The Lost Treasure Of The Outback-With Burt Lancaster’s Rope Of Sand In Mind

 

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Zack James

Every once in a while Josh Breslin liked to abandon his hideaway in his old growing up hometown of Olde Saco up in coastal Maine which he had several years early returned to after living in many other places to “get the dust of that old town off his shoes” as he liked to say to his old gang and go down to Boston and join up with some old friends from Carver whom he had met back in the early 1960s through his connection with the late Pete Markin out on the hitchhike road in San Francisco. He, they, including Markin before he went over the edge in a drug deal and lost his life in the mid-1970s dealing with some serious mal hombres down south of the border who did not give a damn about some “from hunger” gringo, had spent a few years living that alternative lifestyle counter-cultural dream that was the 1960s before the night-takers pulled the hammer down and sucked all the air out of whatever small Eden they were trying to build.

They all, except Markin, one way or another read the tea leaves of the ebb tide of the 1960s and made their respective “armed truces” as Sam Lowell, one of their number from Carver, liked to call it and went back to whatever they had intended to do before the action in the 1960s caught them in its web, including Josh who spent his time as a free-lance writer for half the small and medium-sized publications in the country. Josh, Frankie Riley the schoolboy leader of the tribe in Carver although more laid back out West where being herd-riding “boss” was in bad odor, Sam, Sam Eaton, Jack Callahan, Bart Webber and the recently deceased Benny Borden known always as the Be-Bop Kid after he latched onto  Benny Goodman and went crazy for swing when the rest of us were seriously into acid-etched rock (we called that friendly enough “different strokes for different folks,” and it was just fine) kept in touch over the years and would meet periodically over drinks and dinner, although frequently as they have been retired or semi-retired mainly drinks, at the Rusty Nail in downtown Boston to reminisce over old times and tell some new lies. One such occasion a while back was the reason that Josh had come down from Maine.

Now almost like in their schoolboy days the subject matter under discussion at any of these get-togethers could range from the general rage they felt for the war policies of the current American government since they had all more or less retained their hatred for war carried over from Vietnam War days of which Sam Lowell, Frankie Riley and the Be-Bop Kid had been veterans of and the others staunch opponents of including jail-time to what was new in music or seen on YouTube, film or books. (Sam Eaton said filled in the blank for which current government it is in the now endless wars that preoccupy Washington.) Josh usually of late had been regaling the group with his reviews of various old-time black and white movies he had watched via Netflix DVDs or streamed on his T.V. now that he had time to do so. He was especially crazy over film noir or anything that smacked of that genre and the other guys usually gave him a listen since they had all seen at least some the films from the old days down in Carver at the Strand Theater where they would take in the Saturday afternoon kids’ matinee double-feature or later went at night on hot dates up into the balconies with “hot” dates at that same locale.     

On the night in question after warming up to the subject with a high shelf shot of Chivas neat (many steps up from old time Johnny Walker Black with water chaser, praise be, Josh praise be)  Josh started talking about gold, about how the gold lust in the classic Treasure of the Sierra Madre did Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt and Walter Huston in. Got them nothing but windy graves down in old Mexico when the mal hombres came to take the gold away from them. (Everyone, including Josh, could only think after he had made that statement about what happened in the film about Markin and his unmarked potter’s field grave down there in Sonora, south of the border, and you could almost hear a collective moan, moan for man, moan for that old sainted bastard still missed and moaned over all these years later.)       

The reason Josh brought up the gold lust was that that precious mineral was not the only substance that men would fight and die over, would get that strange blood lust in their eyes to grab a fistful of. Having seen almost all the A film noirs available these days Josh had been checking out the vast array of B noirs and the one he wanted to talk about that night starred Burt Lancaster in an odd-ball noir entitled Rope of Sand. Here the lust, blooded or not, name your lust but here diamonds, diamonds found by the bags full, diamonds for the taking down in Southern Africa if you were man enough to go and grab them, and had the strength to keep them. A lesson lost on the boys in the Sierra Madre. Here’s how Josh ran to ground with the story.

“See this Davis guy, the part played by Burt Lancaster had been a hunting guide in the outback, out in Southern Africa probably South Africa but down in serious diamond country. One of his clients not only wanted to hunt animals but to seek what he was told were diamonds just waiting on the ground to be grabbed, grabbed by him as it turned out. Davis was not into that action but the client was and he took off one morning to cross the bushy savannah and serious dry rot desert to find them. He did but lacking proper hydration he was too weak to close the deal and dropped down on the ground ready for the grim reaper to take his hand.

“During this time Davis tracked him, found him seriously dehydrated, and after hiding the cache tried to get back to civilization to no avail. The client died. That was not the end of Davis’ troubles though since news of a huge diamond cache just waiting for somebody to grab set all kinds of wheels turning. Especially since those diamonds were on the private property of the main mining company in the area. The mining company security chief Vogel, played by Paul Henreid, you know he was the guy who played Victor Lazlo the escaped leader of the European anti-Nazi resistance in World War II who Rick, of Rick’s American Café in Casablanca gave up fetching Ilsa for on the theory that the love woes of three little people in this wicked old world don’t amount to a hill of beans when the night-takers are on a rampage, and he was right of course, played the heavy here and tried to torture Davis for the information about the whereabouts of the diamonds. Getting that haul would put a feather in his cap, put him in good with the mining company boss. No go, Davis wasn’t so brittle, got away to fight another day under better conditions and that is the backdrop to the action to follow.

“Davis, who despite his toughness, was strictly from hunger after he was banished from the guide trade decided he was strong enough to grab the diamonds a couple of years later. Of course Vogel would have a say about that, a big say since he controlled the most guns. But here is where Monty, played by Claude Rains who you will remember was the Vichy cop who wound up walking in the fog with Rick of Rick’s American Café once Rick played out that “hill of beans” theory and needed to get out of Casablanca fast and he was just the boy to do it, the mine owner has his own plan. After suffering a false rape scene with Suzanne, a local bar girl, maybe an independent street-walker they never made that easy rider stuff clear in those 1940s and 1950s movies expecting  that kids would get all worked up if they called women whores and men pimps that kind of stuff. For some filthy lucre she was to seduce Davis into telling her where the diamonds were, get the information and he would cut Vogel out. See how the lust works even with guys who have a ton of dough.                

“Well the seduction business doesn’t work on Davis and not because Suzanne did not have her charms but because along the way she turned out to be the whore with the golden heart and decided to side with him (after a couple of off-screen tumbles in the hay that off-screen another Hollywood play in those days). She was messing up his silk sheets for free on the side although like I say they didn’t spell that out for us then which might have helped clear up a lot of misunderstandings about sex, girls and what makes the world go round if they had but I will save that screed for another day.

“Naturally Davis went after the diamonds, has about six misadventures getting there. And of course you know that the evil Vogel had the “fix” in. But you know when you have a “from hunger” guy and a whore with a golden heart in a 1949 noir that Vogel was going down and things would  come up roses for Davis and Suzanne. They do since after wasting Vogel Davis made a deal with Monty for his life, free passage, a couple of rocks and Suzanne and Monty went for it. But see how that lust business did old Vogel in, and almost Davis.”

Everybody laughed but it was not an easy laugh since every man in that group in that bar that night had grown up “from hunger” and was probably wondering if the diamonds in Rope or the gold in Sierra Madre had been within their reach they might have wound up on the wrong side of the grave.