***Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- Warren Smith’s “Rock And Roll Ruby”

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

WARREN SMITH ROCK´N´ ROLL RUBY LYRICS

Well I took my Ruby jukin'
On the out-skirts of town
She took her high heels off
And rolled her stockings down
She put a quarter in the jukebox
To get a little beat
Everybody started watchin'
All the rhythm in her feet

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul

Now Ruby started rockin' 'bout one o'clock
And when she started rockin'
She just couldn't stop
She rocked on the tables
And rolled on the floor
And Everybody yelled: "Ruby rock some more!"

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul

It was 'round about four
I thought she would stop
She looked at me and then
She looked at the clock
She said: "Wait a minute Daddy
Now don't get sour
All I want to do
Is rock a little bit more"

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul

One night my Ruby left me all alone
I tried to contact her on the telephone
I finally found her about twelve o'clock
She said: "Leave me alone Daddy
'cause your Ruby wants to rock"

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul
Rock, rock, rock'n'roll
Rock, rock, rock'n'roll
Rock, rock, rock'n'roll
Rock, rock, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul
*****
Nobody had seen Billie (William James Bradley for those who are sticklers for detail and, by the way, not Billy, not some billy-goat thing like the boys in first grade called him, called him the last time anybody did so and he made Billie stick, and you will call him that too unless you want more, much more, than you can handle from a wiry, deceptively strong guy) for a while, a few months anyway back then, back in the late 1950s. I had drifted away from his circle, his corner boy circle, when my family moved across town to the other side of Adamsville, North Adamsville a couple of years before. And when Billie got into some stuff, some larceny stuff, mainly “clipping” things (you know five-finger discount at jewelry stores and drugstores mainly to get his girls, that’s plural, not a typo, some pretty “gift” to show his Billie love), and stealing cars if you must know, and when I decided, decided almost at the last minute, that I wanted no part of that scene that pretty much ended our best friend friendship. I still kept in touch with him for about a year or so after that and then when he got into his new “jag,” robbing stores, gas stations and the like, through keeping in touch with others.

Rumor had it, and it was always rumor with Billie whether he was right in the room or got his fate reported by one of his boys, one of his legend-producing boys which definitely including me at one time (I was the fawning flak par excellence and would have made Tony Curtis’s Sydney Falco in the film Sweet Smell Of Success look like nothing but kid’s stuff with my Billie build-ups), that he was shacked up with some “broad.” I admit I did my fair share to build up the Billie legend but that’s all, he just naturally filled in the empty spaces, empty spaces that he hated, and that characteristic goes a long way in telling why we hadn’t heard from him for a while except through that rumor mill.

The rumor mill also had it, to fill in the particulars, that he had stolen some car, a classic hopped-up 1949 Nash owned by a tough guy, real tough guy, named “Blindside” Buckley (that moniker tells you all you need to know about that august gentleman just keep clear of him, alright. So that’s two hombres to stay clear of in this sketch) or something like that, or maybe it was that he had stolen one car, abandoned it, and had stolen another. Either way sounds about right. Stole the cars and was holed up somewhere with a honey, Lucy (description to follow), that he had met down at the Sea and Surf teen nightclub across from the Paragon Park Amusement Park in Nantasket, a few miles outside of the town limits of Adamsville. Now this honey, this Lucy honey, was a little older than Billie but, and like I say this is rumor, she jumped on him from minute one when he walked in the door, leaving the guy she was with looking kind of stupid. And in the scheme of things he was probably prepared to commit mayhem on Billie (no brother, bad move, bad career, hell, bad life move).

Billie, no question, was a good-looking guy, was a real good dancer and, best of all, he had a great voice, a great rock and roll voice, that fit nicely, very nicely into the music that we were all listening to, listening to like crazy, on our little transistor radios back in the 1950s, mostly late 1950s. So maybe, for all I know, Lucy had heard Billie sing, sing at one of the two billion talents shows that he was always entering in order, as he constantly said, to win his fame and fortune. Like I said he was good, good at covering Top Forty stuff, but just short, just a short, I guess, of making that “projects” jail break-out move that he was always confident would occur once the talent guys heard him, really heard. At some point that dream faded like a lot of projects dreams faded early and hence his alternative career as a stick-up man.

And this honey, this red-headed Lucy, a luscious red-lipped honey was, reportedly, just the exact kind of honey that Billie dreamed of grabbing for his own. Great shape (great shape then meaning all fill-out curves and leggy legs, or something like that), great boffo hair (dark red, an obviously Irish girl), kittenly sexy, and most importantly ready to go all night whether dancing, doing this and that (figure it out, okay), or helping plan some caper. Just the kind of girl the priests and parents of even the projects neighborhood were always warning us against but which we boys still secretly dreamed of running up against, dreamed of hard. Yah, this Lucy was just Billie’s action, just his catnip. And so when I first heard that rumor, that Billie holed- up and out of sight rumor, I said yah, that seemed about right.

See Billie one night, one twelve- year old summer night, down in back of old Adamsville South Elementary School where we used to hang out because that was the only real hang-out place around, and talk, talk of futures, talk of dreams just like everybody else, every twelve- year old everybody else Billie kind of laid the whole thing out for us. He was going to parlay his singing voice, his rock and roll singing voice, into fame and fortune and when his ship came in he was going to search for his rock and roll soul-mate. He didn’t put it just this way but the idea was to get the hottest, sexiest, dancing-est girl around and sail off into the sunset leaving that dust of the projects behind, way behind.

So it looked like Billie had one part of his dream coming true, although being on the lam, being big time on the lam, from the cops, the owner of that hopped-up classic 1949 Nash, and maybe even that guy Lucy left looking stupid, take your choice, wasn’t part of the description back in those twelve- year old summer nights. But being sixteen, being in some dough, and being with the rock and roll queen of the seaside night still seems like a bargain worth having made with whatever devil Billie needed to consult to pull the caper off. Hell, it makes me think that maybe I made a mistake moving away from Billie’s orbit. But just call that a rumor too in case any cops are around, alright. Anyway, my reaction was now that Billie was holed up, any girls, red-headed or otherwise, who wanted to dance the night away please just call out my name. Hey, I could dream too.

An Encore- When You Are A Jet You Are A Jet All The Way- The Centennial Of Composer- Conductor Leonard Bernstein’s Birthday-When The Acre Corner Boys Went Down And Dirty-In Memory Of Corner Boy Sergeant John “Johnny Blade” Rizzo, (Born North Adamsville, Massachusetts, 1946, Died, Central Highlands, South Vietnam, 1967)     

By Seth Garth

[I have already mentioned in an earlier comment (see below) that I knew very little about Leonard Bernstein beyond his classic West Side Story which resonated with me since I shared that sense of being out of the loop growing up (and a few other writers here who also grew up in the Acre section of North Adamsville and who had been corner boys as well). Recently I had a chance to listen to a Christopher Lydon Open Source program on NPR which featured plenty of scholarly banter about the creation of the production and other aspects of Bernstein’s life and work so here is a link to finish up the centennial year of his birth.

  http://radioopensource.org/lenny-at-100/

Recently in a quick acknowledgement of the centennial of American composer Leonard Bernstein’s birthday I mentioned that I don't know much about the man but I did know his breakthrough West Side Story and could relate to the turf warfare in the piece from my old corner boy days when we defended our turf just as fervently as any New York City kid.  Any Jet, any Shark.

The story has been told many times in this publication by me and others about growing up, particularly that high school coming of age corner boy scene that animated our lives, gave us a certain tribal identity, in the impoverished Acre section of working-class North Adamsville south of Boston but Josh Breslin has told me that the same fierce defenses applied in the Ocean View section of Olde Saco up in Maine, Ralph Morris the Tappan Street section of Troy in New York and Sam Eaton ditto down the Bog section of Carver also south of Boston. Mostly those youthful stories have been given a positive spin, or have been sweetened up for public consumption, but there was a dark side, a very dark side to much of what went on-and how we related to our poverty and other corner boy aggregates. 

Maybe the single best way to describe this dark side is to give the event that made the late Peter Paul Markin, the Scribe, take this corner boy stuff, this from hunger stuff to heart. Before he met most of us, except I think Sam Lowell whom he had known since elementary school when they would hustle the younger kids out of their milk money, the Scribe used to hang around a spot familiar to all of us-mainly to stay away from-Harry’s Variety Store since Harry had a great pin-ball machine there and a very cool ice-filled container of all kind of soft drinks. Being a kid and if you saw Scribe then you would know he was no threat to anybody, in the physical sense, to the guys who hung around Harry’s, that corner’s corner boys and so he was something like a mascot to them. Would run errand for them, and in turn they would give him some of their free games which they inevitably won since they were wizards at the game, knew how to sway the thing just right, especially when some young girlfriend was tucked in between his arms.

