Not Ready For Prime Time But Ready For Some Freaking Kind Of Review Film Reviews To Keep The Writers Busy And Not Plotting Cabals Against The Site Manager-Introduction To The New Series

[Recently I wrote a short, well maybe not short when the thing got finished, summary of my “take” on this American Left History publication that I have been the site manager of since the fall of 2017. Took over full time after the variously called “purge,” “exile”, “retirement,” forced or otherwise of the previous site manager Allan Jackson who had actually hired me to run the day to day operations before the “internal rebellion” of the younger writers against his regime knocked him out of the box. I stood on the side-lines then since taking sides would have hurt my chances of taking full command and also I didn’t have a opinion one way or the other although I cringed when Seth Garth who I respect started talking about Stalinist purges, Siberia and written out of history photographs like this was the second coming of the Leon Trotsky-Joe Stalin fight back in ancient history early Soviet Union days.

I also cringed when the younger writers who obviously had never known privation or hard times started taking Allan to task for glorifying his hometown high school junkie corner boy, a guy called the Scribe, who got himself killed for some stupid reason down in Mexico over a busted drug deal and Allan’s incessant nostalgia for the 1960s, especially the Summer of Love, 1967 which they knew nothing about, didn’t want to write about and could have given a fuck about except to placate him (and move up the food chain which some did even in opposition). I now, now that the dust has settled and I have taken firm control of the operations do have an opinion that indeed Allan was unceremoniously purged and found himself in exile although not to Ata Alma or deep Siberia but sunny California, via a short stop in Utah. Needless to say the same fate will not await me as long as I can keep young and old writers too busy to waste time plotting around the office water cooler.

(Needless to say I have in the back of my mind thought many times that I should just get rid of the damn water cooler and let the employees find their own water sources just like in more offices. Maybe putting this in print will be seen by somebody who will then get all protective and defend keeping the thing as some democratic right or something grandfathered in since it was here before I was. My real problem is that this illustrious water cooler is the place where many a plot against recently exiled Allan Jackson were hatched and where, according to Sam Lowell’s own words, he “got religion” about the need to “pass the torch” and along the way put the knife deeply into the misbegotten body of his oldest friend by casting the decisive vote for Allan’s ouster. So you can see where things stand with these wild cowboys and the cohort of women writers I have brought in, or in the case of Leslie Dumont brought back spend even more time there so who knows what they are talking about).

Yeah, Allan took it on the chin, didn’t see it coming when the younger writers led by Will Bradley who when not conniving with others who harbor some kind of grievous hurts from those in charge, whoever is in charge, is an up and coming writer who now has courtesy of my good offices a by-line, if he can keep it, took a vote of no confidence and Allan took the sack, hit the skids. Some of his detractors wanted him escorted from the office under guard like they do in the high tech and finance fields throwing his boxes of stuff out the window or something like that but cooler heads prevails-meaning this silly Editorial Board which needs to rubber stamp my decisions-nixed the idea since maybe he still had some friends from the old days who might take umbrage at the idea-and come in and do bodily harm to whoever proposed the crazy idea. Worse of all his longtime old-time high school corner boy Sam Lowell under the guise of passing the torch gave him coup de grace giving the kids the deciding no vote. With friends like that I said at the time although not to Sam who now heads the Ed Board and is technically my “boss” who needs enemies. Sam I am sure in true hard-ass Acre neighborhood form will say all is fair in love and war and that Allan had done much worse to him over the years including sleeping with his, Sam’s, third wife.

Adding insult to injury the conspirators, Sam in good corner boy form included at first before he got elevated to the Ed Board and so had to be “neutral” or nice I forget which he claimed he was doing to back out of the battle, to slander and libel Allan when he was down, kicked him in the metaphorical groin. Maybe not court-worthy, not money damages worthy but it made it extremely hard for him to find work on the East Coast, in New York City particularly.  Put the hex on him like he had been some kind of monomaniacal tyrant and put the kiss of death “hard to work with,” tag which gets your resume to the shedder faster than you can walk there. Publishers who a few years ago would have paid big money to him just to sit in the office when important advertisers came by now wouldn’t offer him a cup of coffee, would make him wait all day in the foyer and then  tell the front office that the big boys had gone home for the day and could you come back tomorrow like he was just out of journalism school. 

Those young writers as if to bury the dead deeply or perform some exotic exorcism to insure that Allan would not come back zombie-like from the dead like you see in the current wave of dystopic films or if you are old enough or have access to a Netflix account some films from the heyday of zombie films-the 1950s spread the rumors far and wide. As far as I can tell they made the stuff up. Or they had so-called “third parties” do their dirty work a trick I too learned long ago when you wanted to rake somebody over the coals but wanted to pretend you were just reporting some facts you had picked up along the way. Either way they had a field day once Allan left the office, left without giving a forwarding address (although Seth Garth his main old-time hometown neighborhood supporter knew where he was part of the time, knew at least that when he tapped out in New York that he headed West, not just any West but purely West Coast California west, to get clean, to get washed over by some fresh Pacific breeze in along the Pacific Coast Highway near Todos el  Mundo scene of many early fresh breathes when he and that crowd were young and filled to the brim with Summer of Love, 1967 dreams and visions).        

Some of the stuff really was unbelievable although as long as it didn’t impinge on the operations here or diminish my authority starting out trying to fill some pretty big shoes in the industry after Allan’s demise, I tucked my head in. A couple of things I tried to check out, stuff like he was selling encyclopedias door to door out in Westchester County when Readers Digest turned him down for an office boy’s job. (Does anybody still use a hard copy set of encyclopedias in the age of Internet anyway which is what made the story seem fishy to me.) Was working in a fish factory for wages down in North Carolina. Nothing to it. Had gotten a job as a bellhop at the Ritz. (Maybe but I could never get anybody to follow up on the story). Had been washing dishes when the Ritz had banquets and needed extra day labor help. Nothing.     

The three that did keep coming up and which had an aura of possibility since he had been seen in the West (which is how we were able to discount the North Carolina fish factory story since he was in either Utah or California by then confirmed by Seth) are worth noting. Let me put it this way I hope the next generation that rebels, assumed to be against me, will just shoot me and get it over with rather than run my reputation into the ground.

