Notes regarding Heroes and movies.

There are several things I should be doing, so of course I'm going to ignore them and work on a blog post instead. The venomous expression of politics, with its accompanying slithering about, have made Facebook and Twitter a fly over zone for now. You know, I've never been fond of that 'fly over' expression, as it seems to me to be a bit of rhetoric that seeks to be divisive; it has a pejorative built in. I will note that the non 'fly over' portions of the country are those portions of the East and West coasts that are home to those awful liberal 'elites' (i.e. "blue" on a political map). They are almost magical areas where sanity still seems to prevail these days. Those areas fare better in everything from quality of life studies to education, health care, happiness, financial stability, and generate a sizeable portion of the country's income. Which explains why the Trump administration's budget and tax plans seem to target those very areas. I don't want to leave that statement unsupported, but I shall for now.

From 'Black Sheep' (2006)

There are plenty of other statements I'd like to make without posting voluminous notes to support my comments. I could, for instance, point out that two of our governments' agencies which heavily influence the daily life and future of our country are the Office of Management and Budget, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The two men in charge of those agencies were both politically active in their respective states. If one were to take an honest look at the financial health of those states, the status of education in those states, the tax burden, etc. ad infinitum, one of the first things one might notice, if one can look behind the curtain of tourist and relocation PR, is that both states are financially distressed to the point of being referred to economically as "sinkholes". Their people are largely poor. Their educational systems are in disaster mode. These states are the bottom of our country's barrel. These men are regarded by the current administration, and their enablers, as heroes.

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. More than a gal with a sword.

A recent discussion with a friend raised the issue of the Hero, and the Hero's place, in our entertainment culture. I had finally caught up with the 'Wonder Woman' movie, which was widely praised and a huge financial success. While it was delightful to have the super hero figure be a woman, there was little else to differentiate it from any other superhero movie, and I pointed out in discussion that the movie simply substituted a female lead for a male. Kind of like the change of sex for the role of Hildy between the stage play and movie of 'The Front Page' to the remake version known as 'His Girl Friday'. The hero role being female was simply a change, it didn't inform or impact the story. 'Wonder Woman' had the same tired tropes as any other superhero movie. I should point out that I'm just making observations; no judgement on the product is intended. It is product, and that statement isn't intended as a judgement either. I found it to be an enjoyable and entertaining movie. I'm not trying to impose my thoughts or vision on it. You know, I hate this. I hate having to qualify every statement; in this case to make it clear that I have no problem with female superheroes, lead roles, or action figures. I'd like to see more of them, and I'm delighted that young girls (or older girls, or women of any age) can have female fantasy figures which might inspire their dreams and persons.

Gal Gadot as Wonder woman,  her sword placed as if it were...
umm, nevermind.

The discussion veered to the first 'Star Wars' movie, which I rushed to see on opening day after reading a review which linked that movie's themes to Joseph Campbell's books, 'The Hero With a Thousand Faces', and 'Myths to Live By'. Such themes reflected some of my interests, and both books had been influences on my thinking. Thoughts of a hero's quest have been rambling around my brain due to the movies I've watched these last three nights.

Sunday afternoon was spent at a younger friend's home attending his monthly 'movie night'. The idea is that there is a stated theme; each person attending should (if so moved) bring a DVD of a movie reflecting that theme, and give a very quick pitch on its behalf. Those in attendance write on slips of paper the name of the movie which most appeals to them. The slips are put into a hat, from which one slip is selected, providing the selection to be viewed. The theme this time was 'really bad movies'. The winner was 'Black Sheep', a New Zealand indy effort in which a flock of sheep become ravenous flesh eating killers of humans. It's got blood, guts, a middling implied criticism of money making science, a zombie or two, and makes particularly good use of sheep flatulence. Science, in this case, was a substitute for magical forces. The male hero is a younger brother with a phobia about sheep, who has returned to the family ranch to sell his interest to his evil and deluded older brother. The boy, in his journey, must confront and overcome his phobia, confront and overcome his brother, and become action oriented enough to overcome his nelly attributes to fight off the marauding sheep for the survival of the main characters and all of mankind. The girl hero arrives to expose animal abuses at the ranch. Her journey moves her from babbling about new age mysticism to becoming an action figure fighting the sheep, helping the younger brother to survive, saving mankind, and, of course falling in love with the younger brother.

Experience (Danielle Mason) and Henry (Nathan Meister) in the midst of a long day fighting sheep. 

The sheep(le) are out to get you , you know. Be warned.

John Wayne as Ringo.