The funny thing is that this group, these guys were nothing like what Scribe and others would do and put together when their corner boy time came up at Tonio’s Pizza Parlor. These Harry’s guys were hoods, hoodlums, bad-ass motorcycle guys, guys who nobody, and according to Scribe nobody messed with. Their leader was one Harold, never called that under penalty of broken bones, “Red” Riley, a guy who lived near Scribe’s grandmother, another reason why he may have been taken on as a mascot, was the baddest of them all. Nobody challenged his authority, not and be able to tell anybody about it. The corners, the corners with corner boys, in the Acre in those days sprawled out to maybe half a dozen locations, all protected by their members. That was the rules and you lived or maybe died by them. One day Scribe saw what Red could do when somebody from another corner even came near Harry’s. This guy who Scribe swore did nothing except walk across the baseball field the other side of Harry’s. Somehow Red knew though that the guy was from another corner, a different turf. Without word one Red pulled out his whipsaw chain, went up to the guy and beat his mercilessly leaving him a lump on the ground. Somebody called the cops and they called an ambulance which took the guy away a bloody stump. Get this-the guy never finked on Red, hell, the cops who actually used Harry for his real purpose at the store to make book-to gamble on the horses-never even asked what happened. Asked if there were any witnesses. Nobody, not Scribe, nobody said word one with that bloody stump in their minds. So the Sharks and the Jets had nothing on the Irish bad boys around Harry’s.

Scribe, or really Frankie Riley who was the real leader of softer and younger Irish boys, mostly in high school where Frankie’s con artist, grifter ways were quickly recognized even by Scribe who couldn’t have organized his socks despite his brilliant plans and dreams, of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor corner boys once he told him the Red Riley story, always made sure to have a tough guy or two hanging around in case some assholes  wanted to rumble, to cut our turf. Enter one Johnny Blade, Johnny Rizzo really who was one of the few Italians allowed on the corner as a favor to Tonio who was Johnny’s uncle but really by his saving grace that his mother was Irish, a Doherty who had also grown up in the Acre. Johnny Blade, nobody ever said the Johnny without the blade even a couple of industrial arts teachers at school, the track they threw Johnny on, who heard about him early on. I hope I don’t need to explain how Johnny got the blade part but for those who might not be quite sure Acre boys at some point, maybe about puberty, sixth grade somewhere around there became fascinated with knives, jackknives at first which everybody had and the more dangerous ones, the kind Johnny carried around from early on-and used.

Johnny Blade maybe could have gone a different root, that Irish-Italian mix made an Acre girl’s dream and he could have if for no other reason that by force of will had whomever he wanted, some older girls too, college girls later so he had something. The thing is Johnny Blade loved his knife (knives really but only carried one at a time by law I think). Like I said Frankie, larcenous Frankie Riley, funny to say now, maybe, since he has been a very successful lawyer in Boston for many years, knew that Johnny Blade was just what we needed to defend our turf if trouble came. Naturally when a guy gets a tough guy reputation somebody is bound as if by osmosis to challenge him, test him. Usually the excuse would be looking at some girl, some “spoken for” girl the wrong way and the boyfriend had to assert his prerogative. This time, this time I speak of which shows not only Johnny’s usefulness but Frankie’s via Scribe’s wisdom to have a “hitman” on board, it was Mother Goose, a member of Red Riley’s corner boys, an older guy like Red and most of his boys, a twenty something although nobody said that then, who took umbrage ( I am being polite) that Cecilia Duggan had caught Johnny’s eye, or more probably she had glanced his way. Bad blood, bad blood no question. (By the way nobody knows why he was called Mother Goose except maybe he never had a mother because he was one tough and fierce looking guy who I would cross the street when I saw him approaching me.       

One dark, probably weekend night I forget now, Mother came strutting, or maybe lumbering is better, into our Tonio’s space not looking for pizza but Johnny. Called Johnny out, started talking the talk that tough guys talk and guys who want to be tough guys have to respond to. I think Johnny was in having pizza or listening to the already mentioned fabulous Tonio’s jukebox (placed there as we later learned by the local Mafia who controlled all that kind of action then, maybe now too for all I know) when he heard the clarion call. He went up to Mother said something like “let’s go out back” who knows but that sounds right. That back was the alleyway between building in the commercial section of the Acre, the area where Tonio’s was located, dark, dark as the dungeon. They went out back together, alone (frankly most of us, whether we admitted it or not, would have freaked out if we had to watch this hand to hand combat in person). Several minutes later Johnny Blade came out breathing heavily, sweating from his forehead and maybe a little peaked. All he said was “maybe somebody should call an ambulance.” Somebody, I think Tonio but don’t quote me on that, did call and the cops and ambulance came. Mother had been cut up badly, a few deep gashes although mostly arm and leg wounds, nothing life threatening. Mother, eyes looking right at Johnny Blade when asked by a cop who had done this horrible deed said he had not been able to identify his assailant. Followed the time-honored, time-worn code of not finking out, ratting out to the coppers. Funny the cops never asked anybody if they knew anything, saw anybody run since they also knew they would get the time-honored, time-worn didn’t see a fucking thing. Didn’t ask sweated Johnny Blade anything.

We expected some blow-back, serious blow-back when Red Riley found out what had happened to Mother and by whom, but he may have been in shock that anybody would waste one of his corner boys and that person must have been a mean mother, meaner than Mother indeed. Or maybe it was just “collateral damage,” another term not used then in the turf wars since Mother had chosen, wisely or not, to confront a corner boy on his own turf. A few years later Red Riley, motorcycle at the ready and motorcycle mama in tow, got wasted by some redneck cops down in some freaking White Hen store in North Carolina trying to rob the place.

Johnny Blade Postscript: After high school we went our various ways as usually happens, and Johnny Blade whether he finished high school or not I am not sure I know he had been kept back at least one year, went his way. The story goes around the old neighborhood that Johnny Blade almost killed a man, by knife of course, in Riverdale out west of Boston, got caught and was given “the choice.” The choice in those days given by a judge was a nickel in the state pen or go in the Army. Johnny Blade, Sergeant John Richard Rizzo, took the latter course and laid down his head in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam in 1967. He forever has his name etched on the Adamsville town memorial wall and down in that black granite-etched wall in Washington, D.C. Every time I go down there, I go to the wall and shed a tear for him (and Frank White). Thanks for defending your corner boys. RIP, Sergeant John Richard Rizzo, “Johnny Blade” (1946-1967)

On This Good Green Universe Finally A Knight, Knights Too,  In Shining Armor Worth Of The Title-Hal Jordan’s “The Green Lantern” (2011)-A Film Review

By Will Bradley

Finally, finally I can tout a legend worthy of the name-the Green Lantern (both in the individual assigned to protect section 2410, Earth and its environs, Hal Jordan, yes that Hal Jordan of Air Force fighter pilot fame and the 3600 members of the Corps protecting the big bang boogie universe from chaos and fear-provoking characters). As the constant reader well knows by now, I have skewered more than my fair share of dead-beat legends. Guys like Robin Hood, Captain Blood, Don Juan who collectively have via granted good press agents and cultist followings had over-blown, over-rated, fake, lying to beat the band reputations which have been hammered by me with facts and figures. A recent UCal poll (in conjunction with the well-regarded Harrison Foundation) has shown a righteous decline in believe in these popular braggards and blowhards. Now I can rightly play a real pilot, the legendary Jordan against the continuing legacy of one supposed  early aviator Johnny Cielo who has been exposed as having flown a freaking Piper Club, Jesus a Piper Club in his last years ferrying well-heeled playboys and their mistresses from Key West to Naples down in Florida. Hopefully, by comparison, Johnny’s fake legend, nothing but press agent blather will tumble like Larry Lawrence’s (real name of Sherlock Holmes), a guy named Casanova, a bunch of mutants from organizations calling themselves avengers and justice leaguers.       

The nice thing about doing a good public relations job for our protectors, for the Greens is that I can lay off the venom for while and sing the praises of our blessed defenders against, well, against fear (and sloth but let’s grab one at a time and fear has created more deaths that a little overeating-right). That guardianship turns out to have been a very tough and time-consuming job with only a small reprieve for an off- hand snuggling with one Carol Ferris, a little fox, no, a match for our boy’s wits.    

