DVD Review
Harlan County, U.S.A., starring the workers of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and the women of the Brookside (Kentucky) Women’s Club, directed by Barbara Kopple, 1976
This excellent documentary, directed by Barbara Kopple, focuses on the long, somewhat isolated strike in 1973 by the new United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) local of Brookside, Kentucky coal miners fighting for a union contract against the Eastover Mining Company (a subsidiary of the massive Duke Power Company, the modern equivalent of the old villainous Peabody Mining Company well known in labor circles and in coal country songs). That long strike, the ups and downs of the battles for recognition, the changing tactics on both sides over time, the frustrations of the strikers and their wives and other supporters, and the lessons to be learned for labor militants today are what make this such a compelling and rewarding documentary to view.
That “hot running water and a big old bathtub” caption in the title may need some explaining in post-industrial America, although perhaps not by as many people as one would think. One of the virtues of this documentary is that the participants in the strike and their wives and loved ones get plenty of air time. Thus, we get to hear and see, up close and personal, them express their views, their frustrations during the strike and their hopes for a successful strike and a new contract that will provide enhanced safety standards (notoriously poor throughout the inherently dangerous history of coal mining underground and a central goal of coal miner unions up to the present day), produce more benefits and place the Eastern Kentucky miners on a equal footing with other UMWA miners.
The most poignant expression, as noted above, of that hope was provided by a poor miner’s wife living in a ramshackle old cabin (company-provided, I believe, which is not unusual in coal country) without hot running water or a proper bathtub to her daughter while the daughter was being bathed in a washtub. That, my friends, is what the class struggle meant down at the base then, and, I daresay, now. We politically-oriented labor militants may express that proposition a little more theoretically concise and analytically profuse but I dare anyone who fights for a more just society to say they can express the sense of the struggle down at the base better than that.
And what of the lessons to be learned by today’s labor militants, including today’s coal miners who have lost a great deal of the spirit of their militant history in the last almost forty years since the events depicted in this film occurred. Well, as always, the question posed by the sub-theme that drives the spirit of the struggle in this documentary and as eloquently expressed by the writer of the song in the 1930s when there was also a huge wave of class struggle in the coal fields, Florence Reece - “Which Side Are You On?” After a few minutes of viewing here one should be very clear about that point. Further that, “picket lines mean don’t cross”, a chronic problem during the strike with scabs being sent into the mines by the company daily- a question that repeatedly comes up these days when labor disputes come up as well. And another lesson, not surprisingly, do not trust bourgeois politicians, judges, cop, the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy or anyone else that gets in your way. That is for starters.
Moreover, a strike committee has to be tactically supple, as the heroic work of the Brookside Women’s Club demonstrated when the miners were enjoined from keeping effective picket lines to keep the scabs out. And… well I could go on and on but the best bet is to actually watch this film, and re-watch it because there is plenty to pick up on there. And plenty to make you glad, glad as hell, that you are a labor militant. A retrospective hats off to the 1973 Harlan County, Kentucky coal miners, a place very close to this reviewer’s heart.
Monday, March 12, 2012
A British Guy From Texas, Okay- The Music of Doug Sahm-CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Doug Sahm performing back in the day, his British invasion day.
CD Review
Dough Sahm: Juke Box Music, Doug Sahm, Antone’s Records, 1988
A British guy from Texas? Oh, ya, that. See one Doug Sahm, a mad monk, a Texas-bred mad monk, of musical talent wanted to ride the wave, the 1960s British invasion wave led by the Beatles that changed the face of rock and roll more than somewhat. Just like Elvis, Chuck and Jerry Lee did a generation before, a rock generation that is, and , strangely, brought blues, big heartland, butcher to the world, industrial city hard life electric blues via Chicago and Memphis and country harder life acoustic blues via the Delta cotton field broiling sun sweats and Saturday night no electricity jukes, mainly, back to America. So ride the wave, take the ride and pay for the ticket, to paraphrase the late gonzo journalist, Doctor Hunter S. Thompson a kindred, here comes none other than the Sir Douglas Quintet no less high and hard in the 1960s American post-invasion hip-hop night.
Well that bluesy rock minute passed but Doug Sahm’s attachment to music, to roots music, apparently never vanished as this CD testifies to in a big way. So back in Texas he made something of a legend for himself in the emerging Austin musical scene. And while I don’t know the all the particulars of the late Brother Sahm’s later career I know two things, well, actually three things. When Bob Dylan wanted to taste, musically taste, all things Texan, particularly that Tex-Mex roots sound that permeated some of his music during his “western outlaw” period (hey, maybe his whole career, at least in his mind) he slip-shot himself by Brother Sahm and they became fast friends.
And Dough Sahm was instrumental in preserving that Tex-Mex sound as it got preserved in old Antone’s, a blue club very closely associated with the blues in Texas and, well, that big heartland, butcher to the world, industrial city hard life electric blues Chicago too, as that storied (and chronicled, on film chronicled) barroom locale provided a final home for many of the Windy City blues greats as they fell on Maxwell Street hard times. And lastly, well lastly Brother Sahm KNEW, knew in his bones and deep in his musical soul, just like Dylan, the American songbook, the generation of ’68 section that he is paying tribute to on this album. Feast on.
