On The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967-“The Monterey Pops Festival” (1968) –A Documentary

On The 50^th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967-“The Monterey Pops Festival” (1968) –A Documentary

DVD Review

By Associate Film Editor Alden Riley 

The Monterey Pops Festival-1967, starring Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, The Mamas and the Papas, Ravi Shankar, and the usual suspects from the 1960s acid rock circuit on the West Coast, produced by D.A. Pennebaker, 1968 

I don’t mean to grouse every time I get an assignment from my boss, from film editor Sandy Salmon, but I think I have grounds to do so here. I only mentioned in passing in reading a recent review Sandy did of a 2015 biopic of Janis Joplin, Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue, one of the icons of the 1960s and of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he and his old-time film critic friend Sam Lowell have gone into overdrive over that I had never heard of her and was not familiar with her work. That faux pas on my part got me this netherworld assignment to watch and review the DVD under review, The Monterey Pops Festival of 1967, the very first one, the three day affair, which has also (back in mid-June) celebrated its 50^th anniversary. Sandy’s idea was, I think, that once I heard and saw her and the other top West Coast groups from his generation that I would go out and buy a tie-dye shirt or look for the nearest commune or something.     

Sandy mentioned that the guy who put the documentary together about the two day concert was the very same guy who trailed after Bob Dylan in his classic Don’t Look Back (which I also haven’t seen but I will charge an unfair labor practice if he attempts to get me to watch and review that one since one thing I do know is that Bob Dylan couldn’t and can’t now sing whatever merits he has as a songwriter and part-time “voice” of his generation or whatever it was that Time magazine dubbed him back in the ancient folk times). Whatever merits the subject matter of this documentary has it certainly is not in the almost amateurish production values here especially in light of the huge technological advances that have been made which makes this documentary seen like one of those old silent movie flicks in comparison. Grainy, swirly footage, seemingly random and inchoate views (or non-views) of the acts on stage and some odd-ball sound effects (or non-sound effects) which I am sure Sandy and his crowd will glower over as efforts to “go back to nature” from a simpler time when everybody was looking intently at their electronic devises of choice.      

I will pass over the performances some of which were very good including Ms. Joplin’s break-out performance with her band Big Brother and the Holding Company on the old blues classic Piece Of My Heart. If she had that much energy consumption on one song I don’t know how she would have gotten through a full set never mind a whole concert but maybe the drugs really did help keep her going. Same goes for Jefferson Airplane with demonic Grace Slick and Marty Balin on High Flying Bird and the great harmonics of the Mamas and Papas (someone said they were “spot on” meaning very in tune) that came through even in this primitive production. But what was that all about with the Who leader smashing and Jimi Hendrix burning up perfectly good electric guitars on stage. I don’t get it and I don’t want to ask Sandy, and definitely not Sam Lowell who was actually out in San Francisco in 1967 although I am not sure he attended the festival, because I don’t want a two hour lecture about creative rock and roll and stage presence-thank you very much.

Here is the funny thing though since this was a billed as a Pops Festival the guy who stole the show (the shown part since I understand that several big-time performers wound up on the cutting room floor (which are shown in a separate disc in the three disc collection as “outtakes”-the other disc Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding’s performances which I did not have time to view and in the case of Hendrix did want to after seeing that maniacal burning in the main frame) was Ravi Shankar who played the sitar hardly a new instrument and a did a rif that was probably about five hundred years old. The crowd loved it, hell, I loved it although it was perhaps a shade too long given the eighty minute length of the film. 

What really interested me and which Sandy will probably give me an earful about were the close-up shots of the attendees, of the audience, of the mostly young audience in their best “hippie” garb some of it which looked very cool even now. Porkpie hats, old-time Victorian dresses, World War II G.I. surplus stuff like that. Funny though and maybe Sandy will think the same thing when he watches the DVD or maybe re-watches most of the audience looked like they had done some serious weed or some drug before they got to the concert (or maybe at it although it didn’t seem like I saw a lot of smoke, weed smoke although a fair amount of cigarette smoke when that was cool. Some of the young women then, women who today would be my grandmother’s age certainly looked foxy. I wonder if anybody who watched the film today and who had been there then would be shocked by the footage of them in their “to be young was very heaven days”. I wonder if Sandy would think the same think thing or dismiss my observation and go back into his ecstatic dream world with Sam yakking about the days when men and women played rock and roll for keeps and everybody listened with baited breathe.     

How Little We Know- With The Film Adaptation Of Ernest Hemingway’s “To Have And Have Not” In Mind

By Henri “Frenchie” Gerard As Told To Jasper Jackson

[Henri “Frenchie” Gerard had owned the well-known pre-World War II Gerard’s Café in Fort-de-France, Martinique, the French colony in the Caribbean, first under the Third Republic and then when France felt to the Germans in 1940 to collaborationist Vichy-control. Frenchie ran the place all through the Occupation at some cost to himself as a local Resistance leader and after the war until 1960 when he retired to his native Nantes in France. That same year he had found out through some old Resistance contacts that his old American friend Captain Harry Morgan, a fishing boat owner whom he had given work to, had had more than his fair share of drinks with in the old times, had passed away in New York City after a long bout with cancer. According to his obituary Harry left a wife, Marie, nee Browning, and three children, all teenagers.          