Here’s the play as my antagonist Seth Garth likes to say. The universe was, is in some chaos, engendered by that fear I was just talking about. Yeah, we all know fear is an emotion but what the average citizen does not know, what Hal Jordan before he got hipped, before in the days when all he cared about what wine and women, maybe a little dope to go off track a little, especially while flying those supersonic jets, did not know what that it had a material presence. Something like the worst serpent nightmare, worse that the Garden of Eden serpent who caused all the trouble thereafter. Something like a hundred tsunamis rolled into one with no reverse. This “fear” was relentless and had the old Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Hitler and pals dream, nightmare for us, desire to rule the whole known universe and maybe some black hole stuff too. A tough, tough adversary.  

That is where Hal comes in. He was not originally a Green but had been recruited by a Green who in battle with that dreaded “fear” came out on the short end, had been mortally wounded despite his bravery. Landed, seemingly by chance, on Earth, near Gotham, Metropolis, you know it as New Jack City and plucked Hal out for one very strong reason-he wasn’t afraid, had no fear when the deal went down as everybody knew it would. Once Hal bought in though he was, like his hero-worshipped by him father, in all the way. So despite the trials and travails and a little flare up or too with that honey of his he banished fear -for now. Without fanfare, with having to be bedecked with medals, and without some desperate press agent spinning lying weaves to gin up what Hal had done. Nice, thanks brother for saving our bacon.           

How The Mighty Had Fallen On Hard Times-The Decline And Fall Of The Late Famous Private Detective Lew Archer-With The Chalmers Case In Mind-A Book Review-Sort Of       

By Sam Lowell

The Good-bye Look, Ross MacDonald, 1969

[To be honest I had originally no intention of writing this bracketed introduction but am doing so now as the request, damn, make that order of site manager Greg Green. That little command despite the fact that I am chair of the Editorial Board of this publication and am in theory at least his boss, or one of his bosses. However Greg has pulled rank on me since there was great deal of blowback from readers and reviewers from other publications on my previous efforts to understand the demise of a man who would have been the greatest of all the private eye detectives Lew Archer. I had assumed that as a hard-hitting publication seeking the truth no matter I was on solid ground. I had freely posited that Lew’s trouble began (and ended) with his hushed-up sexual impotence sending him to the minor leagues where chasing skirts as well as criminals didn’t matter that much to a P.I.s reputation since that was mainly repo work or security stuff. The blowback mostly was why was I “defaming” a long-gone dead guy who had had some great successes. But they fail to  mention in the end a guy who through the breakthrough Hardman case and a few others looked like he was a shoo in for the P.I. Hall of Fame wound up peeking through keyholes in seedy U.S. 101 motels before “no-fault divorce” put and big crimp in that P.I. money-maker and then after he go this license yanked wound up shagging golf balls at the Bel Air Country Club for an ex-client who felt sorry for him.  

I would have let the whole thing fade to oblivion, easily fade to oblivion except I ran into Lew’s lawyer, his last lawyer who was sitting in a San Francisco gin mill when he spotted me and after the obligatory exchange of a few drinks which will always loosen up tongues he posed the question of questions about Lew’s demise. And like all lawyers thought he had the answer to before he asked the question. See I knew Lew in the old days, in his old age just before the hammer came down from the State of California that maybe for the good of the profession he “retire” meaning they were not going to renew his license after he got caught planting so-called evidence in the Miller case, a missing child case which never did get solved. Knew Lew from the time that I interviewed him for the East Bay Other as a young free-lance reporter interested in the wild crops of private eyes who populated the Left Coast (not called that then but later). Had an intense interest on film private eyes too as I was beginning to start my first steps as a film reviewer and wanted to compare Lew with some earlier immortals like Phil Larkin, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe, all three easily inducted into that hall of fame.          

Look, in the old days the cops, the DA, the police reporters and everybody else would cover for somebody like Lew who had started out as a public copper but those hero-worshipping days are long gone, long gone for guys whose feet were made of clay. Although those days are long gone and now every reporter, young or old, has to have a “hook” to stay in place even on the food chain of this cutthroat business I was prepared before I got this inside information to move on to other pursuits. Since I am “outing” Lew who was exceptional in that he tanked early I might as well mention that a guy like Phil Larkin was actually arrested as a “peeping Tom” on his last case and had to register as a sex offender in Pennsylvania where his graduate student girlfriend met on-line was doing her doctoral dissertation at Penn State. Sam Spade passed on in a mental hospital, that is what they called them then screaming out the name “Brigid” over and over again. Phillip Marlowe after he married Vivian Sternwood of the oil money billions and moved to Poodle Springs lost his edge. Took only high-end clients and cases until Vivian tossed him out after she caught him fooling around with younger sister Carmen in Las Vegas (that before he ran into Dotty Malone, the famous screen-writer who he would later marry). Not a word below has been changed as a result of the “boss’ command so read on.   Sam Lowell]     

***********

Lew Archer had been impotent, sexually impotent, which explains a lot about why he never entered the pantheon, the P.I. pantheon. The famous, or rather almost famous, Hollywood private detective who was expected to light up the 1950s professional firmament after guys like Philo Vance, Same Spade, Phillip Marlowe. Phil Larkin, even Nick Charles, stopped peeking through keyholes or cashed their checks whichever came first. Except poor Lew could not cut the mustard as we used to say in the old North Adamsville neighborhood when we had time on our hands and tried to figure who was homo, a fag, you know “light on their feet, ” a mama’s boy, a Nancy and some stuff I refuse to say in my old age after having learned a thing or two -including it ain’t  my business, or yours, who somebody loves. Except nobody, and I don’t here, is trying to “out” Lew at this late date nor do I think he was into same-sex relationships. I think he just lost steam, lost some sexual desire after maybe taking one, or twenty, too many hits on the noggin, a few off-hand slugs and maybe had some other physical problems like erectile dysfunction in those Viagra-less days as he grew older.

Hollywood though as I just learned recently from Seth Garth, a fellow writer at this publication and one of the guys who gay-baited with me in the old Acre working poor days when we had nothing but time on our hands for such foolishness was very protective of its own back in those same 1950s days. The recent comments he made in this publication in doing a quick review of a new biography about male icon and AIDS victim Rock Hudson and other well-known male hunk figures like Tab Hunter and Rory Calhoun show how well all that stuff was kept from the public in the interest of illusions and profits. At who knows at what cost to the actors and others involved. Hollywood, as is less well known, was as protective of its private investigators as its movie stars so it is understandable that Lew’s reputation as a “lady’s man” lasted so long. (Ironically, no, sadly Hollywood was not so protective of its personnel who were being tarred with the “commie, red” brush in the heart of the Cold War purges orchestrated by the U.S. government. They fed the grist mill with all hands in those days.)        

Naturally anybody would want proof or at least informed speculation to go with the “accusation” against Lew at this far remove and I would suggest that beginning with the Galton case, the case that made him very famous, Hollywood famous and thus fleeting he lost his way. And I will provide proof in due course but first it is necessary to set Lew and his manly failure up against what the public, hell, what the profession expected of its own practitioners. Guys like Phil Larkin, Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, hell, even married to Nora Nick Charles when Nora wasn’t looking, set a high bar for grabbing some serious femmes in their time. Hell a guy like Phil Larkin was still pushing himself forward, and succeeding, with young lovelies, with as the term went, or one of the terms for desirable women went, the frills, grabbing a foxy twenty-something graduate student, a Glennon daughter, when he was almost seventy after the Glennon murder case wrapped up. And Phil was a lesser light in the profession then.     

The two big guys in the profession though who I want to highlight here to set up Lew’s problem were one Samuel Spade whose mother raised no fool and the ubiquitous Phillip Marlowe. First to Sam who, with or without his partner Miles Archer, no relation to Lew, solved many cases including that got him in the P.I. Hall of Fame the Astor case, the case where by the skin of his nose he avoided the noose, the big step off and sent a femme, his femme, Brigid who the hell knows her last name she used a million aliases to face the music. Beautiful and every private detective program from those established by the Pinkertons to those you used to see advertised on match book covers about learning the profession in ten easy lessons without leaving the comfort of your armchair (but leaving a few bucks behind as usual).

That Astor case is informative for it is the first time in public that a P.I. slept with a client, a lying bitch of a client but still a client under most state licensing rules and then turned her over the coppers after she nearly blew his brains out, and few other guys too. The point here being that with a wild one like the Astor dame you had better have, what did we call it up above, plenty of mustard if you are going to go the distance and not fall down in the cracks. I won’t even mention that Chinese beauty over in Chinatown that cleans his whistle in the Tong Wars case or what in the profession was called the “flute-player case,” although in public called the Bergman case, when this Scandinavian femme tried to leave him flat to take yet another fall after doing her thing with him. Great almost heroic mode stuff.      

