From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Cold War Night- Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer Is On The Case- “Kiss Me Deadly”- A Film Review

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_Me_Deadly

Click on the headline to link to a <i>Wikipedia</i> entry for <i>Kiss Me Deadly</i>.

<b>DVD Review

Kiss Me Deadly, Ralph Meeker, Cloris Leachman, directed by Robert Aldrich, 1955</b>

Sure I‘m a <i>film noir</i> buff. And sure I like my film detectives that way as well, Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, Phillip Marlowe and so on. Normally Mickey Spillane and his 1950s-style detective, Mike Hammer, would no hit my radar though. Believe me I did, however, spent many a misbegotten hour reading Spillane’s detective stories, maybe as much for cover art work that ran to provocative bosomy, half-clothed <i>femme fatale</i> dames in distress as for the insipid story line that ran heavily to Mike’s anti-communist warrior pose ready to smash heads at the drop of a hat, and grab an off-hand kiss from every dame he ran into along the way. Aside for the question of that scurrilous (now scurrilous, maybe) cover art that is better left for another day my tastes in detectives were more to the “highbrow” Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and their more knight-errant-worthy story lines, and a little more reserve in the fist department, although for a damsel in distress they were ready to duke it out with anyone, and gladly.

That said, now along comes this classic 1950s <i>film noir</i> Mike Hammer story line, Kiss Me Deadly,  and I was hooked, well, maybe not hooked so much as intrigued by it. Moreover, director Richard Aldrich seems to have had a flair for the <i>noir</i> film, from those black and white filmed shots of streets scenes in the seamy Los Angeles be-bop night (and day too, come to think of it), to an incredible be-bop jazz bar scene, complete with “torch” singer where after the loss of a friend Mike gets plastered (drunk), to the endless line-up of high end “golden age of the automobile” cars on display. Of course there is the normal bevy (maybe two bevies, I didn’t count) of alluring, mysterious women just waiting to fall into Mike’s arms when he comes within fifty paces of them, and he is, as usual, ready to put on his white knight uniform when he senses that something in evil in the world, and he most definitely is willing to thumb his nose as the governmental authorities who are always just a step, or seven, behind the flow of the action. But most of that is all in a day’s work for a <i>noir</i> detective. What makes this one stick out is the doom’s day plot.

Of course, the 1950s was not only about the rise of the “beats” and of teen alienation and angst-driven rock and roll but the heart of the international Cold War, a scary time no question, where if things had taken a half-twist a different way. Well, who knows, but it was not going to be pretty. And part of that Cold War, a central part, was the presence of the “bomb,, and for those who are too young to remember that was nothing but the atomic and hydrogen bombs that could, at any non-be-bop minute, blow the planet away.

And it is that threat that underlines old Mickey Spillane’s tale. See, with that kind of threat, but also the power potential, private parties, evil private parties could think of all kinds of nasty ways to wreak havoc on the world. If only they could get just a little of that bomb power. And that lust, that seemingly eternal lust, for power by certain of our fellows is where we are heading. See, someone privy to the atomic secrets had a little pot of the stuff ready for the highest bidder. And the highest bidder, so to speak, also happens to be a guy with plenty of dough to buy a ton of modern art (and a fondness for classic quotes). I knew there was something funny about those modern art collecting guys. Didn’t you?

And all it takes to spoil that nefarious plan is one Mike Hammer. Now, and here is the beauty of the Spillane method, this is not for governmental agents to handle, as one would think in trusting 1950s America, although they are hot on the trail but one thread worn detective. Thread worn? Yes, threadworm. See Mike is nothing but a low-rent, dirt-peddling divorce work detective (in the days when such dirt was necessary to get that desperate divorce), working this racket with his girl Friday (and lure), Velda. But see maybe Mike just fell on hard times and needed some dough (although his car, office set-up, digs… and fetching Velda belie that). But once Mike gets on the case, and only when he knows in his gut that something is wrong and he has that feeling here, then they are no limits. He faces off the mob (naturally, if there is something evil to broker they are in on it), half-mad women (one that he picked up on the hitchhike road, kind of, and her roommate) and that relentless modern art collector before he is through. I could go on but, really, this is one you have to see. And add to your list of <i>film noir</i> be-bop nights.

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin- Out In The Jukebox Saturday Night

Recently I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a classic rock series that goes under the general title <i>The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era</i>. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

And we had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that <em>Zeitgeist</em> today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered) hanging from the lips, Coke, big sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor jukebox coin devouring, playing some “hot” song for the nth time that night, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. Of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, merely to share a sundae, natch. And the same for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their damn rock music, the now eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing.

Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “ inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them). Moreover, I clued you in, and keep this quiet, about sex; or rather I should say “doin’ the do” in case the kids are around, and about the local “custom” (for any anthropologists present) of ocean-waved Atlantic “watching the submarine races.”

Whee! That’s maybe enough memory lane stuff for a lifetime, especially for those with weak hearts. But, no, your intrepid messenger feels the need to go back indoors again and take a little different look at that be-bop jukebox Saturday night scene as it unfolded in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hey, you could have found the old jukebox in lots of places in those days. Bowling alleys, drugstores (drugstores with soda fountains- why else would healthy, young, sex-charged high school students go to such an old-timer-got-to-get-my- medicine-for-the-arthritis place. Why indeed, although there are secrets in such places that I will tell you about some other time when I’m not jazzed up to go be-bop juke-boxing around the town.), pizza parlors, drive-in restaurants, and so on. Basically any place where kids were hot for some special song and wanted to play it until the cows came home. And had the coins to satisfy their hunger.