According to the most prevalent rumors Allan had variously been “seen” running a high-end West Coast whorehouse with his old flame Madame LaRue, acting as stage manager for the  famous Miss Judy Garland “drag queen” Queen of  the notorious KitKat Club in San Francisco or more improbably “selling out “ to the Mormons via attempting to get a press agent’s job during Mitt’s now successful U.S. Senate campaign out in the wilds of Utah. The first one was totally wrong although Allan did stay at Madame’s place, not the whorehouse, on Luna Bay for a while and who knows what they did or did not do together but it was not running the whorehouse since Madame according to Seth was very touchy about anybody running her place since she dealt almost exclusively with rich Asian businessmen with a taste for the wild side. Still even spreading such a rumor was just another nail in Allan’s coffin in a profession where things at least had to look aboveboard.

The KitKat Club rumor was really a vicious one and I was kind shocked when young Sarah Lemoyne, who was hired by me after the Allan dust-up so had no reason to seek some silly revenge, told me in all good faith and naivete that Allan had come out of some “closet” and was MC-ing the nightly shows at that establishment in full drag regalia. When I asked Seth about it, actually ordered him to find out what was happening, he laughed and said that yes Allan was out in Frisco town, all these older writers love to call it Frisco town like they were just slumming wherever else they landed in life. What the younger writers didn’t know, maybe couldn’t know, or didn’t give a damn about just so they could throw some mud was that Miss Judy Garland, the owner of the club and the Queen of the “drag” set out there was none other than their old-time corner boy Timmy Riley who after years in the closet, after years of being abused, mentally and physically by everybody in their old home town from immediate family to some Acre young toughs had drifted West to a friendlier environment. The real deal was that Allan had staked Timmy to the money to buy the club and so was only staying in one of the apartments above the club (which Timmy also owned) while in town to see if he could catch on in the publishing industry out there far from the East where he really had tapped out. End of story.        

I would not ordinarily in a publication dedicated to the left side of society, politically and every other way although some of the writers, especially the younger ones, are either pretty wide-world politically indifferent or just slightly to the left of say the Democratic Party, give two words to the Romney slur. But maybe, just maybe although none of this ever surfaced in any piece submitted to me except maybe a vague reference in a film review about Utah, whoever surfaced this one will learn a small political lesson, or at least get the facts right before running to the water cooler all heated up. What that rumor did not recognize was that Allan had skewered Mitt Romney for years when he was governor of Massachusetts all the way to his failed Republican Party presidential bid in 2012. Had particularly homed in on counting his inadequacies as a executive against his Mormon pioneer great-grandfather who had five wives in the days when that religion went in for polygamy. The guys here from what I have been told had great admiration for the old man. Nevertheless no way was Allan going to get any job with the long-memory Mormons hovering around Romney, or even anything in the whole state of Utah for that matter. End of story although I hope not end of lesson.    

I noted above that I had been looking over the on-line archives since this publication went to a totally on-line format in 2006 and offered some observations about what way the winds were blowing and which way they should blow in the future. (See From The Archives Of “American Left History”-An Analysis And A Summing Up After His First Year By Site Manager Greg Green, date November 18, 2018) One key observation, especially since I was brought over from American Film Gazette by Allan Jackson (who by the way now writes an occasional contributing editor piece here belying all those rumors mentioned above except as I have also mentioned that he did wind in Frisco will old friend Miss Judy Garland when he was broke and needed a place to stay before heading back East) where I had spent many years editing some 40,000 film reviews of varying lengths and by everybody with any pretentions to film reviewing expertise from long time film editor Sam Lowell of this publication to the legendary Janie Dove and Jack Cummings was the yearly decline in the number of film, book and music reviews.

I wondered why given the sparse political environment, the general decline of street politics which animated a lot of the early work and decline in end-around cultural and social material to report on, to spent money sending people to cover. I have since his return talked to Allan, we have exchanged e-mails since he is now up in Maine, about the matter and gotten some other feedback. Allan had insisted that each review had to be full-blown “think piece” style contribution or else forget it apparently. (He denied this originally when he resurfaced to edit a rock and roll anthology which I thought needed his touch, but most senior older writers have testified under oath and a couple before God for balance that anything less than three thousand words and worthy of print in some academic cinematic journal went into the ashcan and I accept their takes on this.) Frankly, many of the films that I have seen come to my desk or have reviewed personally are not worth more than about three or five hundred words, maybe less, maybe just a thumb up or down is plenty.

To bring more balance, to get better into the film review business which is what many people who don’t have time to read endless reviews expect of a publication like ours I have started this new series of short movie reviews which has the dual purposes of giving today’s busy world a quick but incisive opinion. And keep these monstrous writers who are hanging around the “water cooler” plotting against the “boss,” me, occupied. Greg Green]  

“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.                     

Don’t Blame It On Rio, Rio de Janeiro That Is-Once Again Under The Astaire-Rogers Screen With Divine Dolores del Rio Thrown In-“Flying To Rio” (1933)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

Flying Down To Rio, starring Dolores del Rio, Gene Raymond, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and  a million dancers, singers and musicians, especially the Carioca scene, 1933    

Thank God for Sam Lowell’s words of cinematic wisdom after watching this film under review an early Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers song and dance musical from the early 1930s Flying Down To Rio. (I might add that unlike later productions by this song and dance team they were not the leads here which will be discussed below.) Sam’s pearls of wisdom culled after some forty years of reviewing every kind of film is that when you are at loss, actually I was truly befuddled, for a “hook” for your review you can always go to the “slice of life” gambit, especially as here on older films. Actually I had two choices for the “hook” the previously mentioned slice of life which I will use, thanks Sam, and the eternal fallback since Greek times maybe before, maybe going back to the Garden in Genesis-“boy meets girl” that has saved many a film and many a film reviewer. That seems too weird to use here, although the material as will become clear was there, so I will go with the former Godsent.   