Monday night, a friend unexpectedly had free time and came over to watch one of the movies I wanted to see and delete from my digital video recorder. We settled on the 1939 'Stagecoach'. In it, the male hero escapes from jail in order to extract revenge on three bad guy brothers who killed his family and whose false testimony put him in prison in the first place. His journey includes fighting to save the stagecoach from Indian attack even though a sheriff has him in shackles. The girl hero is less action oriented, instead proving herself as a caring, nurturing goddess despite being thrown out of town by the uplifter ladies league for being of questionable moral character in her choice of employment. The movie took great pains not to use the word prostitute, and greater pains to not state that another female character was pregnant. The hero, named Ringo, was played by a youngish John Wayne. The good-bad girl was Clare Trevor, who had top billing. The rest of the cast was character actor heaven. It's the kind of movie which keeps things moving in an attempt to distract the viewer from questioning some sizeable holes in the story. I could, and should, go on at length about the movie, but that will have to be its own post in that great someday in the sky. I'll just note this about one iconic shot - Ringo is first seen, standing by the side of the road, his shotgun male appendage held akimbo. As he walked towards the stagecoach, I noticed was that he didn't fill out his jeans all that well. Simply put, John Wayne had a saggy female pear shaped ass. Otherwise, he was the slightly nelly butch straight shooter who treated the good-bad girl with the respect that no one else could muster, save perhaps for the drunken doctor who was really Scarlett O'Hara's father.

 

Last night, another friend came over on the spur of the moment. We watched the 1940 'Thief of Bagdad'. (Note to the Turner Classic Movies channel: the print quality was shameful.) Sabu, then 16, played the titular hero. He spends a portion of the movie as a dog, due to a spell by an evil wizard. He also helps a wronged Prince regain his throne, helps the Prince save the woman the Prince loves, copes with an ill tempered genie, fights off a giant spider without falling into an aqueous pit inhabited by octopi, visits magical places, and triumphs over other similar adversities while fulfilling prophecy. For his part, the Prince is cut from the same sort of slightly nelly English male cloth as an Ashley Wilkes or Sebastian Flyte. He must overcome magical blindness, find his Princess, and defeat the usurper of his throne, the very magician whose anti-education, pro-punishment, rule by fear, power mad greedy attitudes starves the population, and provides the evil which engulfs several kingdoms. In this, the oldest of the movies being noted, the hero journey for the Princess involves staying out of the clutches of the evil wizard, and falling instantly in love with the Prince who speaks in poetic phrases.

Two of the movies involved Princesses (Thief of Bagdad, and Wonder Woman whose journey includes learning that she is the daughter of Zeus and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. She is out to kill Ares, the God of War. In classical Greek mythology, Hippolyta was Ares daughter. The movie's comic book mythology avoids the potential complications of that one. In Stagecoach, One might make a case for the woman traveling to meet her husband being a Princess stand-in. She was a Southern Lady, which figures slightly in the Grand Hotel on wagon wheels plot. The girl in Black Sheep starts as a satirical take on new age hippie throwbacks and could thus be said to be a Princess stand in, but was otherwise just a modern gal who proves to have some gumption.



Black Sheep (2006) Experience got a gun.  



In a sense, three of the movies had magical realms;  Black Sheep's was the New Zealand farm in the countryside which left me wondering when the hobbits were going to appear; Wonder Woman's realm was an island protected by Zeus' magic cloud cover, and Thief was set in ancient Iraq's mythical period. If there was a magical place in Stagecoach, it was Ringo's ranch in Mexico where he and the good-bad girl could live in blessed happy ever afterness if only they could reach it. It was only mentioned, never seen, and not integral to the story.

In all four stories, the heroes overcome obstacles, and fight for their happiness, as well as the common good. All of them must deal with the sacrifice of friends or relatives along their journeys' paths. In all but Stagecoach, the heroes save the world.

Of these four movies, the only one which didn't involve magical forces was Stagecoach. Well, unless you count too many bullets, or killing all of your enemies in an impossible situation (the main event occurs off screen). This American myth has a wronged hero, willing to suffer the penalty of 'doing what a man's gotta do'.



The Stagecoach about to depart a rest stop, even though they know Geronimo is out and about.
John Carradine (far left), Andy Devine (holding the reins), George Bancroft (riding shotgun), Chris Pin-Martin as the innkeeper, Louise Platt as the woman traveling to meet her husband, Donald Meek as the milquetoast liquor salesman, Clare Trevor as the good-bad girl, John Wayne as the Ringo Kid, Berton Churchill as the thieving bank manager. 
Thomas Mitchell, who won an Academy Award for his drunken doctor, is not in the picture.

Now, let's go back for a moment to those two erstwhile heroes of the right, the men in charge of the nation's budget, and the nation's environment. They present themselves as John Wayne he-men out to conquer a world gone mad due to the ideals of those annoying liberals who want to feed the hungry, house the homeless, educate the masses, and provide health care in a reasonable manner. Needless to say, these men do not fit the hero myth. Their 'common good' is what is good for the power brokers who pay them, those who steal people's money, food, kingdoms, and who unleash unholy forces in the name of profit.

Conrad Veidt, the evil wizard of Thief of Bagdad, plots how to cover up his orange hair.
No wait, that's not right... Mr. Veidt played Nazi Major Strasser in Casablanca, and
the murderous somnambulist in the silent German expressionist classic 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.'