A lot of it was to kill time waiting for this or that, although the basic reason was these were all places where you could show off your stuff, and maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who attracted your attention as they came in the door. The cover artwork on this compilation that I am thinking of just now shows dreamy girls waiting for their platters (records, okay) to work their way up the mechanism that took them from the stack and laid them out on the player. There is your chance, boy, grab it. Just hanging around the machine with some cashmere-sweatered, beehive-haired (or bobbed, kind of), well-shaped brunette (or blond, but I favored brunettes in those days) chatting idly was worth at least a date (or, more often, a telephone number to call). Not after nine at night though or before eight because that was when she was talking to her boyfriend. Lucky guy, maybe. 

But here is where the real skill came in. Just hanging casually around the old box, especially on a no, or low, dough day waiting on a twist (one of eight million guy slang words for girl in our old working class neighborhood) to come by and put her quarter in (giving three or five selections depending what kind of place the jukebox was located in) talking to her friends as she made those selections. Usually the first couple were easy, some old boyfriend memory, or some wistful tryst remembrance, but then she got contemplative, or fidgety, over what to pick next.

Then you made your move-“Have you heard <em>Only You</em>? NO! Well, you just have to hear that thing and it will cheer you right up.” Or some such line. Of course, you wanted to hear the damn thing. But see, a song like that (as opposed to Chuck Berry’s <em>Sweet Little Rock and Roller</em>, let’s say) showed you were a sensitive guy, and maybe worth talking to … for just a minute, I got to get back to my girlfriends, etc., etc. Oh, jukebox you baby. And guess what. On that self-same jukebox you were very, very likely to hear some of the songs from that compilation I am thinking about. Here are the stick outs (and a few that worked some of that “magic” mentioned above on tough nights):

<em>Oh Julie</em>, The Crescendos (a great one if you knew, or thought you knew, or wanted to believe that girl at the jukebox’s name was Julie); <em>Lavender Blue</em>, Sammy Turner (good talk song especially on the word play); <em>Sweet Little Rock and Roller</em>, Chuck Berry (discussed above, and worthy of consideration if your tastes ran to those heart-breaking little rock and rollers. I will tell you about the ONE time it came in handy sometime); <em>You Were Mine</em>, The Fireflies; <em>Susie Darlin’,</em> Robin Luke (ditto the Julie thing above); <em>Only You</em>, The Platters (keep this one a secret, okay, unless you really are a sensitive guy).

From The Pen Of  Peter Paul Markin-Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When Frankie Roamed The Teenage Dance Clubs

In a recent series of sketches that I did in the form of scenes, scenes from the hitchhike road in search of the great American West night in the late 1960s, a time later than the time of Frankie’s early 1960s old working class neighborhood kingly time, I noted that I had about a thousand truck stop diner stories left over from those hitchhike road days. On reflection though, I realized that I really had about three diner stories with many variations. Not so with Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, stories. I have got a thousand of them, or so it seems, all different. Hey, you already, if you have been attentive, know a few Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, stories (okay, I will stop, or try to stop, using that full designation and just call him plain, old, ordinary, vanilla Frankie just like everybody else alright).

Yah, you already know the Frankie (see I told you I could do it) story about how he lazily spent a hot late August 1960 summer before entering high school day working his way up the streets of the old neighborhood to get some potato salad (and other stuff too) for his family’s Labor Day picnic. And he got a cameo appearance in the tear jerk heart-rendering saga of my first day of high school in that same year where I, vicariously, attempted to overthrow his lordship with the nubiles (girls, for those not from the old neighborhood, although there were plenty of other terms of art to designate the fair sex then, most of them getting their start in local teenage social usage from Frankie’s mouth). That effort, that attempt at copping his “style” like many things associated with one-of-a-kind Frankie proved unsuccessful as it turned out.

But as this story will demonstrate old Frankie, Frankie from (oops, I forgot I am not doing that anymore) was not only the king of the old neighborhood but roamed, or tried to roam far afield, especially if the word "girls" was involved. So this will be another Frankie and the girls story, at least part way. The milieu though will be somewhat different for those who only know Frankie in his usual haunts; the wall in front of Salducci’s pizza parlor where he was the undisputed king hell king of the high school corner boy night all the way through high school, the wall in front of Doc’s drugstore where he was the undisputed corner boy king of the junior high school night and later when he merely held up a wall as a corner boy prince of various mom and   pop variety stores. This time, in a way, Frankie goes “uptown.”

One of the other places where Frankie tried to extend his kingdom was the local teen night club (although we did not call it that then but that was the idea). You know a place where kids, late teenage kids, could dance to live music from some cover band and drink…sodas. Yah, the idea was to keep kids off the streets, out of the cars, and under a watchful eye on Friday and Saturday night so they didn’t drink booze and get all crazy and messed up. Of course, anyone with half a wit, if they wanted to get booze, had no real problem as long as there was some desperate wino to make your purchase for you. But, at least, the idea was no booze on the premises of these clubs and that was pretty much the case.

