry Vengeance.  But he's also appeared in Crash*, The Ugly American, and Gods and Monsters.

Bill Condon's film tells the story of the last day of filmmaker James Whale.  Though known primarily only to film buffs today, Whale directed the landmark Boris Karloff Frankenstein, and well as its sequel  The Bride of Frankenstein, one of cinema's enduring classics.  He was a major director of the 1930s (also directing Show Boat).  But after the mid-1940s, he retired from filmmaking. 

Whale's personal life would have been the stuff of scandal.  He was a homosexual, and never tried to hide the fact.  But fan magazines and gossip columnists of the time didn't make much ado about this.

The movie is set just after the Korean War.  Whale (Ian McKellan) is living alone with his housekeeper Hanna (Lynn Redgrave), weak after a series of strokes.  He is feeling lonely and depressed and hallucinates about the shooting of The Bride.

Into this life comes Clayton Boon (Fraser), an ex-marine who he hires as a gardener.  Whale and Boon become friends, seeing Bride of Frankenstein together and going to Hollywood parties.  But Whale has something else in mind for Boon.

This is Fraser at his best.  He plays a big lug, but not a fool. He portrays the complications of the relationship very well.  It is so different from the type of films he's famous for that you might even think it's another actor.

Ian McKellan proves once more why he is one of films greatest actors. It's really his film, and he manages to draw out the complexity of Whale's emotions in a brilliant fashion.

Box office was modest,** but the film was shot on such a shoestring budget that it was a small financial success.  The film even got three Oscar nominations -- two for McKellan and Redgrave, and a win for Condon's screenplay.

Condon's next film, Kinsey, got good reviews but weak box office and his career stalled a bit, but he seems to have revived it with Dreamgirls.  Fraser has become a major action star in mindless popcorn films.  It's been good for his bank account, but hopefully he will try again to do more serious projects more worthy of his talent.

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*I'm saving asterisks by putting my comments on this list in one footnote:

• George and Dudley. Any Jay Ward fan worth his salt cringes at what they did to his characters.
• Bedazzled.  See the original, one of the great comedies of the 60s, and perhaps the best film of the great Peter Cook.
• Crash. Well deserving of its Oscar.  I can't even fathom the hatred for it, especially from fans of Brokeback Mountain.  Anne Proulx especially has acted like an ungracious jerk, showing the worst case of sour grapes in the history of film.

**Fraser's Monkeybone did better at the box office, and it was considered a massive flop.  Of course, it also cost 25 times as much.

Harry Golden (author)

(1902-1981)

Harry Golden led an unusual life.  Born in the Ukrane, he ended up in New York City at the age of three and grew up on the Lower East Side.  He became a stockbroker, but lost his job in the 1929 crash and was convicted of wire fraud, for which he spent five years in prison.  Once released, he moved to North Carolina where he got a job writing for the Charlotte Observer and in 1944 began to put out a bimonthly newsletter called The Carolina Israelite.

If Golden were writing today, The Carolina Israelite would be done as a blog.  It was Golden writing about topics of interest to him and finding an audience for his writings. He started writing nonfiction books on Jewish history to help make ends meet, and in 1958, republished the best of the magazine in a book Only in America. The book was a major best seller and Golden followed it up with For Two Cents Plain.

The essays in the book, like much of Golden's writings, fell into three categories.  He wrote on general issues for Jewish Americans of the time, with a unique viewpoint as a Jew in one of the least Jewish areas of the country.  He was also a staunch supporter of racial equality and wrote eloquently against the segregated South. But the most popular essays were when he reminisced about his boyhood in New York before World War I.

The stories were a wonderful look into a different time.  Some of the incidents stick in my mind, like the ritual of buying a boy his first suit.  I especially liked the little scam where the kids would get a flavored seltzer (three cents) for the price of a plain (two cents) -- they'd order plain seltzer then, after paying two cents at precisely the right time, they'd tell the soda jerk to "float" a little flavoring on the drink.  It had to be done right, so that the drink had been poured and the soda jerk had no option but to give a little squirt of flavored syrup to the drink.