What we need these days are honest nelly heroes, their butch helpers, angry women, and pissed off teenagers to work together to rid ourselves of the usurpers of power, who prefer their people uneducated, sent off to endless wars, fighting each other at home for scraps of food, so they can't unite to fight the evil taking over the kingdoms. But that would be the old school hero journey, and involve magical help. Even the American West loner hero living by a moral code seems decidedly old fashioned now. Folks are counting on the investigation being held by Mr. Mueller as magical help. In so many ways, it's the same old tropes.

Falling by the wayside

March? I haven't posted since March? Jeepers (mentally adds, singing, 'creepers, where'd ya get those peepers...'). Makes me wonder just what the hell I've been up to all this time. I'd write a bit of it out if I could remember any of it. Actually, I do, but much of it isn't that interesting, and a large part of the rest would be stressful ranting and raving about the political situation in my country. There have been a number of wonderful movies I've watched, or watched again. And there has been the garden, of course. As for the movies I've screened, there have been so many it would be a minor miracle if I could still name them all. The idea was to write them down here, making notes about each, but that project fell by the wayside.

A page from the Tyndale Bible.

Now there's a phrase I haven't used for awhile, "fell by the wayside". While it's meaning is readily apparent, the origin of the phrase may not be. It goes back to a 1526 translation of the Bible by William Tyndale. It was the first bible in English to be translated from Greek and Hebrew sources, and the first to hit the printing press. There had been an earlier version (the Wycliffe Bible) in Middle English in the late 1300's, but due to its use in a pre-Reformation movement, it was banned in 1409. By the late 1400's, owning one could bring the death penalty. But that's another story. The Tyndale translation, by the way, became a principal source for the King James version of the early 1600's. The "fell by the wayside" reference is from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 8, verses 5 thru 8. It occurs just after a mention of unclean spirits being cast out of Mary Magdalene and two other women, and concerns a farmer who went out to sow his seed. The sower was a bit sloppy, and some seed 'fell by the wayside'. In fact, a lot of it seemed to fall by the wayside. Only that seed which fell upon the 'good ground' was productive. Just after the teaching of this parable, the Teacher walked upon the waters, a pretty nifty act.

Now that I've wandered off onto this tangent, I'm no longer sure of where the heck I was headed. Was it to post a few pics from the garden? Or the chance to write mildly amusing commentary on making my own tomato paste, or the adventures of putting up copious amounts of fresh homemade pesto against the depravations of winter? (I used up the very last of last year's pesto a few days before starting this year's batches.) Or were the seeds a reference to all the movies I've watched lately? Or haven't watched?

A part of the larger garden at Solar Hill (which I help maintain) where my garden is located.
At the top of the photo is a bit of the playground for the Neighborhood Schoolhouse

More of the Solar Hill garden. Just off to the left are a large number of peonies, one of which can be seen here.
The Japanese dogwood was kind of spectacular this year; it demanded a photo.

A portion of my garden this past June.

Another part of my garden in mid to late Spring.
There's lots more, including other seasons. I'm considering starting a garden blog.

That last bit in the text above (the 'haven't watched' part) refers to an attempt to screen the RKO 'Hitler's Children' for one of my younger friends. While he's knowledgeable about independent movies from the late 1980's or so up to today, he's somewhat less aware of earlier movies. At any rate, my younger friend is going to be a first time daddy soon. He made his announcement via a Facebook post whose only content was a sound file that mystified a number of folks. It was the sound of the baby's heartbeat in the womb. Now, he's never seen any of the Nancy Drew movies, and thus has no associations what-so-ever for Bonita Granville, or, for that matter, with cowboy star Tim Holt, both of whom have the lead roles in the movie. So one night not long after the incidents in Charlottesville with tiki torch bearing American Nazis, white supremacists, and the follow up ravings of Donald Trump in the role of President of the United States, we settled in to watch this bit of lurid potboiler propaganda history.

The film starts out with a Nazi rally (above), and proceeds, via flashback narration, to a 1933 confrontation between American students in Germany, and a group of teenage male Nazis in training. A fight breaks out, during which wholesome Nazi Tim Holt holds onto the American's baseball bat, refusing to give it back. Plucky Bonita Granville looks him in the eye and suddenly exclaims, "Heil Hitler". When Holt's arm rises in automatic salute, she punches him in the stomach. When the German headmaster refuses to stop his charges from fighting, the American teacher (Kent Smith, giving a performance only slightly more lively than a cigar store Indian) simply yells out, "Achtung!", which causes the German boys to fall into line. If only it were that easy in real life. We then see a little bit of the school room education of the day:

Just after Tim Holt's praise for Hitler in the clip above, my young friend asked me to stop the movie. Under the current political climate, and being an expectant father, it was too much. His heart had started racing, and he was beginning to have a bit of a panic attack. We were only about 10 minutes into the film. Thinking back on it, it was probably a good thing we changed the picture. I'd have freaked out if I was an expectant parent, too. And I'm not just thinking of the scene in which a young mother to be hopes her birth is painful as a tribute to the Führer. This picture gets far more lurid and serious.