Now this club, this teen dance club, that Frankie has his eye on, was the primo such place around. Sure, there were other smaller venues, but that was kid’s stuff, young teen stuff, no account, no matter stuff. If you had dreams of kingship then the Sea ‘n’ Surf Club was the place to place your throne. But, see, this club was several miles away from the old neighborhood, and that meant several miles of other guys who were kings of their neighborhoods, but also several miles of all kinds of different girls that Frankie (and I, as well) had no clue about. And the beauty of this, the real beauty for Frankie was that it was doable. Why? Old ball and chain girlfriend forever, junior high and Doc’s wall girlfriend forever, main squeeze and one thousand up and down flame battles that I have no time to speak of now forever , Joanne was not allowed by her parents to go to teen dance clubs, period. And period meant period, to old Frankie’s smiles.

This club had the added advantage, as its name gives away, of being by the sea, by the ocean so that if the dancing got too hot, or it was too crowded, or if you got lucky then there you were handy to a ready-made romantic venue. Now American Great Plains prairie guys and dolls may not appreciate this convenience (although I am sure you had your own local lovers’ lane "hot spots") but to have the sea as a companion in the great boy meets girl struggle was pure magic. See, and everybody knew this or found out about it fast enough, if a girl wanted to catch some "fresh air" and agreed to go with you then you were “in like flint” for the night. That also meant though that, when intermission ended, or when the steamed-up couple came up for air that nobody else was supposed to cut in on their scene. This may all sound complicated but, come on now, you were all teens once, and you figured it out easily enough, right? This in any case is what Frankie wanted to be king of. The scene, that is.

This club, by the way, this hallowed memory club, could not stand the light of day, although at night it was like the enchanted castle. By day it looked just like another faux Coney Island low-rent carnival, bad trip place ready for the demolition ball ballroom. But the night, oh, the night was all we cared about. And for weeks before Frankie was ready to make his big move the conquest of this place thing, the imagining of it, took on something like the quest for a holy grail.

Finally, Friday finally, summertime Friday night finally, came (he had a date with his ever- lovin’ big flame Joanne for Saturday that week so Saturday it was) and he was ready to make his move. Let me outline the plan as he told it to me. The idea, if Tommy 40 Winks (I did not make that name up; I don’t have that kind of imagination. That was his nickname, hell, mine, was, for a while, Boyo, and later Be-bop Benny, go figure), showed up was to make the scene with whatever girl he was dancing with, at least that was the idea. 40 Winks, for lack of a better term was the “king” of the club, although by default because no one had messed with him, or his crowd before.

And also he, Tommy 40 Winks,  was the “boss” dancer of the universe and the girls were all kind of swoony, or at least, semi-swoony over his moves, especially when he got his Elvis swivel thing going. Yah, now that I think about it he did seem to make the girls sweat. Sure, 40 Winks was going to be there. See Frankie was going to upset that fresh air “rule” and since nobody, not even me, ever accused Frankie of not being in love with himself, his “projects,” or his “style” he figured it was a cinch. Now, forty or fifty years later I can see where there was a certain flaw in the plan.

Why? Well, let me cut to the chase here, a little anyway. When we showed up at the club everything was fine. Everybody kind of conceded that this was “neutral” ground, at least inside, and the management of the place had employed more college football player-types than one could shake a stick at to enforce the peace. So any “turf” wars would have to be fought out on the dance floor, or elsewhere. That night the music, live music from a local cover band that was trying to move up in the teen club pecking order was “hot”. They got the joint, 40 Winks, and old Frankie fired up right away with a big sound version of <i>Good Rockin’ Tonight</i>. Eventually Tommy 40 Winks eyed this one sneeze (girl, blame Frankie and his eight hundred names ) from our school, although none of us, including Frankie, had even come with fifty paces of her, here or in school.

Her name was Anna, but let’s just call her a Grace Kelley-wannabe, or could-be or something, and be done with it. In any case when she had finished dancing that <i>Good Rockin’ Tonight</i> with some goof (meaning non-Frankie friend or associate) the temperature in the place went up a collective bunch of degrees. Even I was thinking of getting closer than 50 paces from her. Okay this was going to be the prize, boys

40 Winks and Frankie both approached Ms. Wonderful for the next dance (and, hopefully, for the full dance card), a slow one it seemed from the way the band was tuning up. Yah, it was, The Platters, <i>Stand By Me</i>. 40 Winks got the nod. Oh, boy. First round 40 Winks. They started dancing and other couples gave them some room because they were putting on something of a show.  I didn’t tell Frankie this but he, his plans, and his teen club crown were doomed. His look kind of said the same thing. But here is where you could never tell about Frankie. After that dance was he went back over to Anna for another ask. Again, no go. And no go all the way to intermission.

Christ, Francis Xavier Riley, pure-bred Irish man was red, red as a Dublin rose by then. He was done for, especially as this national treasure of a girl took the air, the fresh air with 40 Winks. And she made  a big deal out of it in front of half the couples attending, and more importantly, in front of Frankie. Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood but not of the wide teen kingdom. For one of the few times in our junior high school and high school careers together I saw Frankie throw in the towel. It wasn’t pretty. He didn’t show up at that club for a long time afterward, and I didn’t blame him.