CD Review
Dough Sahm: Juke Box Music, Doug Sahm, Antone’s Records, 1988
A British guy from Texas? Oh, ya, that. See one Doug Sahm, a mad monk, a Texas-bred mad monk, of musical talent wanted to ride the wave, the 1960s British invasion wave led by the Beatles that changed the face of rock and roll more than somewhat. Just like Elvis, Chuck and Jerry Lee did a generation before, a rock generation that is, and , strangely, brought blues, big heartland, butcher to the world, industrial city hard life electric blues via Chicago and Memphis and country harder life acoustic blues via the Delta cotton field broiling sun sweats and Saturday night no electricity jukes, mainly, back to America. So ride the wave, take the ride and pay for the ticket, to paraphrase the late gonzo journalist, Doctor Hunter S. Thompson a kindred, here comes none other than the Sir Douglas Quintet no less high and hard in the 1960s American post-invasion hip-hop night.
Well that bluesy rock minute passed but Doug Sahm’s attachment to music, to roots music, apparently never vanished as this CD testifies to in a big way. So back in Texas he made something of a legend for himself in the emerging Austin musical scene. And while I don’t know the all the particulars of the late Brother Sahm’s later career I know two things, well, actually three things. When Bob Dylan wanted to taste, musically taste, all things Texan, particularly that Tex-Mex roots sound that permeated some of his music during his “western outlaw” period (hey, maybe his whole career, at least in his mind) he slip-shot himself by Brother Sahm and they became fast friends.
And Dough Sahm was instrumental in preserving that Tex-Mex sound as it got preserved in old Antone’s, a blue club very closely associated with the blues in Texas and, well, that big heartland, butcher to the world, industrial city hard life electric blues Chicago too, as that storied (and chronicled, on film chronicled) barroom locale provided a final home for many of the Windy City blues greats as they fell on Maxwell Street hard times. And lastly, well lastly Brother Sahm KNEW, knew in his bones and deep in his musical soul, just like Dylan, the American songbook, the generation of ’68 section that he is paying tribute to on this album. Feast on.
Out In The Be-bop 1930s Crime Noir Night- Dashiell Hammett’s Ur-Ur Maltese Falcon-“Satan Met A Lady"-A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the 1936 film version of the classic Dashiell Hammett crime novel The Maltese Falcon renamed Satan Met A Lady.
DVD Review
Satan Met A Lady, starring Bette Davis, Warner Brothers, 1936
Recently in reviewing the 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon (starring Bebe Daniels and Richard Cortez) I noted that it was possible for even a devoted actor Humphrey Bogart and crime novelist Dashiell Hammett aficionado to learn something new. For many years I had assumed that the 1941 hard-nosed Bogie as Sam Spade version of The Maltese Falcon was the original screen version of Hammett’s crime noir classic. Then an acquaintance, the old time radical journalist Josh Breslin whose by-line for half the progressive press and alternate vision journals in this country for the past forty years that some readers may know, informed me that an older version (or rather, versions, existed). That initial discovery however had to go unchecked until the age of the Internet where I found the original 1931 version. And now I have found another film version via a very helpful lead from Wikipedia the film under review, Satan Met A Lady.
Of course after reading Hammett’s crime novel countless times (if for no other reason than that great dialogue even after the plot line wore thin) and viewing the 1941 Bogie version almost as many times certain personal prejudices were bound to show up. The key was the role of Sam Spade as the world weary scrappy avenger of his partner’s murder while “in the line of duty”. If for no other reason than for professional pride. And the well-known plot line, basically murder and mayhem by parties known and unknown searching for a bird (here a ram’s horn), “the stuff of dreams,” is what let’s Sam save the day, his professional pride, and his roughhewn sense of justice.
This 1936 version, despite its familiar story line, is a failed experiment, despite Bette Davis’s talent (she of the Bette Davis eyes). This faux Spade is less concerned with those gritty issues, more brazenly cynical, and much more of a womanizer than Bogie’s Spade (although Bogie was not immune, temporarily at least, to femme fatale charms). This one is played for laughs, for camp and for, well who knows what else. In the 1931 version it is clear, very clear, why Spade is ready to chase after windmills for the femme fatale (played there by Bebe Daniels). Sexual tension and adventure were rife. In the 1941 clearer version I was always wondering what there was about Mary Astor (after all she didn’t seem Bogie’s type on the face of it) that made him all that intrepid. It was never spelled out. This one does nobody justice, sexual innuendo or not. No question though, despite these new discoveries, that Bogie’s Spade is the cinematic standard and Hammett would agree.