Of course, the reverberations of movies like 'Hitler's Children' into our own time should give us pause. We currently have an administration in power which excuses the outrages of the far right, pretending there were good people amongst them, condemning those on the left for their part in the violence (even though every report I saw or read stated that the 'antifa' crowd only resorted to violence when the Nazi types began charging at women, children, the clergy, and people with brown skin). Pictures that came out of the event were startling.

Is it live, or is it Memorex?

Today I turned 67 years old. My parents divorced when I was quite little; my mother was gone by the time I was 6 months old. My father, my brother, and I lived with my Aunt and Uncle in what had been my Grandfather's house. My Uncle had fought in WWII. When television came in, I wasn't allowed to have it on much after 5pm, when my Uncle got home. The noise and cacophony of tv shows with children's laughter, and especially sudden loud sounds, unnerved him and he would fly into rages. I won't dwell on it, or on what would now be easily recognizable as PTSD, except to say that I often felt terrorized as a child. The experiences I had in those years would come back to affect me later in life. As it turns out, I was diagnosed as having PTSD too. The stresses and coping mechanisms from those days got me through my first years on my own in the late 1960's, the Vietnam war protests, getting beat up because I had long hair, being beaten up and/or threatened for being perceived as gay, being shot in the head (not as serious as it sounds, except for the psyche - it was delivered via a pellet rifle after I was seen returning a European kiss on the cheek to a male friend returning to Germany. Still, the bullet lodged in my skull and they thought I might have some damage.) During my years managing bookstores in NYC, my assistant was from Pakistan. When the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran, my assistant became agitated and predicted the rise of ultra conservative Islam. He was in New York studying to become an architect so he could build decent homes for the poor of his country. He told me flat out that with the rise of conservative Islam, he was concerned about returning home; he might be killed for becoming educated, and going to the United States. The best cashier I had was a gorgeous black woman from the Caribbean, with a lilt in her voice which would make most people smile. My warehouse manager, who was the guy I trained to run the science fiction section, was from Cuba. You get the idea; I had a lot of friends and co-workers who, if they were around today, might face deportation. The sad fact of the matter is that my country is rounding people up. Some have been deported, some are being held. Many on trumped up charges, or minor traffic style violations. Now a  movement is on to deport those who were brought here as children, who grew up here, and became part of the fabric of life here. Legal protections for transgender folk are being removed. Repealing the right of marriage for gay folks won't be far behind. The Trump Department of Justice has already insisted that gay folks are not entitled to job protections under federal anti-discrimination laws. Confrontations in the culture wars continue, and will, until decent normal everyday people start to riot. And what then? Well, perhaps that's why the Trump administration has 1.2 Billion dollars in the Federal budget for 'detainee beds'. I have been accused of having a decidedly liberal paranoia about this, but I could spend several hours writing out the reasons for such suspicions, and pointing out the similarities between the US today and Europe in the early 1930's. You're free to laugh at me if you want, I won't mind. But I will remind you that Nazis are on the march. In America. They may be carrying mass market torches, but that doesn't change the fact that they are there, marching, provoking, waiting. Their own leaders will tell you that an army is being built. We have a President who threatened violence from his supporters if he wasn't elected. His supporters threaten violence if he is removed from office. Go ahead and laugh some more. But remember the following image when the 'arrests' start. It was painted on a fence in California a few days after the Charlottesville events. And you'd better hope to hell everyone in your family is straight, and white. A lot of the seeds being sown aren't for flowers.

"I'm not crazy, my reality is just different from yours."

It has been difficult to return to writing here, even to just jot random notes about the movies I've watched. It's not that I don't want to do so, and it's not the laziness of older age; I think my reluctance has more to do with wanting to protect what has become my own little bubble of sanity and security. Movies, after all, have much value as escapism. As the ad campaign for 'That's Entertainment' put it, "Boy, do we need it now".

Ticket Booth, Times Square, 1954. Photo by Frank Oscar Larson.

Last night, the anchor of the CBS News program introduced a segment by saying, "It has been a busy day for presidential statements divorced from reality". My cable box has the capability to 'rewind' whatever has just been shown, kind of like a videotape could be rewound to replay something, or instant replay on a sports program. I had to go back and listen to that introduction again. At first, it was because I couldn't believe the anchor, Scott Pelley, had actually said it. Then I watched it again to savor the moment. And a third time to accurately note the wording of the quote. Frankly, I'm still amazed. It's not something I ever expected to hear on a news report. Certainly not on one of the major networks, and certainly not on CBS, once the center of great reporting by journalists like Edward R. Murrow, and Walter Cronkite, now fallen on the same hard times that beset most news departments under the purview of their networks' entertainment divisions. It would seem that even CBS News has had enough. The sad thing is that most people probably don't realize how important and unprecedented it was to make that statement.