But here is where life, teenage life was (is) funny sometimes. My brother, my corner boy king, my be-bop buddy Frankie was set up, and set up bad. How? Well, Anna, old sweet Grace Kelley wannabe Anna (and now that I think about could be), actually was smitten, or whatever you want to call it, with Frankie from seeing him around school. Yes, Frankie. But, and this is the way Frankie told me the story some time later after the event, Anna and firebrand Joanne, sweet Frankie girlfriend Joanne, had classes together and, moreover, were related to each other distantly like a lot of kids were related to each other in the old neighborhood. Anna knew that Frankie was Joanne’s honey (I am being nice here we didn’t get along well many times) so they talked it out and Anna passed on old Frankie. But, see, Joanne got wind of Frankie’s no ball and chain Joanne teen dance club scheme and she and Anna patched this deal up to keep Frankie out of harm’s way. Women!

Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- The Teen Queens’ “Eddie My Love” (1956) - A 55th Anniversary, Of Sorts- Billie's 1956 View

<b>Markin comment:

</b>

This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hardworking, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived, and what we listened to back in the day.

<b>EDDIE MY LOVE

(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)</b>

The Teen Queens - 1956

The Fontane Sisters - 1956

The Chordettes - 1956

Dee Dee Sharp - 1962

Also recorded by:

Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.

Eddie, my love, I love you so

How I wanted for you, you'll never know

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait to long

Eddie, please write me one line

Tell me your love is still only mine

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

(Transcribed from the Teen Queens

recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)

**********

Billie here, William James Bradley, if you don’t know already. To “the projects” born but you don’t need, or at least you don’t absolutely need to know that to get the drift of what I have to say here. I am here to give my take on this latest song, <i>Eddie My Love</i>, that just came out and that the girls are going weepy over, and the guys are saying “that a boy, Eddie.” At least that’s what the wiser guys I hang around with say when they hear the record played on the radio. Except, of course, sappy Markin, Peter Paul Markin if you don’t know, my best friend at Adamsville Elementary School (or maybe best friend, he has never told me one way or the other what it was with us from his end, but sappy as he may be at times, he is my best friend from my end) who thinks Eddie should be righteous and return to his forlorn girl. What is he kidding? Eddie keep moving wherever you are, and keep moving fast. And please, please don’t go within a mile of a post office. 

Why do I hold such an opinion and what gives me the “authority”, some authority like the pope of rock and roll, or something to speak this way? Well, first off, unlike Markin, I take my rock and roll, my rock and roll lyrics seriously, hell, I have written some myself. Also I have some talent in this field and have won vocal competitions (and dance ones too), although there have been a few more I should have won. Yah, should have won but the fix was in, the fix was in big time, against project kids getting a break, a chance to make something out of the jailbreak music we are hearing. I’ll tell you about those bad breaks some time but now I am hot to straighten everybody out, even Markin, on this one. Markin pays attention to, too much attention to, the “social” end of the question, looking for some kind of teenage justice in this wicked old world when there ain’t none. Get it, Peter Paul.

Look, I can read between the lines of this story just like anybody else, any pre-teenage or teenage anybody else. Parents, my parents, Markin’s parents, Ozzie and Harriet, whoever, couldn’t get it if you gave them that Rosetta Stone they discovered to help them with old time Egyptian writing and that we read about in Mr. Barry’s class. No way. But Billie, William James Bradley, who will not let any grass grow beneath his feet, is wise, very wise to the scene. Hey, it’s not rocket science stuff; it’s simply the age old summer fling thing. Eddie, handsome, money in his pocket, super-charged car under his feet, gas in the tank, and an attitude that he is king of the known world, the known teenage world, sees this cutie, makes his play, they have some fun, some teenage version of adult fun for any not wise kids, school days come and he is off to his next cutie. Yah, he said he would write and, personally, I think that was a mistake. A quick “I'll be in touch,” and kiss on the cheek would have been smarter.

See Eddie, love ‘em and leave ‘em Eddie, is really a hero. What did this teen queen think was going to happen when Eddie blew into town? Love, marriage and here comes the teen queen with a baby carriage. Please. Eddie, Eddie your love ain’t got no time for that. And that old threatening to do herself in or whatever she means by “my next day might be my last,” is the oldest trick in the book, the oldest snare a guy trick that is. Yah, maybe someday when things are better, and guys don’t have that itch, that itch to move on, and maybe can settle down in one place and have plenty of dough, plenty of ambition, and the old wicked world starts taking care of its own better. Whoa… wait a minute, I’m starting to sound like Markin. Jesus, no. Eddie just keep moving, okay. Billie’s pulling for you.

Feel The Bern

Once Again On The Great Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Art Heist-With Plenty of Speculation And of With No Apologies

By Sam Lowell

If you have been on the planet for more than a few minutes now you know two things-one, I am through the vehicle of commemorating Rembrandt’s 350^th birthday linking that event up to speculation about the “who and how did they do it” of the famous Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist which hauled away some of Rembrandt’s works still allegedly missing.  (Maybe “infamous” is a better word but I will stick with famous for my purposes since I admire such works of imaginative con artistry and pluck by parties unknown and who in my youth I would have idolized like we did Pretty James Preston, the single-handed legendary motorcycle bank robber who captured the attention of a bunch of desperately poor working class kids for his bravado acts until the day they laid him low, maybe kept our attention after he fell down as well.)    