DVD Review
Satan Met A Lady, starring Bette Davis, Warner Brothers, 1936
Recently in reviewing the 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon (starring Bebe Daniels and Richard Cortez) I noted that it was possible for even a devoted actor Humphrey Bogart and crime novelist Dashiell Hammett aficionado to learn something new. For many years I had assumed that the 1941 hard-nosed Bogie as Sam Spade version of The Maltese Falcon was the original screen version of Hammett’s crime noir classic. Then an acquaintance, the old time radical journalist Josh Breslin whose by-line for half the progressive press and alternate vision journals in this country for the past forty years that some readers may know, informed me that an older version (or rather, versions, existed). That initial discovery however had to go unchecked until the age of the Internet where I found the original 1931 version. And now I have found another film version via a very helpful lead from Wikipedia the film under review, Satan Met A Lady.
Of course after reading Hammett’s crime novel countless times (if for no other reason than that great dialogue even after the plot line wore thin) and viewing the 1941 Bogie version almost as many times certain personal prejudices were bound to show up. The key was the role of Sam Spade as the world weary scrappy avenger of his partner’s murder while “in the line of duty”. If for no other reason than for professional pride. And the well-known plot line, basically murder and mayhem by parties known and unknown searching for a bird (here a ram’s horn), “the stuff of dreams,” is what let’s Sam save the day, his professional pride, and his roughhewn sense of justice.
This 1936 version, despite its familiar story line, is a failed experiment, despite Bette Davis’s talent (she of the Bette Davis eyes). This faux Spade is less concerned with those gritty issues, more brazenly cynical, and much more of a womanizer than Bogie’s Spade (although Bogie was not immune, temporarily at least, to femme fatale charms). This one is played for laughs, for camp and for, well who knows what else. In the 1931 version it is clear, very clear, why Spade is ready to chase after windmills for the femme fatale (played there by Bebe Daniels). Sexual tension and adventure were rife. In the 1941 clearer version I was always wondering what there was about Mary Astor (after all she didn’t seem Bogie’s type on the face of it) that made him all that intrepid. It was never spelled out. This one does nobody justice, sexual innuendo or not. No question though, despite these new discoveries, that Bogie’s Spade is the cinematic standard and Hammett would agree.
Out In The Be-bop 1930s Crime Noir Night- Dashiell Hammett’s Ur-“Maltese Falcon”-A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the 1931 film version of the classic Dashiell Hammett crime novel, The Maltese Falcon.
DVD Review
The Maltese Falcon, starring Bebe Daniels, Richard Cortez, Warner Brothers, 1931
Well it is possible for even a devoted actor Humphrey Bogart and crime novelist Dashiell Hammett aficionado to learn something new. For many years I had assumed that the 1941 hard-nosed Bogie as Sam Spade version of The Maltese Falcon was the original screen version of Hammett’s crime noir classic. Then an acquaintance, the old time radical journalist Josh Breslin whose by-line for half the progressive press and alternate vision journals in this country for the past forty years that some readers may know, informed me that an older version (or rather versions existed). That discovery however had to go unchecked until the age of the Internet. Now I have found the film via a very helpful lead from Wikipedia. Kudos.
Of course after reading Hammett’s crime novel countless times (if for no other reason than that great dialogue even after the plot line wore thin) and viewing the 1941 Bogie version almost as many times certain prejudices were bound to show up. The key is the role of Sam Spade as the world weary scrappy avenger of his partner’s murder while “in the line of duty”. If for no other reason than for professional pride. And the well-known plot line, basically murder and mayhem by parties known and unknown searching for a bid, “the stuff of dreams,” is what let’s Sam save the day, his professional pride, and his roughhewn sense of justice.
The 1931 Spade (played by handsome Richard Cortez) is less concerned with those gritty issues, more brazenly cynical, and much more of a womanizer than Bogie’s Spade (although he is not immune, temporality at least, to femme fatale charms). That as I found out was a result of the change in what was deemed acceptable to the general audience (the so-called Production Code). In the 1931 version it is clear, very clear, why Spade is ready to chase after windmills for the femme fatale (played Bebe Daniels). Sexual tension and adventure were rife. In the 1941 version I was always wondering what there was about Mary Astor (after all she didn’t seem Bogie’s type on the face of it) that made him all that intrepid. It was never spelled out. Now I know. No question though, despite that new information, that Bogie’s Spade is the cinematic standard and Hammett would agree.
DVD Review
The Maltese Falcon, starring Bebe Daniels, Richard Cortez, Warner Brothers, 1931
Well it is possible for even a devoted actor Humphrey Bogart and crime novelist Dashiell Hammett aficionado to learn something new. For many years I had assumed that the 1941 hard-nosed Bogie as Sam Spade version of The Maltese Falcon was the original screen version of Hammett’s crime noir classic. Then an acquaintance, the old time radical journalist Josh Breslin whose by-line for half the progressive press and alternate vision journals in this country for the past forty years that some readers may know, informed me that an older version (or rather versions existed). That discovery however had to go unchecked until the age of the Internet. Now I have found the film via a very helpful lead from Wikipedia. Kudos.