Here’s why I was befuddled. Bandleader and playboy, maybe that is not a good term to use these days although that seemingly fits this character, Roger, played by Gene Raymond who along with ultimate love interest, Belinha, played by Mexican femme idol Delores Del Rio, are the leads here has landed his band in hot water for the umpteenth time due to his romantic interests overriding the need for him and his band to make a living. To keep body and soul together and off the mean streets of America. As it turned out Roger is just slumming since he is strictly a Mayfair swell lad who can go back home and idle about whenever things get tough. Not so from hunger Fred Ayres, Astaire’s role and vocalist Honey, Ginger’s role who are living from paycheck to paycheck. The latest firing of the band with the lively name Yankee Clippers came about when Roger went charging after the Brazilian dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty Belinha who was being held on a leash by her chaperone so she wouldn’t stray before her wedding day. Roger and Belinha were smitten with each other but there was no place for them to expand that relationship given Belinha’s status (although I am still scratching my head over Ms. Del Rios poses looking heaven-ward bound which should have given Roger the chills but I will chalk that up to her having had to “over the top” emote like that in those silent films where she got her start since it was probably hard to break the habit).    

Luckily Roger was able to rebound nicely by getting an engagement for the band in Rio, Rio de Janiero and so everybody is off to the races heading to Rio. Oh yeah, playboy Roger along the way was also a pilot and he wound up giving Belinha a ride down to Rio, with a quick romantic pitstop on what was supposed to be a desert island (although it turned out to be Haiti in a ham-fisted view of the “natives” on that then, and now, benighted island). Not only that but the hotel where the boys and Honey are to play belongs to Belinha’s father who has all his dough tied up in the venture.   

Naturally, aside from some so-so dancing by Fred and Ginger in their first film together and a spectacular rendition of the Carioca by an ensemble cast of singers and dancers, there has to be some problem to be resolved before the couple can go off and get some suntans (which as Cole Porter noted in one of his lyrics has “taken all the gold of more than one man”). This is around the question of an entertainment license which a cabal of competitors is holding up so they can buy the unsuccessful hotel on the cheap. Never happened though since Roger and Fred came up with an idea to use airplanes to highlight the dancers who could not perform on the ground and make the grand opening of the hotel as success. Weird, very weird, to watch in 2018 believe me. Naturally as well good sport and good friend Julio who is the guy engaged to Belinha seeing that they are in love joins the pair together, literally, arranging their marriage in an airplane by the captain as heartbroken Julio parachutes out of the plane to whatever fate awaits him. Weird again but you can see what my dilemma was. See some later Astaire-Rogers films if you really want to see what dancing was like when done for keeps.   

Everybody Loves A Con, Con Artists Unless They  Are The Dreaded Con- Steve Martin and Michael Caine, Oops And, Oh Yeah, Glenne Headly “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (1988)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, starting Glenne Headly, Steve Martin, Michael Caine, 1988

One of the virtues of coming back to work at this publication occasionally after I retired from my daily by-line at Women Today is to hear the stories from some of the older writers about various characters, mainly but not exclusively male con artists and armed robbers, they knew when they were growing up. That includes my old flame and now fellow writer Josh Breslin who along with one Sam Lowell live by the headline above that “everybody loves a con artist except the conned.” That idea will come in handy as I review the film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels because the whole film, every waking minute, is spent documenting a series of interrelated cons. Cons coming out of your ears before the last frame. (By the way in case some other writer has betrayed a water cooler thought the relationship between Josh and I these days is well, murky. After my two failed due to the press of work marriages and his three due the press of work failed marriages murky is good, very good.)      

One day around the water cooler on another occasion not related to the discussion mentioned above Sam, Josh, Fritz, Frank and maybe Laura Perkins were talking about the legendary Eddie Riley from Sam and Frank’s old neighborhood who pulled the biggest con they had heard of on a New York banker who was looking to  make some easy money to get out from under some Ponzi scheme he was running that was starting to go awry and he would listen to anything that sounded like a life-saver. (Rule number one by cynical Sam make sure your mark is desperate then it is like finding money on the ground to take whatever you want.) Nobody was still sure of all the details since the gaff had happened a couple of decades ago but basically Eddie set up a fake stock brokerage house complete with agents and all putting up numbers for stocks especially around say the Acme Toy Company. A sure thing, especially when Eddie said he had inside information (illegal I know but goes on all the time just be smart about it). So Mr. Investment Banker forked over a cool 100 thou and the game is on. Two or three days later the stock jumped from say ten to fifteen dollars, a good rise with Eddie’s assurance that it was just the start. Another 100 thou, no two hundred thou since Mr. Big was in a very deep hole. Stock goes from say fifteen to twenty-two and Mr. Big is almost hooked. Another couple of hundred thou to make a half million and the stock goes to thirty then thirty-five in a short time.

Mr. Big is breathing a sigh of relief. So he goes another two hundred thou. Eddie makes his smart move here by not being too greedy and starts to wind the con up although he knew for certain he could have gotten to a million no sweat. Of course on all of this Eddie, really Mr. Big, is buying on margins, grabbing stock for say ten percent down with the expectations that it will generally keep going up for a while even with some blips. The blips start and eventually just to add salt to the wound the stock goes low enough that margin calls come into play and Mr. Big has to folk up another couple of hundred thou to cover his margins. Done. From there the stock takes a slow nosedive all along Eddie “calming” the guy with a new upturn soon. Never came as the stock when to about twenty cents and Eddie wrote the guy a check for about a thousand dollars to close out the account. I don’t think the guy committed suicide but I do believe that Sam said that he fled the country. Here is the beauty-there is, was no Acme Toy Company, no stock was ever issued-t was all mirrors-beautiful, even I can see the beauty of the thing. And everybody else, well, except Mr. Big probably could as well.               