I have shared my speculations with the likes of Seth Garth whose addiction to private eye film noir and books is loaded up with speculations and inside jobs waiting to be uncovered by stealthy investigators who usually get their “man,” usually solve whatever got then a hundred a day plus expenses. I have also shared my ideas, and this is important here, with fellow writer and amateur art critic Laura Perkins (she insists on the “amateur” part since she is in a running battle with a professional art critic Clarence Dewar from Art Today who has made it clear that he loathes what he calls “citizen critics,” apparently a sub-species not worthy of  listening to) since she too has been fascinated by the scope of the heist and its remaining unsolved after all these years.

(On my speculation that it was the well-known late Whitey Bulger or one of his kindred as will be noted below she was totally fixated to the extent of having something of a “crush” on him. Strangely some well-brought up gentile women, maybe men too, are attracted to the dangerous types, at least from afar. I will never forget the day one of my high school friends was sitting with Minnie Murphy, who by everybody’s account was the prettiest girl in our school and the legendary Pretty James Preston came by, nodded for her to get on the back of his motorcycle and off they went without a murmur. We never saw nor heard of Minnie again except a rumor that she was on the opposite corner, assumed to be a look-out, the day Pretty James tried to single-handedly knock over the Granite National Bank and through some rent-a-cop fuck up wound up face down with a few public copper slugs in him for his last efforts.)           

Of course, Laura’s interests have been somewhat, no, very divided over the past few months, what she has called “gone dark” on the Gardner business, the Rembrandt commemoration business either since she does not as a rule like the 16^th and 17^th century Dutch and Flemish art epitomized by that master with sour-faced if prosperous bourgeois printed forever on our poor brains along with their forlorn wives and broods. She, as she has explained in a recent article on the amazing “discovery” of 26 presumed lost or destroyed works by the pioneer German Abstract Impressionist Raybolt Drexel, had a small research part in that adventure. And now has some contractual arrangement with the now former Abstract Impressionist curator at the Met to do a book on the long-winding road to finding these treasures brought to American soil clandestinely rather than having been burned at the stake during the “night of the long knives” against so-called “degenerate art” when the Nazis ran the show in Germany in the 1930s and later most of Europe.       

The reason I am referencing that article is that in that piece she pointedly made references to the various theories that she claimed I had concerning the Gardner heist. Called my speculations –

“Sam Lowell’s on-going battle, shadow boxing really, about the fate of the masterpieces that were stolen in the heist of the century (20^th) at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston some thirty years ago. Sam’s main beef, no, point, no, admiration, having been nothing but a charter member corner boy in his desperately poor youth so always on the lookout for the easy score and always just a little East of Eden on the legality question, was how easy the heist had been.

“Certainly to his eyes and ears with plenty of inside help and he didn’t mean the silly rent-a-cops who were supposed to protect the crown jewels but probably some well-positioned curators and volunteer tour guides. You know the cubby hole knowledge of some exotic artist for which some well-placed curators have written a seamless 66-page essay on as part of some exhibition and the suburban matrons who thrill to jabber their six-sentence knowledge of say, well, Rembrandt. Or as likely among those “volunteer” art students from the Museum School and Mass Art who facing the prospect of garret life for the next few decades decided to find a benefactor like the old artists, like Rembrandt if I am not mistaken, did in the courts and chanceries of Europe back in the day. If the reader will recall at least one curator, a Holbein the Younger expert and a couple of art students (not sure from which school) left the staff shortly after the theft never to be heard from again after a light FBI grilling…

“More importantly than who qualified as prime suspects for the job on the inside for the actual thefts though, the thirty-year question really, was how the various agencies investigating the whereabouts of the stuff have come up mainly with egg on their faces. Sam, even today has a certain amount of glee when he describes the lightweight work done by the FBI and Boston Police  to recover the masterpieces even with the so-called big rewards available (although really chump change compared to the value of the art today at half a billion maybe more today so you know that missing curator and those so-called art students are not giving up squat, Sam’s word, not playing ball with the law, also Sam’s, else find themselves in stir. What a laugh.)    

“Frankly, Sam, and through Sam, me have had a few so-called theories about the fate of the works, where they are, who had them and who has them now. It did not take old Seth Garth long to figure out where such stuff would be in the Greater Boston area once he and Sam put their heads together. So it was no surprise, made perfect sense to me to have known that the works had been stored in the Edward McCormick Bathhouse, or really the shed where they keep the tools and trucks,  over on Carson Beach for years so Whitey Bulger, complete with pink wig and paper bag beer sitting on the adjacent seawall or the seats around the bocce courts could eye them at his pleasure while he was on the run. “The key link was one guy, a career criminal mostly but with a François Villon poetic heart, who claimed to be the President of Rock and Roll, Myles Connors, who did the detail work (and also did as far as we know some very good preservation and protective work to keep the “Big 13” from the elements coming off of Dorchester Bay).