Of course after reading Hammett’s crime novel countless times (if for no other reason than that great dialogue even after the plot line wore thin) and viewing the 1941 Bogie version almost as many times certain prejudices were bound to show up. The key is the role of Sam Spade as the world weary scrappy avenger of his partner’s murder while “in the line of duty”. If for no other reason than for professional pride. And the well-known plot line, basically murder and mayhem by parties known and unknown searching for a bid, “the stuff of dreams,” is what let’s Sam save the day, his professional pride, and his roughhewn sense of justice.
The 1931 Spade (played by handsome Richard Cortez) is less concerned with those gritty issues, more brazenly cynical, and much more of a womanizer than Bogie’s Spade (although he is not immune, temporality at least, to femme fatale charms). That as I found out was a result of the change in what was deemed acceptable to the general audience (the so-called Production Code). In the 1931 version it is clear, very clear, why Spade is ready to chase after windmills for the femme fatale (played Bebe Daniels). Sexual tension and adventure were rife. In the 1941 version I was always wondering what there was about Mary Astor (after all she didn’t seem Bogie’s type on the face of it) that made him all that intrepid. It was never spelled out. Now I know. No question though, despite that new information, that Bogie’s Spade is the cinematic standard and Hammett would agree.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When Butterfly Swirl Swirled- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to YouTube film clip of the Kinks performing their classic rock number, You Really Got Me.
CD Review
Classic Rock: 1964, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1987
Scene brought to mind by the cover art that graces this CD. Said cover art showing in the background a motley foursome from some post- British invasion invasion group all with de rigueur Nehru jackets and getting little long in the back and on the sides better get to the barber boys reminds dear old moms. But that is some much fluff. Because in the foreground is the object our, ah, inspection, one female, dangling earring bejeweled, but more importantly day-glo, or if not day-glo then some non-toxic paint celebration, painted flower. No tattoo, no permanent not in those days, although more than few young women has an off the back of the shoulder flower and some even had, well that is a story for another time. A time when the snooping grandchildren are safely out of sight.
The whole effect, as if in a flashback, no not that kind, immediately brought to my memory’s eye one Kathleen Callahan, a. k. a. Butterfly Swirl, Carlsbad (California, that’s important) High School Class of 1968 and Josh Breslin’s old flame from the summer of love, 1967 version, circa San Francisco in the merry prankster, yellow brick road night. Of course, as always in the interest of full disclosure, Ms. Swirl was my girl. Very much my girl, until old Josh, Olde Saco High School Class of 1967 (that’s up in Maine, although that is not important to the story, or just a little) showed up in a Russian Hill park one day.
[That, by the way, is Joshua Lawrence Breslin, the radical journalist whose by-line has appeared in half the unread back hall recycle bin radical newspapers and public good alternative vision journals in the country over the past forty years. And here is the beauty of it. Since he is legally a “public figure” (I looked it up before starting), although he is right now holed in some podunk Maine log cabin holding off the winter chills in solitude, he had better not even think of the word “defamation.” I know where the bodies are buried and while I am not usually a “snitch” I do have a long, very long memory.]
This was a day when we, our whole merry prankster crew, Butterfly Swirl included, were taking in the view (read: smoking dope, fine stuff I can still smell now from Panama I think, and actually inhaling don’t let anyone, including amnesiac Josh, tell you otherwise. And, yes, I said that with the full knowledge that the statute of limitations has run out on that. I checked that up too just to make sure). And that one fine day was, well, when “stole” her from me. That too is not important to the story, except maybe to explain, a little, the kind of magnetic gal Kathleen was. What is important is how she came to be, not even out of high school yet, Butterfly Swirl.
No question in 1957 or 1977 Kathleen Callahan, brown hair, bright smile, good figure, great legs, and an irksomely sunny disposition would have been just Kathleen Callahan, maybe the head cheerleader at some suburban school, some seaside suburban school like Carlsbad just norte of San Diego. Or, more realistically given that locale, some dippy surfer joe girl watching while they, some impossibly blond surfer joes, were hanging five or ten or whatever they did to those LaJolla, Malibu, Carlsbad waves that weren’t harming anybody as they slipped tepidly to shore. And, as she later confessed to Josh, she actually had been a surfer joe girl, although the guy’s name was Spin Curley, nice right.
Then the 1964 British invasion came, and she, all of thirteen, although fully formed in lots of ways as she also told Josh was swept away, swept away from the silly little surfer girl life, small seaside everybody adobe-housed Spanish fandango and the inevitably inevitable Spin. She told Josh it was really the Kinks that got her off-center. Not the Beatles or Rolling Stones as you might think. She said she was mad for their You Really Got Me, it kind of turned her on, turned her on a lot. A lot more than Spin could deal with what with his having to hang five or ten out in mother nature wave land. So naturally she headed to Los Angeles to check things out for a few days. Her and another girl from school a year ahead of her but about one hundred years ahead in everything else, whose story can be summed up in one word-bonkers. Heavy petal to the metal drug bonkers.