That was the high side but of course that requires some skill and a deep understanding of human greed only a greed-head could understand and work through. Mostly, and after Eddie’s exploits got a serious airing at the water cooler that day, they began to talk about small time grifters starting from street guys hustling blind routines or from hunger stuff. Probably started with guys like this hustling their fellow student out of their milk money or throwing counterfeit slugs in change machines, stuff like that. That latter point is important because that idea, that grifter business enters into the plot of the film under review via small time Freddy, played by Steve Martin, whose idea of a big score is hustling some passenger on a train for dinner and carfare. Kids’ stuff. But Eddie, you remember Eddie of the big score, also enters the scene as the fast company for the big-time scam artist, Lawrence, played by million film Michael Caine, bilking rich widows and bored wives of enough money to keep his mansion and his expensive appetites afloat. The rubber will hit the road when these two go mano a mano as the action progresses.      

They start as strangers on a train to the French Rivera and Lawrence once he meets Freddy and find out that he is planning on squatting on his turf tries to move heaven and earth to get him out of town, and away from endangering his profit margins. And it works, well, almost works as you could figure since Freddy on his way out of town runs into one of those rich ladies Lawrence has been bilking based on his being an exiled prince in need of funds to get his kingdom back, or something like that. In order to avoid exposure as a fraud Lawrence agrees reluctantly to tutor Freddie on the high-side economics and style of the con game. And he doesn’t do badly but in a place like the Rivera only one king can survive.

Enter the con between cons, always a good watch when titans go at each other no holds barred. The object here is one Judy, really, Judy Colgate of the Colgate fortune they think. The bet $50,000 but the real stakes are the first guy to bed her wins, the other guy leaves sad sack out of town and back to cheap street and hustling winos for beer money. For a good while the battle of the titans is something to watch as they cut and feign, slash and burn and still get nowhere near a bedroom until finally Freddie makes a score, or think he has. Faking the old cripple routine that has melted many a woman’s heart her “love” has allowed him to walk, to walk right up to the bed.  Success. Well almost, well no actually. See Judy is from hunger or rather is a con artist on her own, the notorious Jackal that every con artist stays up late trying to emulate (to no success). After she cons Freddy into taking a shower before love-making she blows town. Or rather she heads over to Lawrence’s mansion where he, suddenly soft after finding she was no heiress and from hunger herself, gives her the 50K and she really does blow town after blowing the boys off and sending them back to school chastised. Nice, and in a real twist on her next caper to show no hard feeling she brings a boatload of suckers Freddie and Lawrence’s way as they head off into the sunset. Nice, yeah, everybody loves a con, no question, none whatsoever.

  

  

When Your Rooster Crows At The Break Of Dawn-Hold On To Your Wallet-Or Shallow And Swallow Down Your Love

By Ronan Saint James

That goddam rooster down the road, I am not sure how far down that road but this the fourth day running the sleepy bastard has broken the hell out of my sleep, thought Jack Dolan as he once again, for the fourth time running tried to shake off the tepid sleep of the weary. Yeah, like the song said, Dylan wasn’t it, always that gravelly-throated bugger has an apt phrase to speak to what wearied a man, probably reflecting his own weariness, yeah, his own woman trouble what else would drive a man to write prose or lyric about his malaise blame farmyard animal for his discontents -“when your rooster crows at the break of dawn look out your window and I’ll be gone.” That is what had been keeping one John Dolan weary and wary four days running and not some fucking stone cold-eyed rooster yelling his brains out for whatever he yelled his brains out for at dawn. That Jack weariness wariness too had a name. Lucinda, Lucinda Jolly, the so-called love of his life who had walked out that door four days before without not so much as a by your leave. Left him high and dry in not to be alone Naples, down in Florida, broke and broken-hearted.

He should have seen it coming should have seen that Lucinda had been distracted by something. When they had argued, screamed really, that last night before she took a powder something they generally did not do since both had come up in households where the screaming and disorder had made them very reticent to argue, to yell at each other and maybe that was the problem, maybe what called the day done, she had mentioned that he seemed to be “distant, “ seemed to have been off his “meds” his drugs that kept him on keel. He denied it as usual and maybe that was the day done deal that finally broke things in her overheated head.

Hell that was all bullshit, all crap, what it was she had found another guy, a guy he did not see coming either although he should have since lately she had been going out by herself and coming in late. Didn’t make any excuses, lame excuses anyway, about being over at some girlfriend’s house but that she needed to be alone. That was when they decided to take whatever money they had and head to Naples, not a natural place like Big Sur out in the California coast where they could wish the Japan seas would solve whatever ailed their relationship and be washed clean by the fresh air and dreams of Jack Kerouac. dreams she had been spoon-fed on growing up in the French-Canadian Acre section of Lowell, Jack’s hometown, but what they could afford and had been a place to head for in fast sunnier days. Now she was gone, left him with no dough in godforsaken Naples of all places.

Maybe Jack should have taken those rooster crows for a sign, better should have listened to the whole Dylan lyric where he talks about it not being him (her) he (she) was looking for-after having given their, her, his bet shot, best shot maybe not up to some abstract standard they could never reach and a while back had both agreed could never reach that the whole thing had been a house of cards, had been a waystation for both after divorces, his three her pair and after those deep unhappy childhoods that seemed to glue them for a while. The whole thing had been so freaking fragile from the night they met in The Garden of Eden bar in downtown Albany near Russell Sage College when he had had plenty of dough and a full to the brim credit card that got them within a couple of days out to Big Sur, out to where he believed he had been washed clean and wanted her to see life through the prism of Pfieffer State Park complete with stone ass totems once she mentioned Jack Kerouac and that Lowell Jack park set in stone too with some his words, especially about looking for some dead-beat father they never knew. Hit right home with that one.             

In his mind, in his rooster-disturbed mind as Jack started to meditate, real meditation, and not just dwell on her being gone, who the hell that other guy was that he had not seen coming but should have when they were in their down in the mud days who maybe had not been divorced a million times, maybe didn’t drink, didn’t need “meds” and even need to meditate to keep an even keel, him with no dough and Albany many miles north but some old-time Allan Ginsberg in lieu of his now depleted “meds” he unwound the whole affair. Saw for the first time that what they had had was made of more smoke and mirrors than he could have figured when she was like a breath of fresh air coming through the fields after that first date to Saratoga field the day after they first spent the night together (he still had a hard time around “sleeping together, damn, sex so spent is what anybody would get who asked when they “did it”). She had been staying with her sister, a Russell Sage graduate and former denizen of “the Garden,  over in Ballston Spa, a sleepy little town that suited her just then but she was restless, needed to see some city lights and so the Garden of Eden had been her stopping place since Guy Williams, an old favorite, was playing a few sets there and her sister assured her that no guys would hit on her. Before she got out the door that sister Kate would amend her statement given what a breath of fresh air beauty he emitted even if she thought herself not particularly pretty, at least not too hard. Guys hitting on her. And hence Jack and his credit card and shy manner around her. (Lucinda was always amazed that he was ready to shake her hand, which he did, softly that first night and leave it at that he was so shy around women even after three marriages and a bunch of affairs. She had been the one who mentioned taking a walk along the Mohawk River to “talk” although that was not the only thing on her mind that night.) 