 It is snowing at the moment. It is, as a voice somewhere in the back of my head would put it, "coming down at a pretty good clip". I don't have a particularly wonderful view; Putney Road gets a lot of traffic as it's the main artery going north to the land of shopping malls, empty stores, pizza joints, supermarkets, discount palaces, auto parts, and fast food. A couple of old mid 19th century mansions, once the homes of the local gentry, are in evidence peeking out from under trees, and from behind hedges of evergreen. Even with the traffic, it is still mesmerizing, calling forth the little boy still trapped somewhere within. It's probably the boy who is so entertained by the movies. Certainly the movies lead me to reading a number of books which became favorites. I often bemoan my books being in storage, but I suppose it's better that way. Just before they all got packed into boxes for the trip to a friend's early 18th century barn, I had to sell off quite a few of my best, my favorites, my - yes, friends. It was during a period of unemployment uncertainty and had to be done to raise the necessary emollient for modern life. I don't quite know what I still have left. I would be crushed to discover I sold my Compleat Sherlock Holmes, my annotated copies of Dickens, my reference edition (including manuscript) of 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking-Glass'. The Alice books have been on my mind a lot recently.

The quote which serves as the title for this post is from one of the Alice's. With the beauty of the falling snow visible before me, the image of falling down a rabbit hole into a world of nonsense seems a fit metaphor for the current political situation in these United States. I've occasionally railed against the present unpolitic politic on Facebook, which does not lend itself to writing of more than a few sentences. People seem to read a paragraph or so and move on. People post links to articles with wildly exaggerated headlines they think bolsters their reality, without having read the accompanying story. Only liberals and reporters seem to be bothered by statements which stress "alternative facts", as noted by one of President The Donald's hench spokespeople. I could go on and on, but I don't want to at the moment. I'm feeling peaceful while looking at falling snow, and such moments of peace are few and far between just now.

I'll try to force myself to come back later, or tomorrow, to make a few notes about some of the movies I'm already beginning to forget. After all, tomorrow is another day. (cue swelling music)

My First

While I haven't given the matter a lot of thought, it has always seemed to me that as far as songs, movies, tv shows, and etc. go, people generally prefer the version they first encountered. This preference goes beyond nostalgia for the music and tv shows that were current during the years in which they came of age. It is as though their "first" became neurally imprinted as the version by which others are measured. For me, this is especially true of Vampires, Frankensteins, and Wolfmen.

When I was just a lad, television was still new. My formative years were spent in an unathletic and rather private family. I was neither encouraged or allowed to go outside to play. Any such activity could only occur after all school work and chores had been completed, and by that time, it was dark outside. I was not allowed out when it was dark. I spent a lot of time watching tv. Back then, to fill programming needs, it was common for tv stations to show old movies. Although I certainly wasn't aware of it at the time, those movies usually came from RKO, Universal, or Warner Brothers.

Aside from RKO's King Kong, and Warner Bros. Adventures of Robin Hood, my favorite movies were Universal's horror series. My initial encounter with their Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein provided something of an apotheosis, as it contained the holy trinity of Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman. A 3 minute long condensation of it was the first 8mm movie I ever purchased. And Dracula was played by THE Dracula, Bela Lugosi. (Although Lugosi played many a vampire, this was the only other time he played the role in a movie. It was also his last big movie; the rest of his career being spent in grade Z cheapies.)

I got to thinking about all of this a week or so ago after the pay-extra-for-it cable channel Turner Classic Movies broadcast a beautifully restored print of the 1958 Hammer version of the story starring Christopher Lee as the Count. Although it was titled "Dracula" in England, here in the U.S. it was retitled "The Horror of Dracula". As much fun as that version is, Lee just isn't my Dracula. The Dracula story has many film adaptions, and any number of similar stories. But my first Dracula is, for me, still the best. And that is the 1931 Universal version I memorized from televison.

The 1931 version was more or less directed by silent film director Todd Browning, who would also direct the strange and fascinating Freaks. The production was plagued by problems from its inception as a silent film in the vein of the same studio's Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera, with Lon Chaney slated to star. Sound and the Depression arrived in Hollywood around the same time. Universal had already purchased rights to the Bram Stoker novel, but now needed a revised speaking script. They purchased a melodramatic stage version which had been a success in 1924 to be the basis of their new script. Depression budget constraints ruled out many of the studio's plans for the project. Lon Chaney, a good friend of Browning's, died from cancer. During the shoot, the usually meticulous Browning was often absent, leaving cinematographer Karl Freund to direct parts of the picture.

Young Bela Lugosi

Initially, neither the studio nor the director wanted Lugosi for the role of the Count. Lugosi was a Hungarian actor who had distinguished himself as an officer in the ski patrol on the Russian Front during WWI. Due to his work for an actor's union, he was forced to flee his homeland during the Hungarian Revolution. He eventually made his way to the US, and won the role of Dracula in that 1924 New York stage production. By the way, it was for that production that Dracula acquired his black cape. Along with a high collar, it enabled the Count to seem to "vanish" into the darkness onstage.