But she, that girl, get this, already had a moniker, Serendipity Swan, and knew some real cool people that she had met down at LaJolla where they were taking care of some rich guy’s estate (they are all estates in that zip code, then known as postal zones, look it up in Wikipedia, alright). This rich guy got rich, got very rich by “inventing” acid (LSD), or something like that. Or knew guys who invented it, or something like that. Old Serendipity wasn’t much on facts, straight or crooked. But in any case, the guys taking care of the estate, Captain Crunch and his confederates were always high, were always on the move with their merry prankster yellow brick road bus and were always welcoming to lost lambs, and ex-surfer girls.
That was how, a couple of years, before Kathleen, who had not then metamorphosized into Butterfly Swirl, kind of at wit’s end, eventually came up further north. And that is how I met her, when she got “on the bus” around Big Sur, I think, somewhere north of Xanadu. And became the Swirl (my pet name for her, for obvious reasons, obvious between us and like I said before relatable when the grandkids are not around). Complete with some tempera design on her face most of the time. Nothing elaborate but sometimes in a certain light she looked like something out of Botticelli. Here’s the funny part though, as things got weird on the bus, or too weird for her and her embedded suburban girl manner (when she wasn’t high, high she was like a Buddha or Siva or whatever those divines are called) she hankered (my word) for home, and for her Spin and his hanging five or ten, or whatever he did to those waves. Like I said in 1957 or 1977 she wouldn’t have even been “on the bus.” But just for that 1967 minute, driven by those wicked Brits she broke free. Josh, after his theft and after she slipped away one night, looked for her later but never caught up to her again.
CD Review
Classic Rock: 1964, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1987
Scene brought to mind by the cover art that graces this CD. Said cover art showing in the background a motley foursome from some post- British invasion invasion group all with de rigueur Nehru jackets and getting little long in the back and on the sides better get to the barber boys reminds dear old moms. But that is some much fluff. Because in the foreground is the object our, ah, inspection, one female, dangling earring bejeweled, but more importantly day-glo, or if not day-glo then some non-toxic paint celebration, painted flower. No tattoo, no permanent not in those days, although more than few young women has an off the back of the shoulder flower and some even had, well that is a story for another time. A time when the snooping grandchildren are safely out of sight.
The whole effect, as if in a flashback, no not that kind, immediately brought to my memory’s eye one Kathleen Callahan, a. k. a. Butterfly Swirl, Carlsbad (California, that’s important) High School Class of 1968 and Josh Breslin’s old flame from the summer of love, 1967 version, circa San Francisco in the merry prankster, yellow brick road night. Of course, as always in the interest of full disclosure, Ms. Swirl was my girl. Very much my girl, until old Josh, Olde Saco High School Class of 1967 (that’s up in Maine, although that is not important to the story, or just a little) showed up in a Russian Hill park one day.
[That, by the way, is Joshua Lawrence Breslin, the radical journalist whose by-line has appeared in half the unread back hall recycle bin radical newspapers and public good alternative vision journals in the country over the past forty years. And here is the beauty of it. Since he is legally a “public figure” (I looked it up before starting), although he is right now holed in some podunk Maine log cabin holding off the winter chills in solitude, he had better not even think of the word “defamation.” I know where the bodies are buried and while I am not usually a “snitch” I do have a long, very long memory.]
This was a day when we, our whole merry prankster crew, Butterfly Swirl included, were taking in the view (read: smoking dope, fine stuff I can still smell now from Panama I think, and actually inhaling don’t let anyone, including amnesiac Josh, tell you otherwise. And, yes, I said that with the full knowledge that the statute of limitations has run out on that. I checked that up too just to make sure). And that one fine day was, well, when “stole” her from me. That too is not important to the story, except maybe to explain, a little, the kind of magnetic gal Kathleen was. What is important is how she came to be, not even out of high school yet, Butterfly Swirl.
No question in 1957 or 1977 Kathleen Callahan, brown hair, bright smile, good figure, great legs, and an irksomely sunny disposition would have been just Kathleen Callahan, maybe the head cheerleader at some suburban school, some seaside suburban school like Carlsbad just norte of San Diego. Or, more realistically given that locale, some dippy surfer joe girl watching while they, some impossibly blond surfer joes, were hanging five or ten or whatever they did to those LaJolla, Malibu, Carlsbad waves that weren’t harming anybody as they slipped tepidly to shore. And, as she later confessed to Josh, she actually had been a surfer joe girl, although the guy’s name was Spin Curley, nice right.
Then the 1964 British invasion came, and she, all of thirteen, although fully formed in lots of ways as she also told Josh was swept away, swept away from the silly little surfer girl life, small seaside everybody adobe-housed Spanish fandango and the inevitably inevitable Spin. She told Josh it was really the Kinks that got her off-center. Not the Beatles or Rolling Stones as you might think. She said she was mad for their You Really Got Me, it kind of turned her on, turned her on a lot. A lot more than Spin could deal with what with his having to hang five or ten out in mother nature wave land. So naturally she headed to Los Angeles to check things out for a few days. Her and another girl from school a year ahead of her but about one hundred years ahead in everything else, whose story can be summed up in one word-bonkers. Heavy petal to the metal drug bonkers.