Jack hoped that tomorrow, tomorrow the fifth day running that rooster would lay off so he could gather himself to hit the road back to Albany and pick up the pieces of his now shattered life. The meditation, a new routine, which she had introduced him to calm him down when he was wired, when he was distant too but that was probably too little, too late.   

The next morning Jack did hit the road, well, not really hit the road like he was some second coming of Jack Kerouac or his buddies Allan Ginsberg and Neal Cassidy ready to throw caution to the wind and put his thumb out but go on his computer to look on-line for some ride-sharing opportunity. After setting up a meet with a guy going to New York City he sat around for a couple of hours in the place they had rented through Air B&B and which needed to be vacated by noon and rewound the spool of their two- year relationship now in tatters wishing all the time that he thought about it that morning that she had given a better signal, better signals that he was not what she was looking for, not the one she wanted and Dylan came lyrically back into view with his phrase from some forgotten 1960s song about “leaving at your own chosen speed.”        

Funny she had actually “discussed” with him several times her feeling she had to leave, no, that is not right, feeling that they could not go the distance, that they were too similar in their quiet desperations to stick and that whether he was expecting too much from her or she had too many non-negotiable demands the thing had not been despite Kerouac, despite being washed clean at Big Sur and a few times in Naples as well built to last. She never got to the door then, they would patch things up by having sex, or doing some dope or something to keep the embers alive. But he knew deep down that she was looking at that door and that a time would come, a time would come. 

Maybe a couple of months before when he mentioned that he had after several months had been diagnosed with bladder cancer and he begged her to leave and find her path since the treatment procedure, damn, maybe his whole life said he had to face this alone had triggered something. Or maybe so gallant had seen her and taken his best shot. Who knows. Just as he was to run a new train of thought he heard the honking of the car that would take him North-north and aloneness. He put the key in the mailbox as requested, picked up his suitcase and headed out the door to the waiting automobile. 

As he entered the vehicle and said hello to his new-found friend driver and savior Jack got pensive for a while after throwing his knapsack in the backseat and adjusting his seat-belt. Started recounting, no, re-living all the steps he and she should have taken to bring them to some understanding, if possible. He was not naïve enough after three marriages, a million affairs and his stint with her to think that it would have been a done deal but maybe. How many times had she made it plain that it was him, him and his mercurial ways that would drive her from his door, their door when they decided to move in together. How many times had he had the words in his stinking overactive head that would not come out, would not come out making any sense.

And about the night when both high but still in contact with their emotions they talked the whole night away about his “problem” of not being able to say the words she wanted to hear, that maybe they would make it with a little more communication. About too how that mother constant brow-beating made it very reticent to express any emotions, about the child being future to the man. About how in the end, she must have taken a hint from her ever practical side and realized that continuing would not work out, that the percentages were too low for her own fragile existence to count on.         

As Jack started to talk to that driver he thought  well at least he wouldn’t haven’t to listen to that cocksure rooster and his king kong king of the hill crowing … 

Bonnie Guitar - I Really Don't Want To Know-When The King Of Rock And Roll Held Forth In The Acre Section Of North Adamsville -And Made It Stick-In Honor Of The Generation Of ’68-Or Those Who Graced Wild Child Part Of It

When The King Of Rock And Roll Held Forth In The Acre Section Of North Adamsville -And Made It Stick-In Honor Of The Generation Of ’68-Or Those Who Graced Wild Child Part Of It

By Zack James

[Zack James has been on an assignment covering the various 50^th anniversary commemorations of the year 1968 (and a few in 1967 and for the future 1969 which is to his mind something of a watershed year rather than his brother Alex and friends “generation of ‘68” designation they have wrapped themselves around) and therefore has not graced these pages for a while. Going through his paces on those assignments Zack realized that he was out of joint with his own generation, having been born in 1958 and therefore too young to have been present at the creation of what is now called, at least in the demographical-etched commercials, the classic age of rock and roll. Too young too for any sense of what a jailbreak that time was and a shortly later period which Seth Garth who was deep into the genre has called the ‘folk minute breeze” that ran rampart through the land say in the early 1960s. Too young as well to have been “washed clean,” not my term but Si Lannon’s since I am also too young to have been aware of the import by the second wave of rock, the acid rock period. Hell, this is enough of an introduction to re-introducing the legendary writer here. Lets’ leave it as Zack is back and let him go through his paces. Greg Green, site manager]     

Alex James was the king of rock and roll. Of course he was not really the king, the king being Elvis and no last name needed at least for the bulk of those who will read what I call a “think piece,” a piece about what all the commemorations of events a million years ago, or it like a million years ago even mentioning 50 or 60 year anniversaries, mean. What Alex was though was the conduit for my own musical experiences which have left me as a stepchild to five  important musical moments, the birth of rock and roll in the 1950s, the quick prairie fire called the “folk minute of the early 1960s and the resurgence with a vengeance of rock in the mid-1960s which for brevity’s sake call “acid” rock, along the way and intersecting that big three came a closeted “country outlaw moment” initiated by father time Hank Williams and carried through with vengeance by singers like Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt, and Waylon Jennings, and Muddy Waters and friends blues as the glue that bound what others who write here, Sam Lowell, in particular calls the Generation of ’68- a seminal year in many ways which I have been exploring for this and other publications. I am well placed to do since I was over a decade too young to have been washed over by the movements. But that step-child still sticks and one Alex James is the reason why.