Lugosi's rhythms of speech in the role derived from the natural patterns of speech in his homeland. It is often said that this was due to his limited knowledge of English. At the time he won the stage role, he did learn part of it phonetically, but by the time the movie was made he was quite familiar with the English language.

So what is it about this particular version of Dracula? It's wonderfully atmospheric. There is almost no background music (early sound problems and budget constraints). The title cards are backed by a few bars from Swan Lake, which in this context has a sinister quality. A carriage careens along a mountain path and arrives at a village inn. Frightened women peer out of windows. When the coach's passenger insists on continuing on to the Borgo Pass, an old woman produces a cross for him to wear, "For your mother's sake".

 

 

Before long, we are introduced to the Count himself, slowly descending a castle's stone staircase with menacingly savory and quotable lines that continue for several scenes:

"I am Dracula. I bid you welcome."

(responding to wolves howling in the distance)
"Listen to them, children of the night. What music they make!"

"The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield."

"I never drink. Wine. "

Mist seems as ever present as dust and cobwebs. There is no explanation for the appearance of Dracula's wives - they just appear, floating, gliding, through a nightmare.

Lugosi's Dracula was not an ugly deformed monster, but a handsome nobleman. He approached his victims with a longing sensuality - and with repulsion for his own deeds. Maybe that's a bit of projection onto the character, but it fits and it works. He's a monster, but he's our monster - somehow, we slightly identify with him. I think that is partly due to Todd Browning, who spent many years working sideshows in circuses and carnivals. He knew a thing or two about outsiders.

After the action moves to London, things go downhill a bit and descend into Victorian melodrama. Nothing explicit is ever shown on screen, but there are still more than enough creepy moments to satisfy. There's Dwight Frye, who changes from an assured clerk insisting on going on to the Borgo Pass to a madman craving insects and rats for food.

 

There's Carfax Abbey. There's an incident with a mirror. And there is Dracula, stiff yet leonine. Angry, yet composed. Knowing, perhaps too knowing; "There are far worse things in life than death."

 

Lugosi's menace was so pronounced and memorable that years later Disney artists used his Dracula movements as a guide for drawing the demon Chernabog in the penultimate section of Fantasia.

 

 

Over the years there have been many Draculas. A personal favorite is Francis Ford Coppola's German Expressionist version, with Gary Oldman as a romantic hero of a Count. It works. I like it a lot. I like many of the screen vampires. I like vampire humor. In Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers, our young hero (Polanksi) confronts a shetl's vampire innkeeper by brandishing a crucifix. The inkeep responds, "Oy, have you got the wrong vampie-ar!" Interview With a Vampire was a good read, and a good movie - but Brad Pitt would have been the better Lestat and Tom Cruise would have been better as Louis. In recent years we've had vampires that sparkle. And at the end of the month, a new tv series begins with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Dracula. That's all very well and good. Everybody has their Dracula. Mine, however, is the one and only. He was my first.

A Toast for Taylor Mead

It's a sad morning here at the Auto de Fey. I've just learned of the passing of one of the great characters of New York City, the very bohemian Taylor Mead.

If ever there was someone who sashayed to a different drummer, it was Taylor. He was born in Grosse Point, a child of wealthy parents. He referred to his private school education as "brainwashing for the bourgeoisie". Back in the day he lived in a tiny cramped apartment on Ludlow Street and was known in all the worst places. You might stumble upon him reading his poetry at some dive, or you might find him feeding cats in cemeteries. He was often described as the first underground movie star. He was involved in the San Francisco Beat Poet scene, when a filmmaker saw him shouting his poetry over a crowd of drunks in a bar. The filmmaker, Ron Rice, started following Taylor around, filming him with a hand held 16mm camera. The result was "The Flower Thief" (1960), in which Taylor played a befuddled and wide eyed mystic who wandered around San Francisco carrying his three most precious possessions - a teddy bear, a flag, and a stolen gardenia. In other words, he played himself.

He moved to New York City because he thought it would be easy to be anonymous there. But Taylor wasn't the kind of guy who could be anonymous for long (he tended to attract attention) and was soon asked to be in a play by poet Frank O'Hara. He won an Obie. As a regular on the fringes of the Lower East side arty scene, he became involved with Andy Warhol and the gang at the Factory. He played Tarzan in one of Warhol's first movies; as he climbed around in the trees his loincloth kept falling off, leading one critic to complain of the film's featuring two hours of Taylor's derriere. Warhol wrote a letter to the Village Voice noting that no such footage existed, but that he would try to rectify the situation - he made an hour long film called (ahem, my more gentle readers may wish to avert their eyes) "Taylor Mead's Ass".