But she, that girl, get this, already had a moniker, Serendipity Swan, and knew some real cool people that she had met down at LaJolla where they were taking care of some rich guy’s estate (they are all estates in that zip code, then known as postal zones, look it up in Wikipedia, alright). This rich guy got rich, got very rich by “inventing” acid (LSD), or something like that. Or knew guys who invented it, or something like that. Old Serendipity wasn’t much on facts, straight or crooked. But in any case, the guys taking care of the estate, Captain Crunch and his confederates were always high, were always on the move with their merry prankster yellow brick road bus and were always welcoming to lost lambs, and ex-surfer girls.
That was how, a couple of years, before Kathleen, who had not then metamorphosized into Butterfly Swirl, kind of at wit’s end, eventually came up further north. And that is how I met her, when she got “on the bus” around Big Sur, I think, somewhere north of Xanadu. And became the Swirl (my pet name for her, for obvious reasons, obvious between us and like I said before relatable when the grandkids are not around). Complete with some tempera design on her face most of the time. Nothing elaborate but sometimes in a certain light she looked like something out of Botticelli. Here’s the funny part though, as things got weird on the bus, or too weird for her and her embedded suburban girl manner (when she wasn’t high, high she was like a Buddha or Siva or whatever those divines are called) she hankered (my word) for home, and for her Spin and his hanging five or ten, or whatever he did to those waves. Like I said in 1957 or 1977 she wouldn’t have even been “on the bus.” But just for that 1967 minute, driven by those wicked Brits she broke free. Josh, after his theft and after she slipped away one night, looked for her later but never caught up to her again.
The Girl With The Bette Davis Eyes- Somerset Maugham’s “The Letter”-A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Bette Davis film The Letter.
DVD Review
The Letter, starring Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, directed by William Wyler, based on a play by Somerset Maugham, Warner Brothers, 1940
Not every black and white film is a noir and not every crime noir has a femme fatale although in both cases many are. Nor are all films based on the work of world literature figures like Somerset Maugham (although his reputation has been eclipsed somewhat since his 1920s-1930s heyday when he produced classics like The Razor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage). But the film under review, The Letter, is all of them, kind of. Sure the black and white crime noir is present although with a more than usual amount of melodramatic moments, and as noted so is the world literature authorship.
The real question is the femme fatale aspect. Now Bette Davis was an extremely fine actress during her 1940s and 1950s heyday (and earlier as well in such beauties as The Petrified Forest) but she never struck me as a femme fatale like Lana Turner, Lauren Bacall and Rita Hayworth. You know leaving the guys gasping for breath, and asking for more. No question in this role as the put-upon and isolated wife of a owner of a rubber plantation in pre-war (pre-World War II war to be precise) in colonial British Malaysia scorned by a wayward lover she matches any femme fatale with a quick, too quick, trigger finger when things don’t go her way. She certainly could use her wiles, feminine or otherwise, to get out from under the law, British colonial style. And she was just psycho enough to stand one’s hair on edge. But a lot of her actions (and frankly Davis’ performance) are just too mawkish to root for.
Maybe a little sketch of the plot will illustrate the point. As the film opens Ms. Davis is firing away with that old root-a-toot-toot like crazy at that scornful lover (Hammond by name) mentioned above. No question she is a classic murder one case, and let’s just wrap it up and ship her off to some English prison. Right. But she has a story; a fantastic story on its face about a known intruder making sexual advances to her while her husband is away. Moreover this is the 1930s colonial outback of the Empire and Bette is the proper wife of a stand-up rubber plantation owner (played by Herbert Marshall).
Needless to say, outback or not, murder is murder and the wheels of justice must grind along. A mere formality if her story holds up, a quick trial and she will be free. Except a certain letter, and hence the title of the piece, shows up in mid-plot from her to the intruder. Seems they were lovers, that she had been scorned, and that moreover he had picked up an inconvenient wife, a Eurasian wife to boot. Said letter was in possession of the wife who had her own ax to grind after Bette put six in her husband. A deal between Bette’s compromised lawyer and the wife suppressed this piece of key evidence that would convict Bette.
Bette thereafter was acquitted. Legally acquitted. But you know how those Eurasian women are. That was not to be the end of it. Naturally between a woman scorned and a woman bereft of her companion-lover something has to give. And instead of getting the hell out of town on the first boat, canoe or raft like any real femme fatale our Bette just steps into her fatal fate. See what I mean.
DVD Review
The Letter, starring Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, directed by William Wyler, based on a play by Somerset Maugham, Warner Brothers, 1940
Not every black and white film is a noir and not every crime noir has a femme fatale although in both cases many are. Nor are all films based on the work of world literature figures like Somerset Maugham (although his reputation has been eclipsed somewhat since his 1920s-1930s heyday when he produced classics like The Razor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage). But the film under review, The Letter, is all of them, kind of. Sure the black and white crime noir is present although with a more than usual amount of melodramatic moments, and as noted so is the world literature authorship.