I had heard through a different source that Captain Morgan had although an American been active in the French Resistance in Martinique and eventually other places in the Caribbean. I had also heard that Monsieur Gerard was the last link to knowledge about Captain Morgan’s exploits and more importantly about how Harry and Marie Browning known affectionately as “Slim” in those days met and got out of Fort-de-France by the skin of their teeth. I contacted Gerard in Nantes about twenty years ago and he agreed to tell me what he knew about the affair, about the “skin of their teeth” and about anything else he might know around that initial meeting since “Slim” had gone on to be an editor of a high-end fashion magazine after she married Harry. Harry had become an agent-ambassador for Cunard out of New York. Below is in his own words the way Frenchie described the meeting and match-up between Harry and Slim. He did stipulate that I was only to use most of the information he provided after Slim passed on. Although I did produce a short sketch at the time using the authorized information I left most of the material as it was in note form and stuffed in a back file cabinet drawer. Slim died a few months ago and so here for the first time after a couple of months of unscrambling those long ago yellow note pad notes is Frenchie’s long ago take on that torrid war-time romance which seemed the stuff of legends. This piece is dedicated to Frenchie who passed away in 2007. Jasper Jackson]

“I had seen Marie first, had seen her as she came off the plane from I think that day Cuba, don’t quote me on stuff before the match-up between Harry and Slim because it is all vague and doesn’t add or subtract from the story except that she was an American girl working her way across the waters by herself, by herself mostly except when she wanted company from her dagger-eyed look. Lovely, got my juices flowing, tall and thin making me think at first she was French, maybe from my hometown of Nantes where they are built like that almost exclusively since she fit that bill. Had big flashing eyes, if she was a man I would say bedroom eyes, yes, bedroom eyes no question and those soft lustrous lips, ruby red. Wore her long hair over one eye like was the fashioned then, not like Veronica Lake, no, more like Lauren Bacall maybe in one of her early movies.     

“She had been up against it lately though, had had some kind of difficulties because with her almost too good looks it was strange that she came off the plane with a sort of threadbare tailored suit a little out of fashion that year and a small bag which told me she was on, how you Americans say her ‘uppers.’  [The irony later would be that she was a much sought after fashion editor for a number of high style New York publications and became known for her great sense of where the new look would come from. I’ll bet any photographs from those Martinique days have gone since seen the incinerator-JJ]

“By the way that “Slim” moniker for Marie and she called him “Steve” although everybody knew it was Harry thing was some intimate bed-time talk thing that I don’t know how it started since I wasn’t there when they messed up the silky sheets that first time. She was sure slim, no question about that, model slim so she might have been working that racket at some point, maybe private showings if you know what I mean. So maybe that is where Harry got his pet name for her from. I was also an agent for Air Martinique then so I grabbed her bag and offered to put her up at my hotel where most of the tourists off the flight stayed and I gave the airline a kickback for the business in the days before they started having package tours. She accepted without a murmur but not without an unspoken gratitude. My idea was that after she had settled in and I had bought her few drinks I could coax her into helping me out as an exotic flower bar girl for the American tourists who were flooding Fort-de-France looking for women, kicks, dope, gambling, and some fine deep sea fishing. I had her all lined up on that job so I had not been wrong that she had been on her uppers or that she had been familiar with the trade. Along the way I had my own ideas about jumping under the satin sheets with her although I was married at the time. Or maybe because I was married. Yeah, she was that kind of looker, that kind of dame who guys would take great risks for, would go to the mat for if things went like that.       

    

“Then Harry entered the scene and my day dreams were over. He had been out on a fishing expedient with a client named Johnson, one of those Americans looking for dope and some deep sea fishing, and some kind of deep sea fishing of another kind if you get my drift. This Johnson guy had had a shot at grabbing a big swordfish according to Harry but all he did was lose Harry’s fishing tackle in the bargain. So Harry wasn’t in a good mood when I asked him to go to his room in order for me to inquire about using his boat for some Resistance work that was coming up-bringing in some agents to get the great freedom-fighter Renoir off of Devil’s Island where he was being held by the Vichy bastards. He turned me down cold. Wouldn’t touch the thing then, didn’t give a damn who was fighting for or against who but wanted to keep clear of any controversy, keep his boat, his livelihood for one thing. So whatever he did for us later which was a lot didn’t get a leg up until Marie came in view.

“I had known Harry ever since he had come to Martinique to get away from some nasty business in Key West where he was from, or said he was from, and I let that ride. Harry had definitely been around the block, knew the score but I was always mystified about why the dames went for him, especially the French girls that hung around my bar. Harry must have been about forty, maybe forty-five then and his face and slumped shoulders showed the wear and tear. The best you say for him was that he was a man, a straight up with rugged looks and always would be a twice a day shave guy. Didn’t dress particularly well then [he would later under Marie’s influence and insistence -JJ] but he lacked for female company before Marie. Maybe it was like one of your American writers mentioned to me one time when I met him in Nantes after I came back to France that some women, some young women who have been buffeted about, maybe had no father-figure around the house go for older guys for that reason. But ask Freud or one of his kind about that.

“Here is how they met. While we, Harry and I, were talking about doing that Resistance job a rap came on the door and when Harry opened up the door there was Marie all dolled up and showered asking if anybody had a match. Harry flipped her his box of matches. Then she asked if anybody had a cigarette and said it in such a come hither way in Harry’s direction that I knew I was sunk. Harry threw her his pack of Luckies (unfiltered in those days) which I got for him on the black market since American cigarettes were hard to come by after the Vichy thugs took over the black market trade. She left and after Harry asked me who the hell she was and where did she come from. I left the room knowing that I was out of luck making a play for Slim. The only benefit I got from that “introduction” was that she did do some very good work for a few days as a bar girl and I got many dollars as my cut of her action. I swear I could have been a millionaire if she had stayed on the island.

“As a cover against the snooping Vichy cops who only looked for dough every chance they got and did not like bar girls since even they had to pay the freight for the pleasure of the company I also had her singing at night with Cricket my junkie piano player whose habit was getting him off-track, getting so he could hardly remember the songs. I found out in passing through the lounge area one afternoon while she and Cricket were singing that she could sing and look good doing it so I gave her that job and a cut of the proceeds. Funny about memories. That Cricket was a story in himself since he was on the run from some dope-dealers in the States and laying low in cheap dope Martinique for a while. He had written that song that would be a hit after the war when all the G.I.s headed back to America, How Little We Know. By then I think Cricket was probably six feet under the ground but I always laughed when I thought about that song title and those gullible G.I.s believing their sweeties had been true blue when they were fighting the Nazi scum. Yeah, how little they knew. 