If Sam set the standard, set the bar high, Phillip Marlowe, another P.I. Hall of Famer, went wild with the women once it didn’t matter, nobody gave a fuck as one wag had it whether you played it straight with the client or jumped immediately under the satin sheets with the femme. Had two sisters going at one point, the younger wilder one, Carmen, Carmen Sternwood, dropping in his lap even before he took his hat off. It is not clear whether he went under the silkies with both her and the older sister, Vivian whom he married for a while mostly for the sex and dough then blew their Poodle Springs mansion for the next best thing. Bopped swell Velma against all odds and against the mammoth client who would have put him six feet under if he got a whiff of that scent she gave off when Phillip came a-calling. Grabbed Honey in the big Hollywood star murder case no problem. I could go on and on but you get the message. Cut the mustard or get the hell out of town.  

Now to the case against Lew, why he didn’t measure up, why he was never even close to being voted into the P.I. Hall of Fame despite a fistful of nominations. There was a lot of speculation around over the years that Lew was never the same after the, what did they call it, oh yeah, the Ivory Grin case where he got egg all over his face when he was unable to figure out what happened to the guy his client was looking for. The client a fox if there ever was one but Lew never got to first base with her, never tried to get to first base which is worse from the story I heard from a very reliable source who knew the client and knew the guy she was looking for and couldn’t find through Lew. The public coppers wrapped it up in a week once there was another murder committed by the same warped doctor who couldn’t keep his hands off the women, some other guys’ women.       

Personally, and bear me out on this I think the turning point was when he balled up the Galton case, couldn’t connect the dots, couldn’t navigate the bevy of dames who passed his way and if that was the case then no way could he solve the case. As mentioned before, and if not then now, the public coppers had to come and save his bacon, Jesus, against a guy who hung himself rather than go back in stir, rather than face the inevitable California big step-off.

Funny how you will get information on the subject you are reporting on, the back channels connections that never get made public, by you or any reporter made public, not if you want to move up the tough racket food chain that is journalism the toughest racket of all except maybe film critics, reviewers whatever they call themselves these days. The operative word is you “dug” the nuggets out by the sweat of your brow like some coalminer rather than having it handed to you by some poor drunk like happened in the Johnny Cielo case down in Key West back in those same 1950s. But at this far remove I am not telling any tales out of school by saying that impotence theory was the opinion of a well-known lawyer who should know and whom I met when I was just starting out as a journalist at the East Bay Other, a place where a few other writers here did some free-lance work. Hell, it was all free-lance or free then since you never knew if you would get paid or not, paid enough at least to keep the wolves from your door. I had been sitting with that lawyer having drinks at the notorious KitKat Club in San Francisco in the days when “drag queen” culture was very much underground, and I was on assignment to write about it for the Eye. He was defending the establishment and the exotic entertainers against the city and against various violations of the health moral codes then existing. This in the days before Timmy Riley was the owner, when he was just working out his act, doing a lame impersonation of Miss Bette Davis and hardly keeping the wolves from his door. Somehow the subject of great private detectives came up, probably I brought it up since I knew that he had defended a number of famous private eyes, famous California ones anyway when they got into legal trouble.

Got Phillip Marlowe, yes that Phillip Marlowe from the Sternwood case P.I.s still talk about, still do case studies on in those matchbox cover ads touting how to be a detective in ten or so easy lessons-for hard cash and no refunds, buddy- out from under the big step off when they tried to wrap old-time gangster Eddie Mars’ murder, murder by his own bodyguards on Marlowe when he, Marlowe,   was allegedly doing a burglary of one of Eddie’s properties. Got Phil off in a million other cases too like the time he wasted some doctor, some pill-pusher who filled him up with junk to get him to spill where a guy named Moose Malone, no relation to Dorothy below, was to stop him from finding some femme who did not want to be found-by giant Moose anyway. From a million other cases and who I had found out later at that time had been married to Dorothy Malone, the famous screenwriter who just died this year at 98 and was the last living link to the great Marlowe legacy.

Got Nick Charles into a 12- Step program after he had attempted to “fly,” Nick’s drunken sot term on the QT after a million DUIs without his wife Nora, his mistress Jenny, or any Frisco cops who had an interest knowing about it. Got one Samuel Spade out from under about six felonies and the loss of his license when some twist named Brigit, Mary, who knew in the end what her real name was pointed the finger at him. That was the one where that Brigit femme walked to the big house and took some gaff for stuff, a fistful of murders, that she had attempted to tie to our boy Sam. So that lawyer and if you don’t know who he is by now then you just don’t lawyers who make their kale off the troubles of private detectives and giving the name would mean nothing to you knew from whence he spoke.

What would mean something, name or no name, was that lawyer’s theory about private detectives, and here he zeroed in specifically on Lew Archer and how he blew the Galton case, a few others too but the Galton case was pure fuck-up and made his point. What that big-time lawyer said was that any P.I. who wasn’t half crazy trying to get under the silky sheets with some femme is strictly impotent, can’t get it up. Not gay, asexual, intersexual, bi-sexual or anything like that that stuff is okay, was okay for him back then since he was hanging around such people in the KitKat Club before Timmy Riley, aka Miss Judy Garland, broke out of the pack with the Garland gag, took over and made the place a Mecca for tourists who wanted to take a quick walk on the wild side.

The funny thing as our lawyer described it was that Lew had about five opportunities to bed some dame starting when he first got on the case with Mrs. gallons of oil money Galton’s home companion, Ava, who was a knockout from the photos of her in a swimsuit when the case went to court (the case of officially adopting Granny Galton’s lost grandson as her sole heir not the murder case of her son which some lawyer had forced her to look into and which was a cold case, a frozen solid cold case when Lew put his grimy paws on the thing and screwed almost everything up before he was done and the public coppers had to come in and solve the damn thing, a rare occasion indeed then but the start of the downward spiral, the road to repo and keyhole peeking work). Then there was the guy who fingered Mrs. gallons of oil money son back in the 1930s whose wife, since remarried, practically threw herself at Lew to avoid her second husband, a good man according to all parties including Lew, finding out she was married to a shiftless bum, a con artist and accessory to murder of that Galton son. Passed her by.

We won’t even speak of the easy pickings he would have had, could have had if he had paid the least bit of attention to the wife, the second wife of the lawyer who hired Lew to find Mrs. Galton’s son (I won’t continue with that “gallons of oil money” gag you know who I mean now). Not only was she drugged to the gills, half naked at least half of the time in his presence at the nursing home she was placed in after she had a nervous breakdown over her role in the murder of that guy who fingered Galton’s son for the executioner’s ax back in the 1930s but she believed, when her lawyerly husband brainwashed her to perdition, she had killed that ex-lover. A piece of cake. Blown to perdition.

It doesn’t end there, and maybe I will miss a few other opportunities today when I think about the long-ago case but I will give you enough examples that my lawyer friend gave me to condemn Lew to strictly third-rate private detective-dom. There was the grandson’s college time, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan girlfriend who had enough dough to sink a ship, was ready to give the kid cars, and whatever else he wanted. The kid walked away, went to greener pastures. When Lew interviewed the twist, trying to find out what she knew about the kid’s whereabouts, what made him tick, and why he was the pawn in some nefarious scheme to dupe Mrs. Galton into believing that he was really her grandson, she was as ready to have a soft shoulder to cry on as anybody in the world. Lew walked. Wouldn’t give her the time of day, made some excuse up about his time of the month, male version. Hell even ancient Phil Larkin, he of the famed Simmons case which made his name, grabbed some twenty-something graduate student from Penn State, led her a merry chase, and he was almost seventy. Poor Lew.

(My lawyer checking into that Big Blue dame’s fate just because he was interested, maybe grab her on the rebound told me she already had a new boyfriend about five days after Lew talked to her although he still was able to get a date with her since she and the new lover were not “exclusive,” whatever that meant.)  

Now I think that the next women Lew passed on maybe he wasn’t wrong to not take a run at although my lawyer was infuriated that I would say such a stupid journalist kind of thing. This was a dame, an older dame but not that old who frankly didn’t keep up her appearances as they used to say in the days before body-shaming became taboo, very taboo whether for good or evil. She would have been easy pickings too, maybe a one-night stand but here is what she was about. She had actually been married to Mrs. Galton’s son, has seen him killed out on the coast south of Frisco where they were staying, had had an affair or two with the finger man and her husband’s murderer before under threat of murder to her son, that Galton heir grandson, she had married the guy and fled to Canada with him. Stayed with him trying to protect her son she said-likely story. No go for Lew though even though she had locked the door behind them when he was “interviewing” her. No, not poor Lew, sad sack Lew.