Probably had things worked out Whitey’s way the artworks would still be over in the bathhouse, still be a one-man museum exhibition. But all of that art for art’s sake that a painter named James McNeil Abbot Whistler laid on an unsuspecting world back in the 19^th century with his moody color schemes passing off as art  went in the trash barrel because once Whitey needed dough for his defense in a fistful of murder and mayhem charges he sold all the good stuff, sold everything I believe except those hazy sketches nobody would really want today except museum curators desperate to fill up their artist retrospectives with enough material to not leave any empty spaces. Probably that old clunky Chinese urn or whatever the damn thing was or that silly Eagle from some regiment that Napoleon led to defeat around 1814.

Sold the lot minus the above-mentioned loss-leaders to a guy, I think his name is Tom Steyers, something like that, not the guy running for President I don’t think but who knows, a hedge fund guy who has some social consciousness,  who has the good stuff locked up somewhere in order to peep at them on occasion but mainly to leave his kids with some start-up dough if they too wanted to be socially conscious billionaires. The second-rate stuff for all I know may still be in the bathhouse garage but don’t quote me on that or I’d be thrown in Dorchester Bay if the heat was on.” 

I thought I was going to go crazy, I hear Seth was after Laura’s head as well, when she published that material as an off-hand way to blow off my so-called major insights into that old art news Gardner heist against her “very real” part in the discovery of  the missing Raybolt Drexel masterworks which she claims has added to our current sense of human culture and not some Dutch soiled dark bourgeois noise about a guy who had no real colors in his palette even if he could draw like crazy. Here is the blow-off exactly-    

“Frankly though, especially now that Whitey has taken the fall, has gone to sleep with the fishes, that is all old news, speculation and macho guy talk like Sam and Seth get into when they need some hot air-time and not worthy of my time. Not worthy of my time as an acknowledged and proud amateur art critic…”

That may be but what has me crazed out in how wrong she has gotten a lot of what I have discussed, discussed many times with her and others about the truly logical way to look at the art heist of the 20^th century done right in the backyard so to speak. She has balled it up so badly that I think somebody, the public coppers and the FBI might think I had some inside information on the case. Believe me if I had that solid information then I would be down on the Fenway this minute picking up that juicy check for a few million that those wayward, volunteer guides, and broke art students turned their noises up at for much more filthy lucre. I would figure out some way to get by with such funds, no question. What has me exercised though is to get the story strange to tidy up the loose ends and maybe the reader will understand why I was pissed off at Laura not for balling the whole thing up but for not getting what the real story was.

No question the late Whitey Bulger’s fingerprints are all over this heist as was everything that moved, legally or illegally, in Boston when he was king of the hill back in the day, so-called on the run or not. Don’t ask me why he wanted the culture stuff, why he wanted some artwork (as opposed to a few tons of cocaine or heroin to move like clockwork) that is up to him, and now his maker. The mix of materials clipped against what could have been grabbed makes it obvious that whoever pulled the caper was doing it as an amateur art theft and not some systematic looting. Except maybe that loss-leader Napoleonic regimental standard that might have struck Whitey’s oversized fancy. The idea, if it came from him, or if somebody was looking for Rembrandts and he used the junky stuff to throw the authorities off as a cover in any case I remember as a kid that the rumor around the neighborhood, around the Acre was that Whitey had sent a couple of his boyos in dressed in cop uniforms but in a civilian car to waste some malcontents. Bingo the same idea for the heist-low visibility, low attention around the be-bop Fenway.

Here’s the beauty though-the stuff where I shine in all my speculations. This is where the classic inside job comes in, where the missing and long gone curator (since identified as Holbein the Younger scholar Ethel Blaine), that head volunteer guide for the Rembrandts (since identified as Lois Devine) and the two art student volunteers (one since identified as Adam Ball, the other still not identified so perhaps not an art student after all) come in. All four after short and incomplete interviews with the BPD and FBI “vanished.” It is possible Whitey left no traces but probably the big pay-out to his accomplices was left to do its work. In any case that night the deed was done, the works squirreled away-someplace.

This is where I really am speculating although not by as much as I had thought when I first figured out that Whitey was not on the so-called run but daily sitting by the Edward McCormack Bathhouse (named after the famous 1960s Speaker of the House John McCormack’s nephew who was connected with Whitey’s brother Billy I believe) wearing some disguise. (I have described it in humor as wearing a pink wig and carrying a brown bag for his beer but that is only a joke, okay.) So it figured the goods were nearby, especially since most of the guys who worked the adjacent garage, the public works area were Billy’s boys. The clincher, for me, although the coppers say no, for their own reasons, was that sometime in the mid-1990s a big section of the garage was turned over to a secured box area. Hum!           

      

That idea had all the hallmarks of one Myles Connor who was probably the overall architect of the plan, of the heist and of what to do about storing such material since he had been something of a budding artist in his time before he decided to cover himself as President of Rock and Roll and do felonies for a living. Myles would have known how to preserve the goods against those god-awful winds that came off the bay periodically. Would have known that no guys with peeking eyes were going to bother the operation once they knew the deadly Whitey interest (knowing the short road to the granite quarries in Quincy, the graveyard for old automobiles and loose bodies). Knowing that at some point Whitey was probably going to have to bail out, to get fresh cash for some deal and at least sell some of the works.