The real question is the femme fatale aspect. Now Bette Davis was an extremely fine actress during her 1940s and 1950s heyday (and earlier as well in such beauties as The Petrified Forest) but she never struck me as a femme fatale like Lana Turner, Lauren Bacall and Rita Hayworth. You know leaving the guys gasping for breath, and asking for more. No question in this role as the put-upon and isolated wife of a owner of a rubber plantation in pre-war (pre-World War II war to be precise) in colonial British Malaysia scorned by a wayward lover she matches any femme fatale with a quick, too quick, trigger finger when things don’t go her way. She certainly could use her wiles, feminine or otherwise, to get out from under the law, British colonial style. And she was just psycho enough to stand one’s hair on edge. But a lot of her actions (and frankly Davis’ performance) are just too mawkish to root for.
Maybe a little sketch of the plot will illustrate the point. As the film opens Ms. Davis is firing away with that old root-a-toot-toot like crazy at that scornful lover (Hammond by name) mentioned above. No question she is a classic murder one case, and let’s just wrap it up and ship her off to some English prison. Right. But she has a story; a fantastic story on its face about a known intruder making sexual advances to her while her husband is away. Moreover this is the 1930s colonial outback of the Empire and Bette is the proper wife of a stand-up rubber plantation owner (played by Herbert Marshall).
Needless to say, outback or not, murder is murder and the wheels of justice must grind along. A mere formality if her story holds up, a quick trial and she will be free. Except a certain letter, and hence the title of the piece, shows up in mid-plot from her to the intruder. Seems they were lovers, that she had been scorned, and that moreover he had picked up an inconvenient wife, a Eurasian wife to boot. Said letter was in possession of the wife who had her own ax to grind after Bette put six in her husband. A deal between Bette’s compromised lawyer and the wife suppressed this piece of key evidence that would convict Bette.
Bette thereafter was acquitted. Legally acquitted. But you know how those Eurasian women are. That was not to be the end of it. Naturally between a woman scorned and a woman bereft of her companion-lover something has to give. And instead of getting the hell out of town on the first boat, canoe or raft like any real femme fatale our Bette just steps into her fatal fate. See what I mean.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Night- Bonnie And Clyde For Innocents-Farley Granger’s “They Lived By Night”
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the 1940s film noir, The Live By Night
DVD Review
They Live By Night, starring Farley Granger, Catherine O’Donnell, Warner Brothers, 1948
Usually crime noir does not have an overriding social message, well, except the old chestnut that crime doesn’t pay, although for the rich a little maybe. Otherwise the genre back in the days, especially in the 1940s be-bop heyday of the genre, was pretty much police procedural stuff, and get the handcuffs out. Or maybe, every once in a while a stray femme fatale came carrying her scent and her sway across the room and turned some otherwise rational guy a little screwy. And anyone, any guy anyway, except maybe that screwy guy, will tell you that is just par for the course. And then get the handcuffs out. A film like the one under review, They Live By Night (a little over the top title by the way, bringing out visions of weird aliens, the space kind, or all night sex and drug romps), however, perhaps a little more melodramatically than necessary, tries to break some moral ground as well. And that proposition as presented in the film was none too pretty, then or now. Basically that once one runs down the criminal road, alone or with help, young or old, maybe even guilty or not guilty, the doors to salvation (read: rehabilitation in penal lingo) are closed. Ouch!
And the plot line and unfolding characterizations as the story proceeds go a long way toward driving that hard, if perhaps questionable, premise home. Bowie (played with a studied unworldly naiveté and socially immature confusion by a young Farley Granger) is a young lifer, the details of his imprisonment, except that he came from a broken home and was on his own early in life, do not concern us except to form the underlying basis for his eternal damnation. Wrong step number one. He broke, and was consciously broken, out of the big house along with and by a couple of very nasty career criminals. Wrong step number two. In gratitude, and frankly because he had developed a certain criminal panache while in stir, he aided the pair as the driver of the getaway cars when they went, naturally since they were not going to work in some diner for dimes and doughnuts, on a robbery spree to keep them in clover. And he got his share of the take, no questions asked. Not much to be sympathetic about. So far.
Here is where things get dicey. During the getaway part of the great jail break-out the trio was helped by one the career banditos’ brother (said bandito played by Howard DaSilva, a guy you do not want to cross, ever, especially if unarmed. Yes, especially if unarmed). And the brother, of course, had a daughter, Kee Kee (played just a little too naively and dreamily by Catherine O’Donnell), a young daughter a little unworldly in the world of fringe lumpen crime. Alone with a two-bit drunken father (and long gone mom) Naturally a young, good-looking and spirited criminal guy (who does those bank jobs just to get some dough to get himself straight with the law as he tells it to her later) and a young naïve, kind of tomboyish girl (although through the magic of cinema she gets to be pretty fetching by the end of the film), both socially immature and both desperate to find their place, some place, some small happy place in a world that they did not make, are “made” for each other. And that is where the moral part of the story comes.