Dennis Hooper and Taylor Mead in "Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort Of"
a film by Andy Warhol (1963)

In the late 1970's and early 1980's, in a world before cable tv, the most outrageous program on the air was "The Anton Perich Show" which appeared well after midnights on NYC's own UHF channel 31. Perich was another of the Factory regulars, and his outré avant-garde show featured a number of the Lower East Side crowd like the punk rock country western singer Wayne County (before he was Jane County). The show was vulgar, crude, and absolutely hysterically funny. The funny part was usually Taylor being flamboyantly gay in an era when such things simply weren't done.

For the last several years, Taylor had been in a fight with realtors who were trying to force him out of his long time (and rent controlled) apartment so they could convert it to a high priced market rental. He'd just made a settlement with them and was visiting a niece in Colorado when he passed. He was 88. I want to write "Rest in Peace", but he wouldn't do that. If there is an afterlife, I suspect he'll be busy writing poetry and being very, very, deliciously naughty.



(Bill Rice and Taylor Mead in a scene from Jim Jarmusch's "Coffee and Cigarettes".)

May the fourth be with you

Life has been far too busy to allow time to post on my blog. I've had several things I've been meaning to get around to, but since I'm retired now... (heh, heh).

Today, May the 4th, is Star Wars Day. It's been celebrated for a few years now. It should really be bad pun day as a tribute to its origins. Needless to say, I was (and still am) a Star Wars fan, as attested by the little round graphic over in the right hand column of my blog page. That is actually a scan of the wearable button that was given out on the very first day of the Star Wars engagement at Loews Astor Plaza Theatre in New York City. They ran out of buttons during the matinees - I managed to get one of the last ones.

I also have the original 1977 Star Wars movie poster, an original Empire Strikes Back "Gone With the Wind" style poster, the Star Wars reissue poster with "coming soon : Revenge of the Jedi" in a banner in the lower right hand corner, the original Variety color insert for "Revenge of the Jedi", etc. (Lucas later decided that "Revenge" wasn't a Jedi concept, so the title was changed.)

It was Wednesday May the 25th, 1977. At the time, I was running the Bookmasters store at 33rd and 7th Avenue, across the street from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. It was a very large store, and I had hired a friend from my days at Doubleday, Harold Biddle, to run the children's books and remainders departments. That morning, I'd read the review of Star Wars in the New York Times. I decided I had to see it right away as I would hear too much about it otherwise, and never go. Harold and I left work a little early and went off to the 4pm or so late matinee.

Loews Astor Plaza, which opened in 1974, was one of the last of the large screen movie theatres. It was deep underground at the site where the Astor Hotel and Theatre had been. There was an long escalator ride down to the auditorium, which was under the already underground Minskoff Theatre (where I would be fortunate enough to attend performances of "Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street a few years later). There were 1,440 some seats, and the screen was said to be as long as a football field. When the movie started, there was a "story so far" kind of scroll as though it were an old Saturday matinee serial. To the best of my memory, the text did not start with "Episode 4: A New Hope". Somewhere I have an (ahem) "private" Betamax video tape of that vintage. When I get my Betamax working again I shall dig it out just to check and see if my memory is correct. The Astor Plaza movie theatre closed some years ago and was converted into a concert venue.

In one of those odd little synchronicities of events, "Pippin", whose advertising
poster can be seen next to the Loews marquee, is currently back on Broadway.

At any rate, the 'story so far' scrolled by, and then a spaceship or two flew around, and then there was this incredible rumbling (the theatre had the sensurround sound system designed for the movie Earthquake - then again, it could have been the rumble of the subway line which was very close by the auditorium). As the rumbling continued a starship began to appear on screen - and it kept going - and going - and going. It was huge! I literally found myself bouncing up and down in my seat. I had ceased to be a 26 year old bookstore manager, and become a kid again. The magic of the movies.

This will probably get me into trouble, but I even like the "special" editions Lucas prepared for the original trilogy's re-release on the original Star Wars (now Episode 4) 20th anniversary in 1997, and which are the official DVD's. Of course, I have the original trilogy on laser disk which are unaltered - and in which Han properly shoots first.

Within a year or two, I'd be out of the book business and in movie distribution. One of the stories I eventually heard was that at the time of the first movie, 20th Century Fox had no confidence in Mr. Lucas' little over budget production. They thought the big hit was going to be a different movie they released that month, "The Other Side of Midnight". In the Boston market, "Star Wars" was relegated to lesser theatres in the suburbs. Allegedly, many distributors were told that if they didn't agree to book Star Wars to follow "Midnight", they wouldn't get either film. This was against the old Columbia consent decree which prohibited 'block booking' - i.e. it was illegal. There were lawsuits over it, there were lawsuits in Boston trying to get Star Wars into the big in town houses. "Midnight" grossed a little over 18 million dollars. "Star Wars" spawned several industries from special effects companies (Industrial Light and Magic), to sound processing, toy tie-ins, and etc. ad infinitum - which have grossed billions.