Here is the one I don’t figure, the one he should have taken a run at with all hands. Once Mrs. Galton found out that her son had been murdered but that she had a grandson who had been missing for years and who turned up during Lew’s tenure as her private investigator that case was over. Still there were plenty of people who for their own reasons believed the kid, John was the name he used but as usual any name will do since they are all aliases, was an impostor, was in it for the big payoff when Granny croaked. One was Mrs. Galton’s doctor who had a young daughter whose was at just that age when she was as flirtatious to older guys as young guys. The doctor wasn’t happy when he found out that said daughter was having an affair with John after Lew basically frosted up on her. Jesus how many chances can a guy have and flub everyone.

My lawyer friend also had a theory about the cause of Lew’s impotency which led to his royally screwing up the case so badly. It is tough being third or fourth fiddle in the private detective game (and that was only in California we won’t even discuss the whole country). Lew tried I think, maybe to be a lady’s man but it didn’t work, so he tried a different route, the no sex with clients or persons of interest. It didn’t work but that is that. It now makes perfect sense that he didn’t believe John was the real deal, that the lawyer who hired him played him like a yo-yo. That everybody lied through their teeth to him and he bought it, or at least followed more false flag leads than you could shake a stick at. The funny thing was that all the loose ends got collected up without him. The Galton son's murderer hung himself rather than going back to jail. The finger-man’s ex-wife got redemption from her second husband. John got his girl and his mother’s forgiveness. Mrs. Galton got her real heir, despite the murderous machinations of her scoundrel lawyer and his bedazzled wife got a clear conscience. Lew, well, Lew got egg on his face, lots of egg and a lonely roll-away bed in his low-rent rooming house.                     

It never really got better for Lew as the cases got fewer, as the femme world got the cold shoulder fast even before they could coo a few words. Take the odd-ball Shafer case, an odd-ball case because he took the thing on “spec” from his lawyer who was trying to help a long time neighbor and his wife, The Chambers, whose son had been off the rails, had been as they said in those day, looney, cuckoo ever since he had been abducted as a child had killed the abductor the minute he got a chance. This neighbor, Jim, the man had bags of money either inherited from his late mother or gathered from some unknown sources, and had been too boot a war hero, World War II version, as a pilot out in the briny Pacific death traps. Jim had a wife, a beauty named Oona, nice right who once Lew got on the case could tell was not in love with her husband, was going through the motions. She had looked Lew up and down the minute he came into view but despite being in her presence for a goody part of the case, passed.     

Jim and Oona’s kid really was in a bad way after two events one the so-called robbery of a bunch of his father’s letters to his mother and the stacking up of bodies like cordwood anytime Nick was within fifty miles on any murder. He blamed himself and found his way into the nearest mental hospital which just so happened to be run by a psychiatrist, and his wife Moira, more on her in a minute, trained as a social worker whose benefactor, whose “angel” in funding the clinic had been Jim after Nick got away from that bad ass abductor. Of course anytime the Nick name came up in Lew’s lawyer’s presence he went apoplectic since he did not want his young daughter, young at twenty-five several years younger than Lew but very appealing. She was looking for a shoulder to cry on, another unhappy California woman who seemed to have populated Lew’s life. She could not have been more obvious about her needs but again Lew turned his face away. 

We need not go into the stack of dead bodies that Lew always wound up having to figure out who the murderer was, in the early days he would have had this thing nailed down before sunset by he was clueless for a long while, just like that horrible end to the Galton case when started him down the road to cheap street. What was important though is that he ran through about three other women who would not have turned him down with slightest encouragement. By now you know the drill though.  

I mentioned that Moira, that buxom, curvy woman, Lew’s description not mine I never saw her, married to the shrink who was treating young Nick, the natural fall guy for any bad stuff in the neighborhood. No question she was brighter and kinder than her husband whom she hated with a passion since he went off the deep end running the clinic factory. She was ripe for Lew’s arms, ready to “do the do” as we used to say in the old neighborhood. Why I bring this up with what we know about Lew’s state of mine at the time one story that was circulating at the time was that they, Moira and Lew let’s be clear, went off to some vacant clinic bed and did the “deed.” That was the story then then went around and people were relieved that at least Lew was back on track to be a real private detective.

Baloney, the real story that my lawyer friend who gave me the skinny on the Galton screwups ran into Moira one night in some gin mill in Brentwood. Since he knew her slightly from sending some of his clients to her husband’s in attempts to make a mental incapacity case for them when all else failed he bought her a drink and the subject of Lew Archer and the Shafer case came up. She turned seven shades of red and probably knew right there where the discussion would lead. My guy brought up the subject by way of thanking her for saving Lew’s reputation, for bringing back his “ladies’ man reputation which every serious P.I. needed or got knocked down to repo work or worse. She told him the real story, the story Lew made her tell certain persons who would make sure it got around. Despite about six different attempts arouse him usually every trick she knew from the Kama Sutra nothing. Being a kind if sexually frustrated by the encounter she went along with his wishes. That night hubby got a joy ride she blurted out.  

As for the fate of poor Nick, well, things got better for him once he figured out he was no stone-cold killer. The solution as Lew’s lawyer figured out and passed on to the coppers was simplicity itself, P.I. 101. Nick was set up by somebody who knew he was vulnerable and knew he knew “what was what” about the stolen letters. His “father” Jim had set the poor kid up having committed a burglary of his mother’s house for dough and those damn letters. Jim was a fake, was not Nick’s father, was a worse fake in general because he was one of those “stolen valor” guys, had washed out of pilot school because he got airsick or something. Wound up doing KP, shining officers’ shoes, and policing the grounds around the naval station in San Diego being laughed at by real pilots who had flown serious missions in the Pacific. The only good thing he did when exposed, or about to be, was to slit his worthless throat. As for Lew he got a reprieve from his fading reputation and that was it. Tough slide for a guy who could have been a hall of famer. 

Maybe Not Fit For The Primetime Hallmark Channel- Gary Cooper’s “Peter Ibbetson” (1935)-A Short Film Review    

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Peter Ibbetson, starring Ann Harding, Gary Cooper, 1935

Hasn’t the Hallmark Channel except this time of year add in some Christmas carols and a few decorated trees, etc. already done the plotline to this film, this 1935 film Peter Ibbetson, starring a mustachioed Gary Cooper in the title role and Ann Harding as his flame Mary. (He last seen in this publication in a review, a debunking expose of the legendary American Old West outlaw Link Jones who must have had a pretty press agent to beat the rap as a bad guy by self-proclaimed legend-slayer young Will Bradley). I know of whence I speak since Laura Perkins, yes, the Laura Perkins who writes here and my long-time companion is “addicted” to this channel’s television products this holiday time of year and some days I heard the plot-line as background when I am working or reading.

Let me outline, with Laura’s key input and approval, the plot and see if except the last almost surreal end minutes this couldn’t have been one of the long line of similar Hallmark presentations and saved the channel some money for screenwriters (although they probably only spent about six dollars on that expense from the dialogue and stories that I have overheard but please don’t tell Laura that). Some young professional woman returns home (for Christmas but any holiday would do) having either dumped or been dumped by some unworthy guy who didn’t see her positive qualities, or he didn’t have any as the case may be. During that home stay, and this is the important connector to the film under review, she runs into, one way or another “the boy next door,” some guy from her youth growing up in splendid small-town America. Either she had a crush on him or him her when they were young and that sets the “drama” for the rest of the production. Until that last clinching kiss after one or the other, or both have tried to avoid destiny call.            

Fast forward, no, fast backward. Peter and Mary are the children of English ex-pats in the 19^th century who live in some splendor in Paris-and are next door neighbors. And are fast friends despite their childhood predilections. Young Peter’s mother though dies of what probably was consumption then, tuberculous now and he is shipped back to England with some ne’er-do-well uncle. Before parting they swear undying devotion to each other. (Interestingly we see neither Peter or Mary’s father so maybe that ex-pat business had to do with their mothers as we called it in the old Acre working class section of North Adamsville where I grew up “going to see Aunt Emma,” leaving town or in this case country to have a child out of wedlock, to be pregnant, to bear illegitimate children no big deal now but very big then.)      