“But enough of Cricket. Slim went to work after that meeting with Harry. Like I said she was good, grabbed eight hundred bucks off of that stupid fisherman Johnson, and gave me my four hundred without a murmur. Harry sitting at the bar later saw her in action that first night as she worked the room and was sore from what he told me the next day. Was very sore when that night Marie had after Johnson grabbed some Vichy naval officer for half the liquor on the island. Called her a tramp, a young pretty smart tramp but a tramp nevertheless. Here’s how you can never figure dames though see she was, having seen him for about two minutes asking for that match and cigarette foreplay, trying to make him jealous. Had spotted him looking her way just as she had expected. And he was only trying to pretend to be sore. That interchange if you can understand this psychology solidified their relationship. That night without as much as a by your leave they snuck under Harry’s sheets (or was it Slim’s, yes, it must have been Slim’s because I had left her a set of silk sheets for her bed when I had my own ideas about what I would do with her.)               

     

“Of course that budding affair with Marie business played directly into Harry coming over to work with us. That Vichy naval officer Marie took for a ride bitched to Renard, a bastard who was an official in the Third Republic colonial administration on the island and the day Vichy took over without missing a beat went to work for them as their hatchet man. He had me, Harry and Slim down at police headquarters for a few hours. Took my money, my four hundred from the Johnson con, Slim’s cut and for good measure Harry’s who had nothing to do with it dough too. That pissed Harry off. Also helped me to rope in Harry to the deal for his boat since he had no other dough.     

“That job should have been a piece of cake. Meet the agents who were going to get Renoir off of Devil’s Island in a quiet spot about twenty miles from Fort-de-France, bring them to town and then transfer them to other agents who would work out the details of the tough Devil’s Island caper. Of course in those days you took whoever was not a secret Vichy agent, anybody who had the guts to stick their necks out for the glory of France but it turned out the guys, or rather the guy and his fucking wife, the Dubois, what was he thinking, that they recruited for the job had feet of clay, had too much trouble worrying about his fretful wife. So Harry had run into a Vichy patrol out in the harbor. That patrol shot up Harry’s boat, shot up this Dubois guy and made things tough for all of us. Harry, no doctor, had to patch up the guy while holding off his wife from jumping on his bones. And holding Slim back from scratching Madame’s eyes out.  

“Made Harry something like persona non grata with Vichy, with Renard too once he figured the previously “don’t give a damn” had part in the caper. Renard , the bastard, figured out a way to prove that Harry was involved in the Dubois caper. Harry had this old rummy, Eddie, whom must have been his father or something the way he protected him. Renard had picked Eddie up and was holding him in the drunk tank until he crumbled and told what Harry’s role in the caper had been. Harry flipped out at this once Renard told him about where the missing Eddie was. With Slim’s aid he took on Renard and a couple of his henchmen, shot one dead as a doornail and made Renard after pistol-whipping him order Eddie back to my hotel. That is when Harry handed over Renard to me and decided that since Martinique was too hot for him and Slim, and Eddie that he would take Dubois and his wife to Devil’s’ Island to get Renoir out. I’ll never forget, have never forgotten how Slim shimmied her way out the door with Harry and Eddie carrying their bags behind them after Slim said good-bye to Cricket (and got little stash of opium for the road).     

“You know that Harry did get Dubois to Devil’s Island and that he eventually got Renoir to Europe to work with Victor Lazlo coordinating the Resistance when it counted. Did lots of other jobs too with the resourceful Slim in tow before heading to New York after the war. 

“Here’s something Harry told me before he and Slim left town. That first night they hit the sheets Slim, with a few drinks in her, was being very sexually provocative, had mentioned that all Harry had to do to keep her in line was whistle. Then she said in an unmistakably salacious way that “he knew how to whistle, didn’t he. Just put lips together and blow.” Harry assumed that she was using a sexual double entendre. He found out that night just what she meant as she took him around the world. Damn, that lucky son of a bitch Harry.      

Speak To Me Of Mendocino-With The McGarrigle Sisters Song On The Same Theme In Mind

By Zack James

Sid Lester had often wondered whether Lena, Lena of the Caffe Lena, the small coffeehouse that weaned many folksingers in the days when such activity was on deck, in the time of the now fabled early 1960s folk minute, now too but she the grey eminence had long gone to the shades and so that is not her bother had ever gotten to the Mendocino of her dreams and the song that the McGarrigle Sisters had reportedly written for her when she dreamed the dream of West Coast dreams. This was no mere academic question since Sid was asking it not only to himself but to his lovely companion, Mona Lord, who was accompanying him just that moment on the Pacific Coast Highway about fifty miles from that very spot, from the Mendocino of his dreams if not hers (fifty miles but probably about three hours given the hairpin turns that he increasingly hated to take along some very treacherous stretches of that beautiful view highway having almost gone down an un-guard-railed embankment to the ocean around Big Sur a few years back).

It was not like Sid had not been to the dreamland before, having made the trip up from the fetid seas of Frisco town (fetid in comparison to the Mendocino white washed breakers eroding the sheer rock at a greater rate than he would have expected) a number of times mostly with his old time now long gone to “find herself” Laura, Laura Perkins whom he had talked into going up those several times based on nothing more than that he liked the McGarrigle-etched song. Liked too that she, Laura liked it as well and would cover the song anytime she could find somebody to do a duo with her at folkie “open mics” and coffeehouse features depending on how she was feeling. Mona having heard the song exactly once (she didn’t like the fact that Laura liked the song and had been to Mendocino before she had and so would not listen when Sid tried to play it on his car CD player as they got closer to the place). Moreover she was reserving judgment on the relationship between the song and the place.

And that last point, the point for Sid anyway, was exactly how the song and the place connected. Was the real source of his wonder about old Lena back in the tired old East. Had she longed like he had to be done with Eastern pressures and pitfalls. To stop worrying about where the money would come from for rent, to pay the utilities, hell to pay the performers and stop them from having to play for the foolish “basket” like when they  had just started out on some forlorn street in Cambridge , Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Old Town or the Village. Stop all of that and head west, head to flat earth land South Bend for a minute, head over the majestic no hyperbole Rockies and suck in the breezes of the new land, of the new dispensation. Yeah, he bet though that she never got to the West, never could leave her cats, never could get that café out of her system, would probably fret even if she only went out for a week or so.