This really is where the rubber meets the road though. I do not believe that Whitey thought he would be caught, captured really out in California and thus in need of a

ton of money to dig himself out of a very big hole. This is where things can get tricky. Probably did. I mentioned, casually, to Laura that I thought Whitey probably sold off the whole lot except the obvious loss-leaders at one time. Now I am not so sure. I still believe that the loss-leaders, that urn, those sickly sketches, that silly Eagle, are over in Southie, probably still in that garage but that Whitey only sold what he needed to sell and something that would bring a quick return. Nobody should be foolish enough to believe that guys and dames with serious money and a serious arts jones wouldn’t move heaven and hell to get their hands on a Rembrandt, a Gardner one to boot.

The gloomy black market in such materials is legendary. The question is how much to pay and not where to store the damn thing from prying eyes in those cases. My guess is you can kiss off at least one Rembrandt for several generations, maybe more.

   

That is the basis of my notion, a more solid one than how many items have been sold off as of today, that Whitey did a quick sale to some hedge-fund guy named Steyers, something like that although I am informed that it is not the guy running forlornly at this point for POTUS to raise the needed cash. Beyond that we are a still seekers, still would like to know for example whether the inside jobbers were paid off with works of art and not hard cash at the time. That would lead to a whole new road of inquiry-and a major hunt for the whereabouts of those four so-called bad boys and girls. More later, from me or Seth but Laura has promised to keep hands off -and her eyes on the Drexels.

     

Frank Jackman’s Bernie Sanders “Stump Speech To All Who Will Listen Whatever Front He Finds Himself On In The Coming Months-Bernie Vision 2020 Boston from the heart and here today to testify, to give my reasons for supporting the Senator:

Recently I wrote and have begun doing a stump speech wherever people gather for political purposes giving my personal reasons for supporting Senator Sanders presidential candidacy. I have dubbed that speech ‘the defense of the republic” oration where my motivation centrally was the need to get rid of the current president as a matter of elementary hygiene and to avoid a now brewing cold civil war from turning hot. There I played to the Senator’s and my long time struggles in defense of the international progressive agenda against the endless wars, for social justice and the struggle against want which hold many people back for no purpose, sometimes as voices in the wilderness, sometimes with many at our respective backs.  

One unspoken truth which is common to both the Senator’s and my sense of the world, probably a hallmark of our generation, the remnants of the Generation of ’68 is a serious desire to NOT discuss, not to profile our individual lives, what makes us tick, what gets us on the picket lines, the rally points, the march routes. The background of our staying close to our roots all these years. With the partial exception of his kick-off campaign speech at Brooklyn College back in March he has held to that position although I have noticed he has lightened up a little of late. At some point, probably the point where I decided to write that first stump speech, I took it upon myself to get more personal, to tell why I have stayed so close to my roots in the social struggles of my lifetime. I might mention that I repeatedly have told whoever would listen in the Sanders campaign apparatus to have him concentrate on his compelling American story to better link up with the electorate in this the time when bearing one’s soul is fit for discussion, is part of the political landscape.

One thing that struck me, the key thing, that struck me about the Senator’s Brooklyn speech is toward the end, probably kicking and screaming at his advisers all the time, was when told the crowd “he knew where he came from,” knew he came from down in the dust of society. A father who immigrated to this country just in front of the Nazi onslaught which would take most of his family into the concentration camps and death, a man with no money in his pocket but an overweening desire to make it in America. The Senator grew up in that three- and one-half room rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn and that was that. No that was not that for here is the very personal link between the Senator and me. His mother like many post- World War II mothers dreamed of having her own single-family home before she passed away at an early age. It never happened. I grew up in and came of age  the Germantown projects in Quincy. My mother too in our desperate projects housing had the single family home dream which never happened for her either.

That’s the joiner but there is more. The Senator spoke of never having enough for extras, for having something like a quarter weekly allowance as a kid (against Trump’s massive allowance). Never being hungry or on the streets, nor was my family but always being ground down by the terrible struggle for necessities, for curbing the basic wants which in the richest society in the world should have been fulfilled as part of the social contract. I could go on but let me finish with this example. My father a Marine veteran of World War II had been a coalminer down in Appalachia, down in the hills and hollows of legendary Hazard, Kentucky before the war, a hillbilly who did not get pass the tenth grade. He was stationed at the Naval Depot in Hingham before he was discharged, met my mother and that was that. He stayed North always being the last hired and first fired as long as I could remember.           

My frantic young mother, totally unprepared for motherhood, did the best she could. That best she could when my father was unemployed, and no work was to be had. When there was work come each Friday paycheck she would put out white envelopes with the bill to be paid listed on the front. I don’t ever remember her being able to do any better that giving each collector enough to keep the wolves from the door. I could tell things were really bad when she would send me, maybe I was ten or eleven over to the projects office to pay the rent, pay something anyway, she was too embarrassed to go herself. Yes, Senator Sanders knows that story too well, a variation anyway and we have to stop that wanting habits hunger, and right now too. He knows where he came from as do I and have stayed close to the roots. I am proud to stand beside him.    