That promise to reunite is what drives the second part of the film when Peter as an adult has taken up the profession of architect and Mary has landed on her feet very nicely by marrying an older man, an English Duke of the realm and loaded with dough and love of horses if not of Mary. And she him, the not in love part. The reunion, the dragged out reunion, between the pair gets resolved when up and coming architect Peter is commissioned by the Duke and Duchess to build a new stable for the horses, a job he will supervise for a couple of months without either him or Mary figuring out the basis of the growing attraction between them. Naturally the relationship between the two former neighbors grows putting everything in doubt once the Duke, who may have loved horses and not loved Mary, still was no fool and saw what was going on between them. Saw and had enough jealous rage to plot their murders. Except in the melee the Duke was killed by Peter. No good could come of that.

Frankly, Peter should have gotten himself a better lawyer because what was clearly a case of self-defense got him convicted of a murder rap in very protective of nobility England. Here is where things veer off from a Hallmark script. Essentially Peter and Mary are so much in love that they have a mystical bond between them which lasts for the rest of their lives despite being apart. Peter in some hell-hole Dickens Dartmoor dungeon and her in tortured splendor at her estate (she always seems to land on her feet unlike Peter who takes it on the chin always). I suspected they like Thomas de Quincy and Sam Coleridge were doing some very strong drugs but that is mere speculation. In any case when Mary dies Peter passes away as well although they will be united for eternity wherever they wind up. You know maybe I am wrong, maybe this one has too much drama, too much melodrama to pass muster on the Hallmark Channel. Laura agrees.   

        

***An Encore Presentation -Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Time Of Frankie’s Carnival Time-With Bruce Springsteen's "Jersey Girl" in Mind 

By Lance Lawrence

An old man walked, walked haltingly down a North Adamsville street, maybe Hancock Street, or maybe a street just off of it, maybe a long street like West Main Street, he has forgotten which exactly in the time between his walking and his telling me his story. A street near the high school anyway, North Adamsville High School, where he had graduated from back in the mist of time, the 1960s mist of time. A time when he was known, far and wide, as the king, the king hell king, if the truth be known, of the schoolboy be-bop night. And headquartered himself, properly headquartered himself as generations of schoolboy king hell kings had done previously, at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor as was his due as the reigning schoolboy king of the night. But that schoolboy corner boy king thing is an old story, an old story strictly for cutting up old torches, according to the old man, Frankie, yes, Francis Xavier Riley, as if back from the dead, and not fit, not fit by a long shot for what he had to tell me about his recent “discovery,” and its meaning.

Apparently as Frankie, let us skip the formalities and just call him Frankie, walked down that nameless, maybe unnamable street he was stricken by sight of a sign on a vagrant telephone pole announcing that Jim Byrd’s Carnival and Traveling Show was coming to town and setting up tent at the Veteran’s Stadium in the first week in June, this past June, for the whole week. And seeing this sign, this vagrant sign on this vagrant telephone pole, set off a stream of memories from when the king hell king of the schoolboy corner boy night was so enthralled with the idea of the “carny” life, of this very Jim Byrd’s Carnival and Traveling Show carnival life, that he had plans, serious plans, to run away, run away with it when it left town.

Under this condition, and of course there was always a condition: if Ma Riley, or Pa Riley if it came to it, although Pa was usually comfortably ensconced in the Dublin Pub over on Sagamore Street and was not a big factor in Frankie’s life when it came time for him to make his mark as king hell king, just bothered him one more time, bothered about what was never specified at least to me. Of course they never did, or Frankie never let on that they did, bother him enough to force the issue, and therefore never forced him on the road. But by then he was into being the corner boy king so that dream must have faded, like a lot of twelve year old dreams.

In any case rather than running away with the carnival Frankie served his high school corner boy term as king hell king, went to college and then to law school, ran a successful mid-sized law practice, raised plenty of kids and political hell and never looked back. And not until he saw that old-time memory sign did he think of regrets for not having done what he said that “he was born for.” And rather than have the reader left with another in the endless line of cautionary tales, or of two roads, one not taken tales, or any of that, Frankie, Frankie in his own words, wants to expand on his carnival vision reincarnation and so we will let him speak :

Who knows when a kid first gets the carnival bug, maybe it was down in cradle times hearing the firecrackers in the heated, muggy Fourth Of July night when in old, old time North Adamsville a group of guys, a group of guys called the “Associates,” mainly Dublin Pub guys, and at one time including my father, Joe Riley, Senior, grabbed some money from around the neighborhood. And from the local merchants like Doc over at Doc’s Drug Store, Mario over at Estrella’s Grocery Store, Mac, owner of the Dublin Pub, and always, always, Tonio, owner of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor. What they did with this money was to hire a small time, usually very small time, carnival outfit, something with a name like Joe’s Carny, or the like, maybe with a merry-go-round, some bumping cars, a whip thing, a few one-trick ponies, and ten or twelve win-a-doll-for-your-lady tents. On the side maybe a few fried dough, pizza, sausage and onions kind of eateries, with cotton candy to top it off. And in a center tent acts, clown acts, trapeze acts with pretty girls dangling every which way, jugglers, and the like. Nothing fancy, no three-ring circus, or monster theme amusement park to flip a kid’s head stuff. Like I say small time, but not small time enough to not enflame the imagination of every kid, mainly every boy kid, but a few girls too if I remember right, with visions of setting up their own show.

Or maybe it was when this very same Jim Byrd, a dark-haired, dark-skinned (no, not black, not in 1950s North Adamsville, christ no, but maybe a gypsy or half-gypsy, if that is possible), a friendly guy, slightly wiry, a slightly side-of-his-mouth-talking guy just like a lawyer, who actually showed me some interesting magic tricks when I informed him, aged eight, that I wanted to go “on the road” with him first brought his show to town. Brought it to Veteran’s Stadium then too. That’s when I knew that that old time Associates thing, that frumpy Fourth of July set-up-in-a-minute-thing-and-then-gone was strictly amateur stuff. See Jim’s Carny had a Ferris wheel, Jim had a Mini-Roller Coaster, and he had about twenty-five or thirty win-a-doll, cigarettes, teddy bears, or candy tents. But also shooting galleries, gypsy fortune-telling ladies with daughters with black hair and laughing eyes selling roses, or the idea of roses. 

And looking very foxy, the daughters that is, although I did not know what foxy was then. Oh yah, sure Jim had the ubiquitous fried dough, sausage and onion, cardboard pizza stuff too. Come on now this was a carnival, big time carnival, big time to an eight-year old carnival. Of course he had that heartburn food. But what set Jim’s operation off was that central tent. Sure, yawn, he had the clowns, tramp clowns, Clarabelle clowns, what have you, and the jugglers, juggling everything but mainly a lot of whatever it was they were juggling , and even the acrobats, bouncing over each other like rubber balls. The big deal, the eight- year old big deal though, was the animals, the real live tigers and lions that performed in a cage in center stage with some blonde safari-weary tamer doing the most incredible tricks with them. Like, well, like having them jump through hoops, and flipping over each other and the trainer too. Wow.

But now that I think about it seriously the real deal of the carny life was neither the Associates or Jim Byrd’s, although after I tell you about this Jim’s would enter into my plans because that was the carnival, the only carnival I knew, to run away with. See what really got me going was down in Huntsville, a town on the hard ocean about twenty miles from North Adamsville, there was what would now be called nothing but an old-time amusement park, a park like you still might see if you went to Seaside Heights down on the Jersey shore. This park, this Wild Willie’s Amusement Park, was the aces although as you will see not a place to run away to since everything stayed there, summer open or winter closed. I was maybe nine or ten when I first went there but the story really hinges on when I was just turning twelve, you know, just getting ready to make my mark on the world, the world being girls. Yes, that kind of turning twelve.

But nine or twelve this Wild Willie’s put even Jim Byrd’s show to shame. Huge roller-coasters (yes, the plural is right, three altogether), a wild mouse, whips, dips, flips and very other kind of ride, covered and uncovered, maybe fifteen or twenty, all based on the idea of trying to make you scared, and want to go on again, and again to“conquer” that scared thing. And countless win things (yah, cigarettes, dolls, teddy bears, candy, and so on in case you might have forgotten). I won’t even mention that hazardous to your health but merciful, fried dough, cardboard pizza (in about twenty flavors), sausage and onions, cotton candy and salt water taffy because, frankly I am tired of mentioning it and even a flea circus or a flea market today would feel compelled to offer such treats so I will move on.