As they, Sid and his new Mona, approached the outskirts of Mendocino he wondered, seriously wondered whether Mona would ask him someday to speak of Mendocino, to let the place get under her skin. Yeah, speak of Mendocino.                  

The Decline Of The Old West-With Yul Brynner’s “The Magnificent Seven” (1960) In Mind   

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

The Magnificent Seven, starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, 1960   

I have always been a sucker for a good Western ever since I was a kid back in the 1950s. I would either watch maybe Jimmy Rodgers, The Lone Ranger, John Law or some such combination go through their paces on the small screen family black and white images television set or on Saturday afternoons head with Bunky Roberts and Slim Devine, two fellow youthful aficionados to the now long gone Majestic Theater in downtown    

Riverdale and see the double feature one at least of which was inevitably a Western. That is the place where I first viewed the film under review, The Magnificent Seven, the original version not the well-done remake based on a different twist in the story line starring Denzel Washington a couple of years ago. And although I watched the re-run in the comfort of my home I still think that this film must be watched on the big screen to get the full beauty of the thing and of the then rather new technologies bringing those old 1940s and early 1950s black and white images to color.     

As a kid I was most struck by the fact that a good guy, a good gunslinger, Yul Brynner’s role, was dressed in black the traditional color of the bad guy in the old movies and on 1950s television. It threw me at first until his first good deed seeing to it that a Native American (then Indian or ‘injun’) got buried in a local cemetery. This time out almost sixty years later now being a fair film critic I was taken in by the sub-text beyond the good deeds-the taming of the West (the non-California Coast West, you know the places where the states are square) epitomized by the decline in services of the gunslinger. The guys who for good or evil, depending usually on who paid for the job whether there was more justice on one side or not. You know the profession had taken a precipitous drop when Yul could round up five other hombres for a six week caper down south of the border for twenty bucks each-total. (The seventh guy, a young buck, a Mexican peasant with something to prove came along of his own volition). Hardly expense money even in those days. 

You know the story though. A bunch of poor south of the border Mexican farmers periodically besieged by one or another roving gangs, this one in particular, led by mal hombre bandito Eli Wallach have had enough. Are ready to fight, or pay for guys who would fight and rid their village of this scourge. Enter cool as a cumber dressed in black Yul who hears out the story and brings in the cadre. Of course even seven bravos, seven harden gunslingers cannot be expected to take on a serious gang of maybe thirty or forty hunger, thirsty and broke banditos so much of the center of the film is readying those peasant farmers to help out to defend home and hearth. It was a struggle though getting brave but inexperienced farmers ready enough to face the onslaught of Eli Wallach and friends. In the end though you knew, just as I knew when I was a kid that the good guys despite grievous losses would prevail. I wonder what Yul and his remaining sidekick after the big scene shoot-out played by Steve McQueen will do for their next job as they leave the pacified village to go about its usual business. A landmark film of the new Western that got a workout in 1960s when a more serious look at the West was undertaken.        

Love, Oh Careless, Love-With Diane Keaton and Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” In Mind  

DVD Review

By Associate Editor Alden Riley 

Annie Hall, starring Diane Keaton, Woody Allen,

It is funny how some film assignments I get from my boss,

Sandy Salmon, come into being. I mentioned in a recent review of the classic female vs. male clash of wills and style George Cukor’s Adam’s Rib starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy that he wished me to watch such strong independent lead women’s roles from the 1930s and 1940s to prove out his thesis that female actors such as Hepburn were able to turn in great performances with style and panache without appearing to be man-eaters. Or not too much anyway in contrast to many female-driven leads today where to avoid such designations the     

story-line has to bend over backwards cutting the heart out of such efforts. I had mentioned that in my review of the current Wonder Woman as an example and that one phrase started Sandy’s wheels rolling. 

The genesis of the film under review, Woody Allen’s masterly romantic comedy Annie Hall is very different. It is based on two factors, the first stemming from a BBC radio news broadcast that Sandy heard on his way to work one day about a survey that had been done naming the 150 greatest comedy films of all times. Annie Hall had been named number three on that list. The second my answer that I had never seen the film, had no particular interest in Woody Allen’s logjam of films after having seen a few from his early 2000s production (except Blue Jasmine but that was carried by the performance of Cate Blanchett more than Woody’s plotline and dialogue), and tended away from reviewing romantic comedies. Naturally that put fury red in Allen devotee Sandy’s eyes (that “devotee” status which in turn he had gotten from his film critic friend Sam Lowell, former film editor here, when they were both at the American Film Gazette).        

So here I am grinding it out on this one. Pleasantly grinding it out on a film that still seems fresh today some thirty plus years after its premier. As my companion who was watching the film with me said “it has aged well.” Agreed. I am not sure where I would put it in the pantheon of cinematic great comedies but it certainly belongs among the low numbers, no question about that.   

Of course as with many Woody Allen vehicles the art is in the dialogue and wit and not so much the plotline. At the time of production Woody was well known for his New York Jewish kid comic routine in many such film efforts. Annie Hall is in line with that persona from the neurotic self-effacing guy who can’t seem to “get it” about romance after two failed marriages to two bright star Jewish women and starts out once again on the roady road to love-to romance. Although this time with a classic WASP woman from Wisconsin Annie Hall of the title played by then paramour Diane Keaton as an aspiring nightclub performer (check out her stand-up performance of It Seems Like Old Times which brought a tear to the eye of my viewing companion). Still Woody can’t seem to get the hang of modern romance and he loses Annie not only to another man but to another coast-the dreaded enemy Left Coast-LA. The film is rounded out with every important New York intellectual referential tidbit from the period. Sandy said he howled when Woody made a cutting comment to his second wife about two New York-based high-end intellectual publications of the day- Commentary and Dissent saying they had merged into a new magazine Dysentery. Sandy said “ouch” but I was, maybe not being from New York or old enough to remember those publication was non-plussed by that one although many of the other references were very funny.