This needs a short explanation. As should be apparent Alex James is my brother, my oldest brother, born in 1946 which means a lot in the chronology of what follows. My oldest brother as well in a family with seven children, five boys and two twin girls, me being the youngest of all born in 1958. As importantly this clan grew up in the dirt- poor working- class Acre, as in local lore Hell’s Acre, section of North Adamsville where my mother, under better circumstances, grew up and remained after marrying her World War II Marine my father from dirt poor Appalachia which will also become somewhat important later. To say we lacked for many of the things that others in that now seen “golden age” of American prosperity would be an understatement and forms the backdrop of how Alex kept himself somewhat sane with music although we didn’t even have a record player (the now ancient although retro revival way to hear music then) and he was forced when at home to “fight” for the family radio to get in touch with what was going on, what the late Pete Markin his best friend back then called “the great jailbreak.”     

A little about Alex’s trajectory is important too. He was a charter member along with the late Markin, Si Lannon, Sam Lowell, Seth Garth and Allan Jackson, the later four connected with this publication in various ways since its hard copy start in the 1970s, of the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys. These guys, and maybe it reflected their time and milieu, hung out at Tonio’s for the simple reason they never had money, or not enough, and while they were not above various acts of larceny and burglary mostly they hung around there to listen to the music coming out of Tonio’s to die for jukebox. That jukebox came alive in maybe 1955, 1956 when they first heard Elvis (and maybe others as well but Alex always insisted that he was the first to “discover” Elvis in his crowd.) Quickly that formed the backdrop of what Alex listened to for a few years until the genre spent a few years sagging with vanilla songs and beats. That same Markin, who the guys here have written about and I won’t, was the guy who turned Alex on to folk music via his desperate trips to Harvard Square up in Cambridge when he needed to get out of the hellish family household he dwelled in. The third prong of the musical triad was also initiated by Markin who made what everybody claims was a fatal mistake dropping out of Boston University in his sophomore year in 1967 to follow his dream, to “find” himself, to go west to San Francisco for what would be called the Summer of Love where he learned about the emerging acid rock scene (drugs, sex and rock and roll being one mantra). He dragged everybody, including Alex if you can believe this since he would subsequently come back and go to law school and become the staid successful lawyer he is today, out there with him for varying periods of time. (The fateful mistake on the part of Markin stemming from him dropping out at the wrong time, the escalation of the war in Vietnam subjecting him later to the draft and hell-hole Vietnam service while more than the others unhinged him and his dream.) The blues part came as mentioned as a component of the folk minute, part of the new wave rock revival and on its own. The country outlaw connections bears separate mention these days.  

       

That’s Alex’s story-line. My intersection with Alex’s musical trip was that one day after he had come back from a hard night at law school (he lived at home, worked during the day at some law firm  as some  kind of lacky, and went to law school nights studying the rest of the time) he went to his room and began playing a whole bunch of music starting I think with Bill Haley and the Comet’s Rock Around The Clock and kept playing stuff for a long time. Loudly. Too loudly for me to get to sleep and I went and knocked on his door to get him quiet down. When he opened the door he had on his record player   Jerry Lee Lewis’s High School Confidential. I flipped out. I know I must have heard Alex playing this stuff earlier, but it was kind of a blank before. Background music just like Mother’s listening to 1940s stuff on her precious ancient RCA radio in the kitchen. What happened then, what got me mesmerized as a twelve- year old was that this music “spoke” to me, spoke to my own unformed and unarticulated alienation. I had not been particularly interested in music, music mostly heard and sung in the obligatory junior high school music class, but this was different, this got my hormonal horrors in gear. I stayed in Alex’s room listening half the night as he told me above when he had first heard such and such a song.

Although the age gap between Alex and I was formidable, he was out the door originally even before I knew him since at that point we were the only two in the house all the others in college or on their own he became something of a mentor to me on the ins and out of rock and roll once I showed an interest. From that night on it was not just a question of say, why Jailhouse Rock should be in the big American Songbook but would tell me about who or what had influenced rock and roll. He was the first to tell me about what had happened in Memphis with a guy named Sam Phillips and his Sun Record label which minted an extraordinary number of hits by guys like Elvis, Warren Smith, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee. When I became curious about how the sound got going, why my hands got clammy when I heard the music and I would start tapping my toes he went chapter and verse on me. Like some god-awful preacher quoting how Ike Turner, under a different name, may really have been the granddaddy of rock with his Rocket 88 and how obscure guys like Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner and Willie Lomax and their big bop rhythm and blues was one key element. Another stuff from guys like Hack Devine, Warren Smith and Lenny Larson who took the country flavor and melted it down to its essence. Got rid of the shlock. Alex though did surprise me with the thing he thought got our toes tapping-these guys, Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Buddy Holly and a whole slew of what I would later call good old boys took their country roots not the Grand Ole Opry stuff but the stuff they played at the red barn dances down in the hills and hollows come Saturday night and mixed it with some good old fashion religion stuff learned through bare-foot Baptists or from the black churches and created their “jailbreak” music.

One night Alex startled me while we were listening to an old Louvain Brothers song, I forget which one, when he said “daddy’s music” meaning that our father who had come from down in deep down in the mud Appalachia had put the stuff in our genes. He didn’t call it DNA I don’t’ think he knew the term and I certainly didn’t but that was the idea. I resisted the idea then, and for a long time after but sisters and brothers look at the selections that accompany this so-called think piece the whole thing is clear now. I, we are our father’s sons after all. Alex knew that early on I only grabbed the idea lately-too late since our father he has been gone a long time now.                     

Alex had the advantage of being the oldest son of a man who also had grown up as the oldest son in his family brood of I think eleven. (Since I, we never met any of them when my father came North to stay for good after being discharged from the Marine as hard Pacific War military service, I can’t say much about that aspect of why my father doted on his oldest son.) That meant a lot, meant that Dad confided as much as a quiet, sullen hard-pressed man could or would confide in a youngster. All I know is that sitting down at the bottom of the food chain (I will laugh “clothes chain” too as the recipient of every older brother, sister too when I was too young to complain or comprehend set of ragamuffin clothing) he was so distant that we might well have been just passing strangers. Alex, for example, knew that Dad had been in a country music trio which worked the Ohio River circuit, that river dividing Ohio and Kentucky up north far from hometown Hazard, yes, that Hazard of legend and song whenever anybody speaks of the hardscrabble days of the coal mine civil wars that went on down there before the war, before World War II. I don’t know what instrument he played although I do know that he had a guitar tucked under his bed that he would play when he had a freaking minute in the days when he was able to get work.  