    

New Hampshire Canvass For Bernie -Sat Dec 7th -Feel The Bern 

Frank Jackman’s Bernie Sanders Stump Speech To All Who Will Listen Whatever Front He Finds Himself On In The Coming Months-Bernie Vision 2020 Boston from the heart and here today to testify, to give my reasons for supporting the Senator:

Yes, of course I support Senator Sanders’ “Medicare for All” and healthcare reform proposals putting our country in line with the real world. Of course, I am for the elimination of student debt based on past experiences, having put a couple of kids through college-and graduate schools. And of course, I support the Green New Deal for the future of the planet, for ourselves as well as those same kids and for our collective grandchildren.

Today though I want to get down to my primary reason for supporting the Senator.

Earlier this year, back in January, a number of us from the Boston area, veterans, including fellow VFP members, labor organizers, old time civil rights activists and other political activists seeing what we have seen for the past few years decided we had to dig in early to beat Trump. The overwhelming consensus was that Senator Sanders was the only person who could go down in the mud of what will be the 2020 sewer-etched campaign with Trump and survive. Our last best hope to avoid the catastrophe of four years of Trump unchained.

My own reason for supporting the Senator is because I am fearful for the fate of our Republic, our beautiful if flawed republican experiment which from day one has always been just a step away from being something very different once the bagmen, the grifters, the corner cutters dig in. I cannot believe, wizened as I am, that at age 73 I have to once again go out on the streets as a winter soldier, someone to defend the republican values we have painfully etched out of couple of millennia of human scratching. So be it. I had thought I had a negotiated at least in my head an “unarmed truce” with the government. I was mistaken-they still want my, your butt on a platter. 

The last time I found myself in this desperate situation was in the spring of 1968 when I went all over the East as a youth organizer for Bobbie, beautiful “seek a newer world,” ruthless in that Irish clan sense Bobbie Kennedy before he was gunned down. The villain then one common criminal, con man, unholy goof and thief Richard Milhous Nixon.

Bobbie, who had the scars to prove it, once said that Nixon represented what was the dark side of the American spirit. Trump is Nixon on steroids, and then some.

My support for Senator Sanders is deeper than whoever his Republican opponent might be and goes to the questions of trust and courage. There is a famous, although not famous enough, photograph from 1963 available via Wikipedia  showing a young college student from the University of Chicago being dragooned by the even then notorious Chicago police. Reason: participation in a demonstration to integrate the still deeply segregated Chicago housing facilities. Name: Bernard Sanders. When I saw that photograph I said to somebody who asked my opinion that if anybody asked me what kind of President I wanted just look at the photo.

Here is the invisible, the unshakable bond of solidarity, the spiritual link if you will between the Senator and me -in 1969 yes, 50 years ago if you can believe that, I had been drafted into the Army and ordered to Vietnam. I won’t give the details of my experience since this is about the Senator not me, but I served a couple of six-month terms at the Fort Devens stockade for refusing those orders, for saying no. And here in 2019 the Senator and I are still fighting that youthful fight for social justice and against war, the same good fight, still believing that, as Lincoln said, the better angels of our natures will prevail. 

This is, given my medical diagnosis, probably the last great political campaign of my life, the last time I will have the energy, the stamina and will to go down in the mud to preserve whatever culture we have accumulated currently being debased. I am very happy that I made that January decision.  I am proud to stand shoulder to shoulder in the movement being led by us, by Senator Sanders.

Present At The Creation-First Massachusetts Barnstorm To Feel The Bern- A Short Report On The Event At Masonic Hall in Cambridge November 15, 2019-by Frank Jackman   

Everybody who is even slightly connected with the Bernie campaign knows how important the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday February 11, 2020 is for our fortunes going forward. Many of us have made the trek to New Hampshire or made calls into the state through phone banks over the past several months. The strategy is firmly set now and so those of us from Massachusetts decided to have our first official in-state barnstorm (a nice old political word) event held in Cambridge Friday night November 15^th.

The evening’s event drew some two hundred fifty to three hundred attendees (rough crowd estimate, okay) to connect with the local campaign and begin the process of winning the Massachusetts primary on Super-Tuesday March 3, 2020. We were greeted by host Rich Lyons who also told his personal story of why he supported Bernie followed by Chris from the Nashua New Hampshire office who introduced the featured speaker long-time Bernie stalwart Ohio State Senator Nina Turner who held the assembled partisans spellbound with her almost preacher-like presentation (which not surprisingly she learned at her preacher mother’s knee).  

Most attendees agreed that we are on the move now that we have the triad-Bernie-Nina-AOC in place to rock the joint, smite the dragons, and bring home the nomination. Ms. Turner interspersed her political points-the importance of fighting flat-out for Medicare for All, free public college tuition and general college debt forgiveness and a Green New Deal-with her own personal story including how she met the Senator. Her story a lot like many of ours, one of cycle-breaking as she put it, was one of struggle and overcoming some damn thing other and I saw many nodding heads while she made those points. Most of all her energy (no, super-energy), her on-point presentation and her high spirits made this initial event a good jumping off joint to start the campaign.          

If you are feeling the Bern or starting to, google Ma4Bernie 2020.com to find out how you can help and find local Bernie groups in your area.