Like I said I can for once agree with Sandy and also can truthfully say I was not be put off by yet another “have to do” Sandy assignment this time. This film deserves its low number on the greatest comedy list.

When Eve Spanned-Katharine Hepburn And Spencer Tracy’s “Adam’s Rib” (1949)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Associate Editor Alden Riley

Adam’s Rib, starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, directed by George Cukor, 1949

Recently the film editor of this blog (and of the on-line American Film Gazette) Sandy Salmon mentioned to me after I had reviewed the current version of the film Wonder Woman that strong women’s roles currently seem to bend over backward to prove that the women are not man-eaters (he used another phrase but since this is a user-friendly site I will refrain from using the expression but you can get the drift). He noted that I had also made that point in my review and then suggested that I go back to the 1930s and 1940s for my next review and check out how strong, independent women’s roles were handled by prominent female actors then. Since I was not all that familiar with older films not having grown up in the 1950s like he and former film editor Sam Lowell had when such films would form the core of Saturday afternoon retrospective matinees at the independent theaters they attended where the owners wanted to cut costs by showing such fare rather than the current expensive to show productions Sandy mentioned some female lead names to get me going. Among others like Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell and Bette Davis he mentioned the lead female role the film under review, Adam’s Rib, one Katharine Hepburn. After viewing a few examples I decided on this film since the storyline kind of fit in with the idea Sandy was trying to draw me to-these very independent women could strut their stuff without the appearance of threatening men but also without kowtowing either. And with a nice sense of style and grace too.

The story line here is admittedly a little goofy as a plot to display womanly independence but we will ignore than since the role played by Hepburn, Amanda, overrides that weakness. An overwrought can’t shoot straight New York housewife decided that she had had enough with her philandering husband and decided to put the fear of God in him by following him to his little love nest uptown. There she goes rooty-toot-toot on said husband and his paramour wounding the husband. The ensuing story made the headlines in all the Gotham newspapers and caught the eye of solo private attorney Amanda Bonner, the “Eve” of the rib. She decided that the duel standard about men getting away with straying from home and hearth scot free while women are branded with the scarlet letter needed a good airing out in court where the action will play out. She volunteered her services to the distract housewife. Problem: Adam Bonner, yes, the Adam of the rib, Amanda’s husband, played by Spencer Tracy, is a fellow lawyer working as an Assistant District Attorney. Guess who got assigned the case? Yes the battle of the sexes is on.  

Needless to say the battle between the sexes over the case leads to a split, a temporary split, between the pair once Amanda makes Darwin’s monkey out of Adam in court by pointing out the duel standard but also pointing out some very relevant points about woman’s equality before the law-and before society. A worthy champion despite the tensions between her and Adam.

Amanda carried her case with grace and style, enough so that she was able to win an acquittal for the distraught housewife. Well done. Maybe not so well done was that lingering even at that time need to dress up the plot with some romantic added scenes between the pair with Amanda distressed over Adam’s coolness toward her which were a bow to the times when such conventions were necessary in romantic comedies. Still I see what Sandy (and before him Sam) meant when they say strong woman like Ms. Hepburn could carry the day without being man-eaters-and without pulling punches.   

The Foibles Of The Mayfair Swells -The Film Adaptation Of Edith Wharton’s The Age Of Innocence” (1934)-A Review

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

The Age of Innocence, starring Irene Dunne, John Boles, based on Edith Wharton’s novel of the same name, 1934   

A couple of points before I dig into a short review of the film under review, the cinematic adaptation of Edith Wharton’s classic Mayfair swells novel The Age Of Innocence (or maybe New York Knickerbocker society is better as a way to designate the high society in Manhattan around the turn of the 20^th century). Edith Wharton like expatriate Henry James certainly knew the ins and outs, the mores, morals, and custom of New York high society and could write reams about it. Also I thought that only we Irish neighborhood bred denizens (brought up by grandparents Dan and Anna Riley in my case) were not the only ones who had a taboo against “airing dirty linen in public” if a view of the film is any true indication of what was going on in those inner city mansions and brownstones.

That said this story line done in a flashback form in a conversation between a grandfather and his errant grandson centers on the potentially illicit romance between a married woman, the Countess, played by Irene Dunne and a love struck high society lawyer, Newland Archer, played by John Boles who nevertheless is engaged to a proper young high society prospect which will unite two families like glue upon consummation. The drama, or maybe better put, melodrama, is the built up to the final decision by the Countess, a woman who has left her husband and was in the throes of seeking a divorce, very taboo in gentile society, hell, maybe all society then once she warms up to Newland. The tensions among the engaged and then newly-wedded couple, Newland’s infatuation with the Countess and the high society matrons attempts to put a lid on the affair drive the film. In the end Newland stays with his wife and spent the rest of his life longing for the Countess.        

Working The Street Corners-With The Blues Singer Blind Willie McTell In Mind

Working The Street Corners-With The Blues Singer Blind Willie McTell In Mind

By Zack James

Seth Garth, the fairly well-known music critic for the American Folk Gazette, had always been intrigued by what he called the “blinds,” not the old railroad jungle hobo, tramp, bum use of the term “riding the blinds” but his own personal shorthand way to describe the large number of old blue men, mainly country blues guys who made a living on the streets mostly on the towns down South who were blind. Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Earl Avery, Blind Amos Morris, you get the point, get the picture. Get the picture too of guys hanging on the street corners, hat in hand or maybe in front of them on the sidewalk a guitar at the ready. Guys, and gals still do that today on urban streets and in subways although Seth never remembered any of them being blind, at least not really blind although he had run up against a couple of con artists working a grift faking that blind deal. 