Other essays I loved was his analysis of the character of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, where he shows how Shakespeare subtly undercut the antisemitism in the play.

Golden continued to write.  He stopped publishing The Carolina Israelite in 1968, by which time he had established himself well enough to write books full time.  In 1974, Richard Nixon pardoned him for his embezzlement rap.  His books still remain in print, and are a wonderful look at both the Lower East Side in New York and of life in the early days of the civil rights movement.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (TV)

(1976-78)
Produced by Norman Lear
Created by Gail Parent, Ann Marcus, Jerry Adelman and Daniel Gregory Brown.
Starring Louise Lasser, Greg Mullavey, Mary Kay Place, Graham Jarvis, Debralee Scott, Dody Goodman, Philip Bruns, Victor Killian, Claudia Lamb, Bruce Solomon 
IMDB Entry

In 1976, Norman Lear was riding high.  He produced one smash TV hit after another:  All in the Family, Sandford and Son, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, and One Day at a Time.* And one project that he had been thinking about for a long time finally came together:  a soap opera satire called Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

The show was controversial from the start.  Thought it covered many of the same plots and issues in the daytime soaps of the era, it did it much more directly, so it scared off network executives.  So did Lear's production schedule:  from the start, he wanted it to be like a soap opera: episodes a week. He finally managed to sell it on a syndicated basis, but due to its content, it usually ran at 11:30 pm.**

The center of the story was, of course, Mary Hartman (Louise Lasser), a housewife in the fictional Fernwood, Ohio. She was a perpetual innocent (even when talking about some far-from-innocent scenarios) who tried to look on the bright side of things.  When the neighbors are mass murdered and her grandfather (Victor Killian***) is discovered to be the Fernwood Flasher).

Some of the better subplots in the early episodes included Mary's sexual problems with her husband Tom (Greg Mullavey) and her attraction to a police sergeant (Bruce Solomon) who takes a liking to her.  My favorite early subplot involved her best friend Loretta Hagers (Mary Kay Place), who, along with her husband Charlie (Graham Jarvis), were absolutely certain she would make it as a country singer, talent or not.

The show worked very hard to get a soap opera feel.  The sets and the acting mirrors what you saw on daytime soaps, with a very deadpan style.  It was deliberately slow paced, with a very dry sense of humor that came from the characters trying to act ultra normally amid absurd plot twists and their own obsessions.  Much of the humor, like that in Barnaby, depend on a cumulative effect:  it's mildly amusing the first time, but gets funnier as the lines play off what has happened before, especially as you become familiar with the characters.

This does create problems.  Though DVDs have come out, none have tried to create the series one episode at a time.  And while the show was designed so that missing an episode was no big deal, you start to miss things.  Also, clips taken from the show don't really give a good feeling for its genius, since part of the fun is watching the familiar characters doing their thing.

The show was successful, but it took its toll.  A hundred and 30 episodes in two years is a lot of work and eventually Louise Lasser decided to move on.  The show evolved into Forever Fernwood (following Mary's family after she left) and then to Fernwood 2-Night (a talk show parody starring Martin Mull and Fred Willard, who had joined the original show during its run).

The setup of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman means that it will probably not appeal to younger audiences:  the slow pace is unusual for the MTV generation and beyond. Further, because you need to see the episodes unfold like a soap opera, few are going to give it the time it needs.  It's a shame, because the show was one of the wonders of 70s TV.

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*He had flopped with The Hot L Baltimore, though few held that against him.

**This was before there were any viable late-night alternatives to The Tonight Show.

***Killian has the distinction of being one of the few lead actors to not be credited in one of his films, the hilariously bad Unknown World.  The film is very similar in concept to The Core, but with far more ridiculous science.  Between shooting and release, Killian was put on the Hollywood blacklist, so the producer left him off the credits.