That night Alex also mentioned something that hit home once he mentioned it. He said that Dad who tinkered a little fixing radios, a skill learned from who knows where although apparently his skill level was not enough to get him a job in that industry, figured out a way to get WAXE out of I think Wheeling, West Virginia which would play old country stuff 24/7 and that he would always have that station on in the background when he was doing something. Had stopped doing that at some point before I recognized the country-etched sound but Alex said he was spoon-fed on some of the stuff, citing Warren Smith and Smiley Jamison particularly, as his personal entre into the country roots of one aspect of the rock and roll craze. Said further that he was not all that shocked when say Elvis’s It’s All Right Mama went off the charts since he could sense that country beat up-tempo a little from what Smith had been fooling around with, Carl Perkins too he said. They were what he called “good old boys” who were happy as hell that they had enough musical skills at the right time so they didn’t have to stick around the farm or work in some hardware store in some small town down South.       

Here is the real shocker, well maybe not shocker, but the thing that made Alex’s initial so-called DNA thought make sense. When Alex was maybe six or seven Dad would be playing something on the guitar, just fooling around when he started playing Hank Williams’ mournful lost love Cold, Cold Heart. Alex couldn’t believe his ears and asked Dad to play it again. He would for years after all the way to high school when Dad had the guitar out and he was around request that Dad play that tune. I probably heard the song too. So, yeah, maybe that DNA business is not so far off. And maybe, just maybe, over fifty years later we are still our father’s sons. Thanks, Dad.        

The selection posted here culled from the merciful YouTube network thus represents one of the key pieces of music that drove the denizens of the Generation of ’68 and their stepchildren. And maybe now their grandchildren.   

[Alex and I had our ups and downs over the years and as befits a lawyer and journalist our paths seldom passed except for occasional political things where we were on the same wavelength like with the defense of Army whistle-blower Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley). Indicative though of our closeness despite distance in 2017 when Alex had a full head of steam up about putting together a collective corner boy memoir in honor of the late Markin after a business trip to San Francisco where he went to a museum exhibition featuring the seminal Summer of Love, 1967 he contacted me for the writing, editing and making sure of the production values.]    

Talk to Me Lonesome Heart - James O'Gwynn

Justin Tubb O Goldie Hill-Sure Fire Kisses

Texas Jim Robertson - Slipping Around 1950 (Country Music Greats) Hillbi...

One Less Johnny Rocco, Uh, Johnny Vanning Is Not Worth Dying Over-Bette Davis And Humphrey Bogart’s “Marked Woman” (1937)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

Marked Women, Bette Davis the girl with the Bette Davis eyes who put her hips in her back pocket Bette Davis style, Humphrey Bogart last seen uttering those prophetic words about the Johnny Roccos of the world, 1937

Yeah, Humphrey Bogart, a guy who knew a thing or two and a guy who my old flame Josh Breslin who works at this publication still and Sam Lowell the acknowledged king of film noir and black and white films in his salad days idolized had it right, had it figured exactly right when he was down in Key Largo, down in the Keys sweating like a pig and he had to tell some luscious but dizzy dame what was what about guys like Johnny Rocco being always with us, always wanted more, always wanted to run the easy street rackets just like in the old days. (By the way, as an aside, water cooler rumors that Josh and I are an “item” to use an old-time high school term are just that-rumors. After Josh’s three divorces and my two we are in no rush to jump into anything so things are murky. At this time by mutual agreement murky is good, very good.)

Of course, that didn’t stop old Bogie from bang-bang dead Johnny, made Johnny sleep with the fishes when he tried to mess with his woman, with that luscious if dizzy dame. Get this though Mary, what the hell, Mary Smith since these kinds of women have a million aliases, played by the girl with the Bette Davis eyes, was way ahead of him, ahead of Bogie when she cut the deal of deals with another Johnny, Johnny Vanning who wanted what all such Johnnies wanted-more. Had it figured to make herself the best of it as detailed in the film under review, Marked Woman. Had to do what a girl had to do no fooling around.

Of course in post-Code 1937 Hollywood Mary’s profession had to be dolled up, hostesses they called that sort, B-girls, whores really if you want the unvarnished truth working not the streets but the night club expensive booze, some gambling then hit the sheets and make the bastards, the Johns pay through the nose. Yes, a girl has got to do what a girl has to do. Mary had all the angles, had guys like gangster king Johnny Vanning figured as nothing but trouble in a girl’s life if she didn’t work an alliance. So Mary, what are we calling her, oh yeah, Smith went along and got along. What people didn’t know, what her roommate so-called fellow hostesses didn’t know was she was hustling drinks and guys in order to put her sister, her babe in the woods sister through some swanky elite college.     

That little sidebar would change things for Mary in a big way once little sister got into the act, came to visit her not knowing that she was really a call girl, whore, oh well let’s go with the fantasy night club hostess laugh. Yeah a real babe in the woods who would get more, very much more than she bargained for when she saw the glitter of the big city, when she saw that she couldn’t go back to that swanky college once the kids there knew what older sister was doing with her silky sheets nights. Little sister, Bette I think her name was but who knows, got tangled up with the wrong gees, got tangled up with one Johnny Vanning. Took a funny little fall down the staircase at one of Johnny’s swank parties. So Bette too slept with the fishes in some East River dumping ground courtesy of thoughtful Johnny Vanning.