He often wondered, and wonder is all he could do since all those august names had passed beyond well before he came of age, before he became old enough to appreciate the blues tradition that he got hopped on as a kid after accidently hearing Blue Blaine’s Blues Hour out of Chicago one fugitive Sunday night when the airwaves were in just the right seventh house position in his growing up town of Riverdale just west of Boston. Or something like that since even though a science wiz in high school, a guy who went on to be a weather man (not Weatherman like in the 1960s SDS split-off leftist action of whom he had known a few of them as well after a series of articles he did on the theme of music and politic using Bob Dylan’s phrase “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”) tried to patiently explain that it was not some voodoo magic but had to do with airwaves and wind currents. Whatever had caused that intersession that hooked him for good even though he did not hear anything by any of the previously mentioned blues artists that night. That would come much later after he became an aficionado and became, maybe as a result of those fugitive airwaves, a folk music critic back in the day for several then thriving and authoritative alternative folk and blues publications.

According to ‘Bama Brown, the great harmonica player for Johnny Boy William’s blues band who was the last living link to those “blinds” the reason that they were able to survive on the streets is because even in the Jim Crow South a blind black man posed no direct threat to Mister. That they could walk the streets with their hats or little tin cups, maybe with some black sister to aid them (true in the cases of Blind Willie and Blind Blake), maybe sing harmony in an off-hand minute, maybe play a little tambourine to draw a crowd, to give the word since preaching on the white streets, the streets where the money was on say a drunken sot Saturday, by a black man was frowned upon. Whites had their own set of holy-rollers to patronize and did not need any blacks to draw away from their purses. That would get a black guy, blind or not a swift kick back to Negro-town, to the cheap streets.    

That was ‘Bama’s story anyway and it sounded plausible, and probably was as close to a reason that the blinds survived as any but later after some research, after listening to some precious oral histories provided to the Library of Congress by the Lomaxes, father and son, Seth started to question whether ‘Bama had the deal down pat as it seemed at the time (and as he had written about in an article about ‘Bama as the last living link to a  lot of the old country blues singers, especially the Delta boys from where he had hailed before heading north to Chicago and fame with Johnny Boy). 

Seth had been particularly struck by one oral interview given by Honey Boy Jamison, a great slide guitarist in the mold of Mississippi Fred McDowell, who before he passed away in the late 1940s told Alan Lomax, the son, that the real reason that the “blinds’” were left alone was that in their heyday, the late 1920s and early 1930s before the Great Depression hit hard and nobody had spare change for records or for giving alms to anybody, even blind men was that the record companies from New York and Chicago mainly would sent scouts out to the small towns of the South looking for talent. Looking for a sound for their ‘‘race” labels and in the process those agents would get word out that there was dough to be had if anybody, anybody okay, could find some talent. Obviously the roughnecks and hillbillies were as anxious to get dough as anybody else and the only way they could grab some was listening to the black guys on the streets, on Mister’s streets. And the only guys allowed on Mister’s precious streets were the “blinds.”               

Seth found that piece of news interesting but he was more than a little pissed off that old ‘Bama whom Seth had good cash to for his interview had “forgotten” to tell him about that possible explanation. Especially since ‘Bama at that very time was with Johnny Boy when RCA came looking for a new black sound and had been scouted by Mac Duran, a well-known white record agent in Memphis at the time. Damn.  

Once Again On Jane Austen- Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Emma” (1996  )-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

Emma, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Northam, based on the novel by Ms. Jane Austen, 1996    

Recently in a review of another one of the film adaptations of Jane Austen’s romantic novels, Northanger Abbey, I mentioned that what got me started on reviewing some of Ms. Austen’s novels was a film review of The Jane Austen Book Club a modern day look at romance via the prism of her six major novels. I also mentioned in that review that the works of Jane Austen when I was young, when I was in high school say, growing up in a rough and tumble working class neighborhood dominated by a corner boy culture were tightly wrapped in seven seals. No self-respecting corner boy would read, or admit to reading, such “girl” books short of some classroom command. I was in the former camp since I never read her material not was commanded to do so again my will. Those reading experiences came later when I was much more serious about investigating the great works of English literature-and not under the gun either.       

Another point made in that review was that once I got onto some subject, literary or otherwise, I tended to play out my hand, tended to grab everything I could by an author or as here in this review of Ms. Austen’s  Emma  film adaptations of those works. Here’s what’s what, here’s why many generations of girls, and hopefully, now hopefully, boys, enjoyed reading her books and equally hopefully after reading the books viewing film adaptations as well.  

Ms. Jane Austen had a razor sharp sense of the customs, mores, and foibles of the country gentry from whence she came. The mating rituals as well. In Emma, here played by fetching Gwyneth Paltrow, she takes a tongue and check yet romantic look the matchmaking among the young country set in early 19^th  England just as the Industrial Revolution is beginning to shift England from an isolated rural society to king of the hill world industrial power. Emma is by turns very smart, very well brought and something of an incurable romantic once she takes a funny stab at matchmaking among the younger set. Her “victim” her friend Harriet, sort of country bumpkin, female version whom she tries to match up with several eligible young men, including Mr. Knightley, played by Jeremy Northam. The film then revolves around the mishaps and errors of judgment by Ms. Emma in her chosen profession up to and including encouraging the relationship between Harriet and Mr. Knightley. Oops. As it turned out Emma was mad for Mr. Knightley when she thought she was losing him. Not to worry everything works out in the end. Pure Jane Austen but read the book first-okay.      

Globalization 101-With Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks “Larry Crowne” (2011) In Mind

DVD Review 

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

Larry Crowne, starring Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks,  

It was bound to happen. Long after the world has seen the fall-out of both the international financial crisis of the last decade and the long-term trends toward globalization (and Internet-ization if there is such a word I know there is such a concept) Hollywood has come up with a cinematic idea about how that process is affecting the average Joe (or Jane but this film centers on a guy) in America. Long gone are epics about the plight of the family farm which bit the dust in 1980s and films about average working stiff Joes done in by the de-industrialization of America in the Rust Belt which has had current political repercussions with the bizarre and odd-ball Presidency of one Donald J. Trump whose moves since his inauguration are making room for him to take over James Buchanan’s place in the cellar of American President ratings. (James of that last gasp before the Civil War when he bent his knees to the Southern wing of his Democratic Party). The new look is how the average non-college white collar Joe has taken the fall in the latest phase of the race to the bottom. While the plot of this vehicle, Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks’ Larry Crowne, that crown with an ‘e’ as he is at pains to explain, is rather thin in places as social commentary of the times there are some points, a few comic, which are worthy of talking about further.     