What it had that really got me going, at first anyway, was about six pavilions worth of pinball machines, all kinds of pinball machines just like today there are a zillion video games at such places. But what these pinball machines had (beside alluring come-hither and spend some slot machine dough on me pictures of busty young women on the faces of the machines) were guys, over sixteen year old teenage guys, mainly, some older, some a lot older at night, who could play those machines like wizards, racking up free games until the cows came home. I was impressed, impressed to high heaven. And watching them, watching them closely were over sixteen- year old girls, some older, some a lot older at night, who I wondered, wondered at when I was nine but not at twelve, might not be interfering with their pinball magic. Little did I know then that the pinball wizardry was for those sixteen year old, some older, some a lot older girls.

But see, if you didn’t already know, nine or twelve-year old kids were not allowed to play those machines. You had to be sixteen (although I cadged a few free games left on machines as I got a little older, and I think the statute of limitations has run out on this crime so I can say I was not sixteen years or older). So I gravitated toward the skee ball games located in one of those pinball pavilions, games that anybody six to sixty or more could play. You don’t know skees. Hey where have you been? Skee, come on now. Go over to Seaside Heights on the Jersey shore, or Old Orchard up on the Maine coast and you will have all the skees you want, or need. And if you can’t waggle your way to those hallowed spots then I will give a little run-down. It’s kind of like bowling, candle-pin bowling (small bowling balls for you non-New Englanders) with a small ball and it’s kind of like archery or darts because you have to get the balls, usually ten or twelve to a game, into tilted holes.

The idea is to get as high a score as possible, and in amusement park land after your game is over you get coupons depending on how many points you totaled. And if you get enough points you can win, well, a good luck rabbit’s foot, like I won for Karen stick-girl one time (a stick girl was a girl who didn’t yet have a shape, a womanly shape, and maybe that word still is used, okay), one turning twelve-year old time, who thought I was the king of the night because I gave her one from my “winning,” and maybe still does. Still does think I am king of the hill. But a guy, an old corner boy guy that I knew back then, a kind of screwy guy who hung onto my tail at Salducci’s like I was King Solomon, a guy named Markin who hung around me from middle school on, already wrote that story once. Although he got one part wrong, the part about how I didn’t know right from left about girls and gave this Karen stick girl the air when, after showering her with that rabbit’s foot, she wanted me to go with her and sit on the old seawall down at Huntsville Beach and according to Markin I said no-go. I went, believe me I went, and we both practically had lockjaw for two weeks after we got done. But you know how stories get twisted when third parties who were not there, had no hope of being there, and had questionable left from right girl knowledge themselves start their slanderous campaigns on you. Yes, you know that scene, I am sure.

So you see, Karen stick and lockjaw aside, I had some skill at skees, and the way skees and the carny life came together was when, well let me call her Gypsy Love, because like the name of that North Adamsville vagrant telephone pole street where I saw the Byrd’s carnival in town sign that I could not remember the name of I swear I can’t, or won’t remember hers. All I remember is that jet-black long hair, shiny dark-skinned glean (no, no again, she was not black, christ, no way, not in 1950s Wild Willie’s, what are you kidding me?), that thirteen-year old winsome smile, half innocent, half-half I don’t know what, that fast-forming girlish womanly shape and those laughing, Spanish gypsy black eyes that would haunt a man’s sleep, or a boy’s. And that is all I need to remember, and you too if you have any imagination. See Gypsy Love was the daughter of Madame La Rue, the fortune-teller in Jim Byrd’s carnival. I met her in turning twelve time when she tried to sell me a rose, a rose for my girlfriend, my non-existent just then girlfriend. Needless to say I was immediately taken with her and told her that although I had no girlfriend I would buy her a rose.

And that, off and on, over the next year is where we bounced around in our “relationship.” One day I was down at Wild Willie’s and I spotted her and asked her why she wasn’t on the road with Jim Byrd’s show. Apparently Madame LaRue had had a falling out with Jim, quit the traveling show and landed a spot at Wild Willie’s. And naturally Gypsy Love followed mother, selling flowers to the rubes at Wild Willie’s. So naturally, naturally to me, I told Gypsy Love to follow me over to the skees and I would win her a proper prize. And I did, I went crazy that day. A big old lamp for her room. And Gypsy Love asked me, asked me very nicely thank you, if I wanted to go down by the seawall and sit for a while. And let’s get this straight, no third party who wasn’t there, no wannbe there talk, please, I followed her, followed her like a lemming to the sea. And we had the lockjaw for a month afterward to prove it. And you say, you dare to say I was not born for that life, that carnival life. Ha.

The Shadow Knows, Knows Nada, Nada Nunca, Nada As Legend-Slayer Will Bradley Steps Up His Game-With Alex Baldwin’s “The Shadow” (1994) In Mind-A Film Review, Of Sorts

By Will Bradley  

The Shadow, starring Penelope Ann Miller, Alex Baldwin, John Lone, 1994

How the mighty have fallen. As the constant reader knows I have been on a tear the past year or so beginning with the expose of the legend around one Sherlock Holmes (where I locked horns with old man Seth Garth in an epic fourteen movie review struggle which between us left nothing much left of that silly so-called private detective and his boyfriend or whatever their relationship), or whatever his name really was since the London police files show Larry Lawrence on its books when he was arrested for transporting stolen goods and about thirty other similar charges and a couple more serious like conspiracy to murder which he and a few others did serious time for in Dartmoor, and his dear friend Doc Watson whose real name was Nigel something but don’t get hung up on names when dealing with legends since their various activities require such or their well-paid and padded press agents decided to spruce up their desperado names to appeal to the public’s fancy.

I won’t bore the reader with the litany of those whose reputations, over-inflated, bloated, undeserved or just plain false, lies so brazen that even a priest would be hard-pressed to give absolution, have been crushed and they are now ready for the trash barrel of history. I have taken my righteous campaign going back as far as Robin Hood and his press agent’s coverup of his nefarious doings when he came into some dough. This Robin Hood, for the record real name Robert Locklear or Lockwood the manse records are messy and show both spellings, for example, who was nothing but a gouging rack-renter once his patron King Richard, aka the Lion-Hearted, gave him plenty of acreage for services rendered and he became as oppressive a landlord in his lofty manor as any country squire. Forgot about those yeomen bandits who helped him with his armed robberies of rich and poor alike, whoever dared show their faces in and around Sherwood Forest up in the north of England. Shamed that Lady Marian, real name Holly, by what today would be called “pimping” her to the various courtesan when he found a younger woman, Ophelia.   

(I have refused thus far to take on the “big boys and girls,” the ancient Greeks and Romans, the cranky and crazed gods and goddesses for the simple reason that tracing the records is a bear of a job but I do have a lightweight line on Andromeda and Perseus which I am following concerning his alleged fight against the sea serpents to free her which looks like it was a put -up job worked out so he could “gain her favors,” ancient talk for hitting the sheets or however they covered themselves in their pursuit of lust, if they did, did cover themselves)

Here is the exciting news though and should help me a lot moving up the food chain in this crazy quilt pattern and cutthroat profession which I am only now beginning to navigate with some confidence. A recent UCal survey, poll, conducted in association with the well-known Harrison Foundation has shown a decrease in the belief in various legendary figures of late. The survey was simplicity itself with a broad cross section of the population represented, rich, poor, various genders, races a good mix from what I have seen so far in the preliminary report,  as the interviewee was asked about his or her belief in some figure, then told to read my or somebody else’s documented research and asked whether they were more likely, less likely or the same to believe in the legend. Almost across the board the ratings for these bums with nothing but high priced press agents and shills touting their deeds went down, especially a guy named Don Juan who legend was made of whole cloth by some pent up in a convent by a rich man’s hormonally-charged daughter and Captain Blood exposed as one of the worse of the worse Middle Passage slave trade transporters (and reportedly the person British painter Turner was thinking of when he painted his masterful “Slave.”) 

Naturally in any human endeavor there are failures, failures when people still believe despite all the evidence to the contrary in the validity of something. That was the case with one Johnny Cielo whose legend has kept me up many a night trying to figure out why with all the documentation that I have amassed his ratings actually “spiked” in this latest polling (I should note maybe reflecting the season that belief in angels has also spiked during this period). Fellow writers had shaken their heads when I started this legend-slaying campaign although once I showed them the poll results they have since backed off since especially among the older writers who were knee-deep in backstabbing me for their own purposes, mainly to not fall down the food chain further in my wake. They still though look at me with funny glances around the water cooler when I bring up my troubles breaking the Cielo legend. My whole idea is to get people to think more reasonably to shed their misconceptions, to shed their alternate facts universe in these troubled times when clear heads and clear thinking are necessary. Hence the heavy push against the fake Cielo legend.