Whore or not if your sister gets wasted you have to do something about it, have to change modes of operation so Mary became a snitch, a stoolie for the Assistant D.A, a guy named of all things Humphrey Bogart in the days before he wised-up, before he knew that one Johnny more or less was not worth dying for. Funny Mary in her salad days had played Bogie for the fool in his attempts to bring Johnny, Johnny Vanning to some rough justice, but it could have been Johnny Everyman for all that mattered when Bogie thought Mary was on the level but who was working for Johnny’s lawyer to foul up Bogie’s case. Nice moves. The little sister thing though choked things off. It didn’t help when Mary decided after finding out what happened to sis to because a snitch that Johnny, sweet as pie Johnny, had one of his boys work her over to make her less talkative.

See even if guys like Johnny Vanning, Johnny Rocco, Johnny Blade from my old neighborhood up in Olde Saco, Maine before that town took a nose-dive after the mills started shutting down and heading first to the South and then off-shore didn’t want to rule the world on the cheap a gal like Mary once the sister thing became known was a loose cannon and Bogie played on that assumption. Brought her around to see that she was going nowhere except maybe hustling on the means streets giving head, blow jobs, in some back alley for dimes and doughnuts (left unspoken in coded Hollywood okay but that was the reality). So Mary talked, talked loud and clear, brought her “hostess” roommates along, and one Johnny Vanning was toast was doing some serious time for the death of little sister. Here is the funny thing as rough justice is done for a minute when Johnny V. tags a few nickels in the big house but somewhere in the big city another Johnny will be working his way up the food chain, will have his “wanting habits” on. In some odd way one more Johnny or one less is not worth dying for-still it was nice to watch Johnny Rocco sleeping with the fishes and Johnny V. heading to the big house for some rest.        

The Theft That Made The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft Look Like Child’s Play-Burt Lancaster’s “The Train” (1965)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

The Train, starring Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Jeanne Moreau, 1965

The world, or at least the art world, those interested in art anyway is still in wonder, dismay, confusion about how the robbery of a bunch of extremely valuable paintings including work by Rembrandt and other masters from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston which after all these years still have not resurfaced in public. Wonder how what is something like a half a billion dollars’ worth of art has never seen the light of day. In some quarters, and not just among the street junkies and hipsters you can make serious money betting on who ordered the heist, who carried it out and who has kept the lid on this mystery for so long. Maybe Whitey Bulger went to his recent merciless grave with the secrets intact, maybe Myles Connors who I interviewed one night when he was in one of his short time out of jail moments in the role of President of Rock and Roll when I was a stringer at this publication although that night was about music not artworks, stolen or not, maybe Sid Larry, who is my personal chose if for no other reason that he was one of the great night crawlers of all time and never saw a jail cell. (In the interest of today’s necessary notice of transparency I have a one thousand dollar bet riding on him as the villain with his brother Ned, who I dated for a while after Josh Breslin and I split up.)   

(By the way every time patrons goes to the Gardner they are reminded of the theft by the empty framed spaces where the artwork had been prior to the theft. The interest in what happened that night and how is still high as a local Boston NPR continuing series has yet again explored what happened.) 

After viewing the film under review, The Train, which is based on a French non-fictional book which has documented the thefts by the German Army and other allied forces of major artworks from museums and private collections in France (needless to say and sadly from Jewish art collectors with a vengeance) as they roamed stealing everything not nailed down, and some stuff that was, throughout Europe, roamed particularly through Paris when that city was the epicenter of the art world before World War II that Gardner heist seems like small potatoes. Moreover, the Germans thought that their mere possession of the confiscated property meant that they were entitled to ship the entire looted works back to Germany as the Allies started their serious counter-offensive in 1944 to take back the night from the night-takers. This film details ficticously efforts by the French Resistance to stop the train from leaving the country playing off the real situation where a Free French officer Rosenberg actually did stop a train leaving for Germany with a lot of his art dealer and collector father’s artworks. The real story seems more intriguing in some ways especially since it has taken the equivalent of a legal civil war to get even some of the art works back to their rightful owners.

But the storyline here has its own intrigue and its own sense of logic at a time when the world had gone mad, a time not so very different than our times, or what could be our times if some social tinder gets stoked with the current madness afoot in the land. The whole expedition was planned by one German officer, Waldheim played by Paul Scofield, an art aficionado who apparently did not care that in Germany most works of modern art, meaning art by guys like Otto Dix, George Groz, Picasso, Matisse, damn, even innocuous guys like Degas and Cezanne were “degenerate.” Many a German smoke-filled night saw such works put to the torch. This mad man German officer was a walking bundle of contradictions since on the one hand he had something of a snobbish elitist concept of art and culture as being exclusively the domain of cultured gentlemen like him. On the other he had no problem killing every opponent who tried to stop the shipment’s passage to speak nothing of wasting everybody who got in the way of the German advances to the West, to blood stained Paris earlier in the war when the Germans seemed invincible. He was more than willing, thought it was clever, maybe even a brilliant advance for humankind to have civilian hostages on the locomotive of the train to avoid the damn thing being blown up. Shed not one tear when he ordered the hostages machine-gunned when he plans went awry, when he couldn’t get the art out of the country.    

Of course such a man needed an adversary, a worthy opponent to check his every move. A man or a group, here agents of the French Resistance, who while not having a refined sense of art, maybe even sense that with the world going to hell in a handbasket that some baubles were not worth the effort but who nevertheless made the call to arms when some who saw art, great art or small, an accrual in humankind’s struggle to emerge from the mud took matters into their own hands to stop the looting of French national treasures. That man, Lebite, played by ruggedly handsome Burt Lancaster last seen in this space according to Sam Lowell taking a few unaccounted for slugs over some wayward dame in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers, no man of culture, a man who could have given a damn about this load of art. Except somebody, some comrades, went back down into the mud on Waldheim’s watch for trying to stop, excuse my English, but my French heritage, my Quebecois heritage is showing, his fucking train full of loot.

So the chase was on between these two uneven forces. Naturally once the line-up was set up, and knowing the outcome of World War II, Waldheim would not be successful in his thefts, although it really was a close thing. In the end nobody could, or should have, shed tear number one when our French Resistance fighter took one glance at those machine-gunned civilians and wasted Waldheim without remorse, walked away. Yeah, that Gardner Museum heist was peanuts when you think about it-and that is the unvarnished truth.