Here are some specifics to think about. The title’s Larry Crowne (remember with an ‘e’ and this is the last time I will say it) was a middle-level management type who was pursuing a second career in the retail corporate world at a Wal-Mart wannabe. In his first career he had been a twenty year lifer in the Navy (as a cook). Basically Larry is the go-getter type which every large company is looking for to oversee operations down at the base. Problem: Larry is stuck in that storefront job having been overlooked for promotions losing to lesser employees. Reason: Larry does not have a college diploma in back of his name which the corporate eagles deem a requirement for advancement.

In the cutthroat world of retail that means Larry is out. Hell let’s not be gentle about this. Larry is fired, out, on the street, unemployed. Yeah, I know most large companies, maybe all large companies, would be thrilled to lower their bottom lines by having cheap go-getter labor but we will let that pass. As we will with the idea that a college degree is now required in order to advance in the lower reaches of the corporate world. Just ask those kids with high student debt loans working as wait staff and Uber drivers if I am lying.

Of course Larry had built his life around that second career. Or had wanted to before his firing and his divorce. The long and short of it was that Larry’s assets, his house mainly, were “underwater.” What to do? Well after many rebuffs in the job market (he didn’t want to go back to that cook’s life business) he decided to go to college, to get some new white collar skills in the age of globalization’s new standard of several retraining processes in one’s working life. Obviously Larry was not going to some high-end elite Ivy League school (although they are looking for diversity these days and Larry’s resume might get him some play) but to the more practical junior college system (as it exists in California the scene of the action in this film). So staid middle-aged Larry (although if memory serves Tom Hanks first came on the horizon as a closet cross-dresser in television’s Bosom Buddies which making comic plots about such behavior was not so political incorrect-and insensitive making him very much the high, high side of “middle-aged”) goes to college, takes some courses which will make him globalization marketable in the new international economy.    

Junior colleges in California (and elsewhere) are really diverse operations, maybe more diverse than many four year college campuses so there is a serious mix of racial, ethnic, class and age factors in the student population. Our staid Larry though is something of a hidden gem since a group of younger student “bikers” took him under their wings. Practical Larry seeing that he would never get out from under his debt has abandoned his gas-guzzler SUV for a “bike” purchased from a neighbor who is running an on-going flea market out of his premises. That “bike” business should be explained. I am not talking about some “hog”, and the group he joined as some vision out of the late Hunter Thompson’s evil dirty Hell’s Angels who would put fear is every self-respecting citizen. No, these are motor scooter enthusiasts which after viewing this film will now become a “hip” fad among non-evil, non-dirty folk who want cheap transportation and to be “cool” at the same time.   

Now I have not said word one about Julia Roberts, about Tom’s co-star and her role in this whole plot. As it turns out one of the courses that Larry got a recommendation to take was an “informal remarks”- based speech class. Guess who is teaching the class (and looking ice queen beautiful doing so although she has lost a step or two in that beauty department despite those great high cheekbones)? Yes Professor Tinot, Julias’ role. The good professor though is not a happy camper, seems distressed by her job teaching too social media savvy kids the beauties of the English language (which are still consideration) and getting frustrated by their seeming indifference. Is unhappy with her martial life. Bingo along comes Larry and inch by inch he kind of grows on her (after she finally dumps her blocked, blocked many ways, writer husband) and she on him in the process of Larry becoming a grade A student. 

Yeah, I know, I spent all that time throwing dust in your eyes about Hollywood finally taking a look at what globalization has done to a poor middle-aged, middle-class poor white collar smucks and what they have given us is yet another boy meets girl (okay mature man meets mature woman although some of their actions seem sophomoric) saga wrapped up as a romantic comedy. So fire me. Although this pair, Roberts, Hanks, both have Oscars on their shelves and this film is nowhere near show-casing why they deservedly received them if you have a minute take a peek.  

On The 50^th Anniversary- The Vagaries Of The Summer Of Love-“Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue” (2015)-A Documentary Film Review

DVD Review

By Associate Film Critic Alden Riley

Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue, a documentary about the life and times of blues singer Janis Joplin and the San Francisco rock and roll scene in the 1960s which nurtured her talent, 2015

On more than one occasion the now retired film editor in this space, Sam Lowell (still carrying the baggage of emeritus for all the world to revel in), would point to the fate of the Three Js as the price those of his generation what he called the Generation of ’68 for the decisive year in that turbulent time had to pay for that little jailbreak out that the better part of youth nation was trying to turn the social norm. The Three Js-Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin crashed and burned just when their stars were burning brightest and in a sense their fates wrapped up what many considered the ebb tide of those times when the slogan of the day was “drug, sex, and rock and roll” was followed by the slogan in the end “live fast, die young and make a good corpse.” Tough stuff to think about some fifty years later when evaluating the residue effects of those times on what ugliness is currently going down in America.    

The film, really a documentary, Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue, details the life and times of the third in the trilogy. Goes, as such bio pic usually all the way back to her growing up days in Port Arthur, Texas and gives us a picture through film clips and “talking head” interviews (standard in this kind of film so nothing untoward intended) of , well, Janis Joplin becoming blues singer extraordinaire Janis Joplin. Usually that look back to the roots is perfunctory, glancing at the early age when a celebrity showed promise. But the lookback in Janis’ case where she did not begin to shine until late teenage times gives a much better insight into the negative aspects, the harassment and taunts from unfeeling classmates neighbors and of her growing up that would follow her down the garden path for all her tragically short celebrity life.  

So nothing at first pointed to Janis becoming a blues star except a serious bout of loneliness and harassment growing up giving her plenty of personal blues which later she may have been able to feed off of when in performance. At a steep price as it turned out. All she knew was early on that she had to leave Texas and her family behind. There were many false starts including some early time in San Francisco trying to work the budding folk circuit. All she got from that was habit for drugs, for evil heroin above all. And shipment back to Texas.