By a process of elimination by the middle of the film Bowie and Kee Kee are trying, trying fitfully but trying, to break out of the old crime wave pattern and have little white picket fence existence, if not here maybe down Mexico way where the living is cheap, once Bowie gets straight with the law. But that fantasy was not to be. Bowie was forced (remember what I said about Howard DaSilva) to do that one hold-up job too many and the pair had to go on the lam. Wrong step number three. You already know what that means. They had dough, and each other, but the cards were stacked against them as no one will help them slip down Sonora way.
In the end, the lonely end, one of the banditos’ kin (on the other bandito’s side) “dimes” on him. There is more background to it like the kids getting off-handedly married, a no bells and whistles ceremony by the way, learning about sex enough in their wanderings to conceive a child, and desperately try to hang onto their cardboard dreams of a normal life. But the fate sisters were not kind, not this trip. Like I said, a little on the melodramatic pledging eternal love every other minute high side but a story that I could relate to having come within about two minutes of such a fate myself. Actually make that about one minute.
DVD Review
They Live By Night, starring Farley Granger, Catherine O’Donnell, Warner Brothers, 1948
Usually crime noir does not have an overriding social message, well, except the old chestnut that crime doesn’t pay, although for the rich a little maybe. Otherwise the genre back in the days, especially in the 1940s be-bop heyday of the genre, was pretty much police procedural stuff, and get the handcuffs out. Or maybe, every once in a while a stray femme fatale came carrying her scent and her sway across the room and turned some otherwise rational guy a little screwy. And anyone, any guy anyway, except maybe that screwy guy, will tell you that is just par for the course. And then get the handcuffs out. A film like the one under review, They Live By Night (a little over the top title by the way, bringing out visions of weird aliens, the space kind, or all night sex and drug romps), however, perhaps a little more melodramatically than necessary, tries to break some moral ground as well. And that proposition as presented in the film was none too pretty, then or now. Basically that once one runs down the criminal road, alone or with help, young or old, maybe even guilty or not guilty, the doors to salvation (read: rehabilitation in penal lingo) are closed. Ouch!
And the plot line and unfolding characterizations as the story proceeds go a long way toward driving that hard, if perhaps questionable, premise home. Bowie (played with a studied unworldly naiveté and socially immature confusion by a young Farley Granger) is a young lifer, the details of his imprisonment, except that he came from a broken home and was on his own early in life, do not concern us except to form the underlying basis for his eternal damnation. Wrong step number one. He broke, and was consciously broken, out of the big house along with and by a couple of very nasty career criminals. Wrong step number two. In gratitude, and frankly because he had developed a certain criminal panache while in stir, he aided the pair as the driver of the getaway cars when they went, naturally since they were not going to work in some diner for dimes and doughnuts, on a robbery spree to keep them in clover. And he got his share of the take, no questions asked. Not much to be sympathetic about. So far.
Here is where things get dicey. During the getaway part of the great jail break-out the trio was helped by one the career banditos’ brother (said bandito played by Howard DaSilva, a guy you do not want to cross, ever, especially if unarmed. Yes, especially if unarmed). And the brother, of course, had a daughter, Kee Kee (played just a little too naively and dreamily by Catherine O’Donnell), a young daughter a little unworldly in the world of fringe lumpen crime. Alone with a two-bit drunken father (and long gone mom) Naturally a young, good-looking and spirited criminal guy (who does those bank jobs just to get some dough to get himself straight with the law as he tells it to her later) and a young naïve, kind of tomboyish girl (although through the magic of cinema she gets to be pretty fetching by the end of the film), both socially immature and both desperate to find their place, some place, some small happy place in a world that they did not make, are “made” for each other. And that is where the moral part of the story comes.
By a process of elimination by the middle of the film Bowie and Kee Kee are trying, trying fitfully but trying, to break out of the old crime wave pattern and have little white picket fence existence, if not here maybe down Mexico way where the living is cheap, once Bowie gets straight with the law. But that fantasy was not to be. Bowie was forced (remember what I said about Howard DaSilva) to do that one hold-up job too many and the pair had to go on the lam. Wrong step number three. You already know what that means. They had dough, and each other, but the cards were stacked against them as no one will help them slip down Sonora way.
In the end, the lonely end, one of the banditos’ kin (on the other bandito’s side) “dimes” on him. There is more background to it like the kids getting off-handedly married, a no bells and whistles ceremony by the way, learning about sex enough in their wanderings to conceive a child, and desperately try to hang onto their cardboard dreams of a normal life. But the fate sisters were not kind, not this trip. Like I said, a little on the melodramatic pledging eternal love every other minute high side but a story that I could relate to having come within about two minutes of such a fate myself. Actually make that about one minute.
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