A few Cielo details before I go on to my current task of busting up one Lamont Cranston and his shadow game. The genesis of my knowledge of the Cielo legend came from a fellow journalism graduate student who I knew at NYU and whom I had kept in touch with over the past few years. He had been down in Florida, down in the Keys, on an unrelated story which the parties had backed off on, didn’t show up to expose whenever they had to offer (something about CIA conduits to Cuba if I recall). He was sitting in the old Tanner Tavern trying to drown his sorrows and come up with some kind of story to earn his daily bread. While there an older guy, a drunk from the look of him, Billy something (here I really don’t remember the last name) came up and tried to cadge a drink from him.

My guy reluctantly bought him a whiskey, and a few more as the evening wore on, and as a result that loosened up Billy’s tongue about the old days in Key West. The days when Johnny Cielo roamed the space, roamed the skies by day and drank and whored by night. My guy had never heard of Johnny and so Billy spent the better part of an hour describing this and that about Johnny’s place in the early aviation pantheon which every serious aficionado knows about. (That part, the press agent bullshit part is at least true that the cultists know every detail about Johnny, especially in this part of Florida and the South in general)              

The rest of the story can be told by the researching I did after my fellow reporter told me the story since he knew I was looking for copy on these so-called legendary characters for my burgeoning by-line. The first tip of the Johnny iceberg was the claim that he has been the first guy to take human flight. This would seem to have been the straw that broke the camel back on the legend since I was able to retrieve a copy of his birth certificate from the Elmira clerk’s office showing one John Richard Cielo to have been born in 1910. The Wright boys did their magic at Kitty Hawk in 1903. The other kind of secondary piece of evidence for Johnny’s early days was that he gave Howard Hughes the idea for TWA and would have made millions if he had stayed with Hughes. The real deal Johnny was basically a low-rent flying mail postman who ran many operations to the ground before he had to hightail it out of the country with guys with guns breathing down his neck, and a reward on his head by some Chicago mobster who he tried to shake down.

That leaving the country is really where the Johnny legend is centered, that and his later so-called exploits before he fell into the sea. Yeah, his leaving for Barranca to run a mail operation down there is when all the bullshit got wings. See he was supposed to have talked movie icon drop-dead beautiful Rita Hayworth into leaving with him before she ran off with the Aga Khan after Johnny ran out of dough-and prospects. The reality. He had met a whore working some joy house in Hoboken named Sarah Lind, remember be wary of the truth of names in this stuff who did look like Rita and went with him figuring she was getting off cheap street with this good-looking guy (so-so, okay looks from the photos). A view of her photos taken later when Johnny’s money had run out and she had too from some men’s magazines, “girlie” magazines shows that her legs were nowhere as good as Rita’s and this tramp didn’t have a tenth of Rita’s style on her best days.     

I mentioned that Johnny later, in the late 1950s fell into the ocean, fell into the Gulf of Mexico. That location is important for the last really blasphemous part of the Johnny legend. That he was the guy flying arms and other supplies into Cuba for Fidel, Che and the hermanos and had fallen down into the Caribbean. All the flight manifests from Key West show Johnny flying a Piper Club, Jesus, a freaking tinplate Piper Club, taking well-heeled passengers to Naples down in Florida before he fell into the Gulf. To this day despite every denial by successive Cuban governments and every belief by those who want to see a romantic Amerciano helping the good guys that is the lynchpin of his legacy. That is the basis of the shrine, the heavy money-making shrine in the Keys which Johnny’s estate such as it was established to milk the whole thing for what it was worth. Yes, it will be tough to break that one if all the documentation has provided nothing but a spike in his legend. Damn.

But we must move on to the case of one Lamont Cranston, who claimed until his end at Bellevue where he spent the last twenty years of his life in the indigent ward that he was the so-called Shadow whose task was to rid New York City, also called Gotham, also called Metropolis, of crime and criminals. A one-man wrecking crew, ah, vigilante man. We will crack this one easily although I do feel some trepidation right now thinking that maybe one of the reasons for the durability of the Cielo legend is that he was an American and maybe there is as in a lot of things these days a sense of American exceptionalism, that all the modern recordable American legends have to be true. Baloney. (By the way I should point out that all these one-man or one-woman vigilante operations to rid New York City, Gotham, Metropolis of crime and criminals beyond questioning whatever nefarious motives they have is not borne out by the statistics. Per capita that town’s crime rate was no higher than say Roseville out in Kansas then, maybe now too with the epidemic of opioid addiction flooding the rural parts of the country.)

World War I, Lamont Cranston’s war, I will use that name despite the fact that the only person with that name in the 1920s was on the NYPD police blotter for selling jewelry from a push-cart without a license on 7^th Avenue and subsequently for a “bait and switch” con on so-called magic decoder rings, was hard on a whole generation of European and American youth. The effects hit Lamont like a ton of bricks, maybe shell shock is what he had although that diagnosis was in its infant stages back then, made him a Class A junkie before long. But instead of heading to Paris in the 1920s, in the Jazz Age he headed to Tibet and gathered in a serious opium addiction and lustful carryings on with a fistful of concubines-all at one time when he was really high. Then the Lama, Jimmy Lama if I am not mistaken, Lama in any case, took up his case, made him see that he was made for better stuff, made to see the better angel of his nature.

This Lama, no it wasn’t Jimmy but Jerry, yeah, Jerry Lama spent a ton of time giving Lamont the skill set to go back to America, go back to so-called cesspool NYC and clean house, make it livable for average joes to survive. One of the skills he picked up was the ability to transform himself via a joke store nose to look differently when he was doing his whirling dervish Shadow shtick. That and a silly eerie laugh fit in the end more fit for Bellevue than the mean streets of NYC. Yeah, the Shadow knows alright.

I grant that for a while this Cranston caught the public’s imagination although strangely during his escapades the crime rate in Gotham spiked before they put him in a safe place. Mostly I attribute that positive spin to his hiring a press agent, the famous society columnist John Kerr, and his reputation soared for a bit. Then the wheels came off his express. See back in Tibet the word was that Lamont was some progeny of one Genghis Khan, yes that Genghis whose nomadic marauding Mogol hordes at least according to some revisionist historians brought some stability and modernization to Central Asia in his day. DNA testing has proven once Lamont’s body was exhumed at the request of his estate to see the truth of that matter showed he was descended originally in the 14^th century from a pig thief in England who was hanged, hanged high in those days when stealing livestock meant something, especially when the stolen object was of royal or noble ownership.

Yeah so Lamont played out the Genghis Khan gag, along with his brother Don, the bad guy in the loop who like his forebear wanted to rule the known world. A known world much larger to conquer these days than the steppes of Central Asia which was child’s play for those lustful Mongol hordes. This Don Khan, this brother, arrived in H.G. Wells time machine fashion via a coffin delivered to the natural history museum in that town. After Don arrived all hell broke loose since all he cared about were two things-world conquest and bringing brother Lamont in on the deal as his hatchet man, as his alter ego maybe since Don too had been trained by Jerry Lama. No wonder this so-called Lamont character wound up in a straight- jacket, maybe they should have used two to be safe.

Of course when you have a guy like John Kerr sprucing up your legend, taking liberties with the truth you have to have some society dame in the mix or these Mayfair swells won’t read the column or buy into the legend. The love affair aspect here is provided by one Lois Lane, no Margo Lane, whose father allegedly was the real father of the atom bomb. More on him in a minute. We know that Lamont had some kinky sex habits when he was high as a kite on cocaine, opium whatever he could find in Xanadu, in the late Kubla Khan’s opulent opium den where Sam Coleridge earlier had picked up his habit by the sunless seas. This so-called society girl, this so-called Margo, was some call girl he picked up in a joy house he frequented on 8^th Avenue when he was looking for a “flute player” just because she said she could read Lamont’s mind. Not the hardest task in the world when somebody is looking for a little off-kilter sex.

Here is where things get interesting. The legend anyway. Don, Don Khan in case you forgot his name, that erratic symbiotic brother was interested in this Margo too, and for the same reason in the end but mainly because she had a certain style which could work with the guy who claimed to be the father of the atomic bomb. This bomb is what Don needed to play out his hand. Margo got handed back and forth and in the end she went with Lamont since he was more her speed than the defeated maniac Don. Done in by the NYPD wrapping up his operations off the East River. Well folks that is the legend, the legend the Mayfair swells bought into to keep the “people with the pitchforks” from Riverside Drive and other high number precincts in the 1920s and 1930s. In the end though they trusted their local coppers who at least they could bribe rather than another one of John Kerr’s paste-up jobs. Still legends die hard, especially modern legends which can be traced as I have been doing of late. For now though another bum-of-the-month down.