Then something happened, something she was able to grab onto when she returned to Frisco in the early stages of the Summer of Love. A new sound was being born under the sign of a particular Frisco beat and sensibility. Janis was able via contact with a group of young “hungry” musicians, Big Brother and the Holding Company, to make a big imprint of the scene. That combination of singing, shouting, screaming from a white girl found a home in the trendy, trend setting Bay Area (one black commentator/band member though she was black before he saw her in person). All you have to do is look at the whole series of poster art concert announcements which have been exhibited at the de Young Museum in its celebration of the Summer of Love to know that she and the band made every important concert in the area over a few year period. Decisive was the Monterrey Pops Festival (as it was for other up and coming performers as well) where she blew the house away.  

Eventually Janis broke with the band, with Big Brother probably a bad career move, and moved on to her own career as a solo artist. (In an interesting take one rock critic argued that she should leave the band after she did called on her to come back but that has more to do with fickle critics than career moves) And gained even more fame. Gained headlines and magazine covers. But the pain of that deep-seated Texas hard winds, that blue norther pain, never let her be and in the end the “fixer” man did his evil work and she fell through the hole at 27 in 1970.

During the one hour and forty-five minutes of the film though you get to know why she was an icon of the Summer of Love that dwindled into the dust some fifty years ago. Why she brought a new sensibility to rock and blues. Watch this one to remember what it was like when women, men too, played rock and roll for keeps. Whatever the price.   

On The Great White Way-Broadway-The Indie Film “Opening Night”(2016)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Associate Film Critic Alden Riley

    

Opening Night, starring Topher Grace, Alona Tal, 2016

I am totally fed up with and refuse to, except on an infrequent assignment, to watch any comedic offerings on commercial television, traditional or cable. Moreover most, certainly not all by any means but most, current comedic efforts on the big screen leave me cold. Then along comes an indie film, an indie comic film, Opening Night, centered on the trials and tribulations of opening night on the Great White Way, Broadway and for the ninety minutes of the production I witnessed what a good ensemble cast and a strong idea can do to restore my faith in the genre.     

The beauty of the film is simplicity itself. Go backstage live on the opening night of a Broadway musical comedy and work it out from there. Work it out through following, sometimes at high and reckless speed, what a production manager has to go through to get everything in order for the patrons out front who have paid too much money to get tickets and be amused. Nick, played by Topher Grace, a failed singer trying to hold his life together by being busy around the set plays the production manager and his estranged love, Chloe, played by Alona Tal, an understudy for the main female role who by chance gets to go before the bright lights are the central story around which all the antics and secondary stories are built. (Okay, okay I know the “real” plot in another version of the boy meets girl trope that has been hung on half the movies ever made but I will give that a pass this time)          

Along the way Nick not only has to deal with his suppressed feelings for Chloe and his disappointment that he is not among the working cast but fend off every imaginable “drama” from a touchy male lead to an “over the hill” female lead and a screwball producer who is desperate for a hit. All of this to present a musical comedy about the plight of one-hit wonders and their fates in the record industry (providing some very funny songs on that subject on stage). Naturally as is the seeming the trend these days every “intersected” gender, racial, ethnic, sexual orientation and class element has to have a play. For the most part all to the good effect. See this one.       

What Is In A Name-The Film Adaptation Of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance Of Being Earnest”(1952)-A Review

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

The Importance Of Being Earnest, starring Michael Redgrave, Michael Denison, Dame Edith Evans, directed by Anthony Asquith, 1952    

No question the great late 19^th century English playwright Oscar Wilde took a terrible beating from hypercritical late Victorian society for his little ‘vice’-“the act that dare not speak its name” to use the quant phrase used in polite society for homosexuality. (Victorian society hypercritical since as far as the upper crust and certainly in the literary and culture milieus there were plenty of closeted, and not so closeted in some places, homosexuals who were tolerated if not celebrated). Certainly today his activities would have drawn little attention in Western society anyway but then such exposure devastated his career.

Before Wilde’s fall, before he took his court room beating sending him to Reading Gaol and infamy he wrote and had produced the play upon which the film under review is based, The Importance Of Being Earnest. A play which was a humorous sent-up of all the hypocrisy, manners and tedium of upper-crust bourgeois society. There was not necessarily any great political message to the work but by virtue of the truly great use of dialogue Oscar was able to drive his spears in all the better. The film adaptation by Anthony Asquith is pretty fateful to the original play and the acting is of a high order so we get today a fairly decent sense of what was going on in some circles in those bygone days.             

Here’s the simple plotline on which the fast-paced dialogue rises and falls. A couple of free-wheeling gentleman, representing country and city, Jack and Algy having time on their hands and wicked senses of humor carry around some assumed names, Ernest for the former and Bunbury for the latter in order to brush off any untoward questions or people. They both have the same problem or aspects of the same problem. They long for female companionship, for proper marriages. Jack is in love with Algy’s cousin the aristocratic Gwendolyn and Algy is in love with Jack’s ward out in his country estate Cecily.Therein lies the dilemma. Jack is caught up in a bind because having under the assumed name Ernest he has caught Gwen’s attentions although she is fickle enough only to want to marry a man named Ernest. Cecily by a certain sleight of hand by Algy only wants to marry a man named Ernest as well.         

With that conundrum in mind the chase is on. Jack has to invent a younger brother Ernest whom he tries to kill off but who shows up at the country estate door but Algy posing as Jack’s supposedly late brother Ernest. Then Gwen, mother in tow shows up as well to find out whether Jack, who has willingly proposed to Gwen and she has accepted, has the correct lineage to betroth her daughter. Every social and cultural prejudice of the day gets a work-out as in the end love conquers all once Jack, who turned out to be a foundling, actually had been born with the name Ernest. Nice touch. A great sent-up and great fun if not a big time look at the foibles of late Victorian society.