Over the last few years, as my life hit personal and financial skids, I found myself having to move several times. So, back in 2007, in order not to lose track of my precious first day matinee button, I attached it to a Mickey Mouse Sorcerer's Apprentice doll I had picked up somewhere along the way. As it turns out, that was rather prophetic. I hope the series fares well.

A couple of years ago, when I signed up for Facebook, there was a questionnaire which Facebookers are asked to fill out (one can leave most things blank). One question asked my religious views. I put, "Learn about the Force - and may the Force be with you".

 Oh, one last thing, Thank You for everything Mr. Lucas - but Han shoots first.

Annette

She was a Mouseketeer. She was the girl on Spin and Marty. She was a young teenager visiting Los Angeles who met Senor Zorro. And she was a beach bunny who was always the sensible girlfriend of Frankie Avalon. There were songs like "Pineapple Princess", and "Tall Paul".

The "Iron Lady", Margaret Thatcher, may have passed away earlier today, but she only ruled a country in an era when it was a boy's club (and still is for the most part). Her polices did much to harm her country, and the people of her country, and the countries which followed the lead she and Ronnie provided.

Annette ruled our hearts. She partied on the beach like every teenager since wanted to do, following the lead she and Frankie provided. She solved all of the gang's problems, and triumphed over bullies and her often thick headed boyfriend. And she had a sense of humor about it all, even appearing as herself with Frankie on Pee Wee's Playhouse, and in a "Back to the Beach" movie.

In the late 1990's there were rumors that she had a problem with alcohol. Usually a private person, she went public and announced that she had MS. She took it on in typical Annette fashion, and started The Annette Funicello Fund for Neurological Diseases . My Uncle had MS. When it's in the family, one tends to notice things like this.

I hope the youth of today discover her now, and follow the lead she provided. It's a much better path than the other woman who passed on today.







Rest in Peace, Lady. Rest in Peace.

Emma Smith

April the 3rd was a Tuesday that year. The banks had been closed the day before as part of Easter Holiday. People had a little extra money on them. It was an old neighborhood, the large houses the main remnant of the days when it had been fashionable. The French who had built them had moved out to the country. The Irish had come, and then the Jews. The jobs had gone. The big old houses built by and for wealthy merchants had been carved up into rooms.

In the early hours of the morning, Emma Elizabeth Smith was assaulted and robbed on the corner of Osborn Street and Brick Lane. No one knew much about her. There was something in the way she talked that hinted at a cultured and educated life; she might have once been well off. Someone said that she had two children, a son and a daughter who lived in another part of town. Even though she had been injured, she managed to walk the block to her rooming house at 18 George Street. She told Mary Russell that she had been attacked by three men, one a teenager. With the help of another tenant, Annie Lee, Russell took Smith to hospital where she was treated by surgeon George Haslip. Smith fell into a coma and died the next morning.

Two days went by before the police were notified. At the inquest, Dr. G. H. Hiller found that she had  been brutally raped  with a blunt object which ruptured several internal organs. The police report described her clothing as being comprised of rags so dirty that it was impossible to tell if there had been fresh tears in them. The official cause of death was listed as peritonitis. The police investigation noted that though she was poor and friendless, every effort was taken to find her assailant. Smith and been a prostitute. She was most likely attacked by her pimp or a gang of pimps as intimidation or for refusing to follow orders, they decided.

Several months later detective Walter Dew developed another theory. On the 7th of August, the day after another bank holiday, Martha Tabram was murdered in the same neighborhood. She was a prostitute and had been stabbed many times. At the end of that month, Mary Ann Nichols was murdered. A reporter from the Star may have talked to Walter Dew for the paper soon began to note theories similar to his: all three women had been prostitutes, all in their mid 40's, all from the same area, their murders thought to be the work of gangs of pimps. Perhaps the deaths were the work of the same person.

It was 1888, and in the slums of London, the legend of Jack the Ripper was born.

Grumpy

It's cold out this morning. Minus 9 degrees Fahrenheit cold. Mornings like this have a strange calm about them, with an early-light grayness that is vaguely disquieting. Especially when that light is reflected by the sightly dirty crusted snow. This morning I woke from a dream. I've had the dream a few times over the last couple of days. I'm busy doing something - exactly what I can not tell. Held between my lips are several nails and/or thumbtacks which I am using for some project. As I get to the last one, I am overcome by a sudden panic that I am going to swallow it. This morning in the dream I did just that - it was a thumbtack today. My first thought was a hearty "Oh, Shit!" (excuse my language). Then I wondered if I should go to the hospital, or if I should just, well, let it pass. I was wondering what damage it might do when I woke up.

As I toddled towards the coffeepot (yes, I'm officially old enough to toddle in the early mornings. And evenings. And points in between. And...) my coffee mug slipped from my hand and shattered. I liked that mug - it was emblazoned with a graphic reminiscent of an old fruit crate label (one of my interests) which proclaimed "Radio" and had an appropriate graphic. It was a gift from The Hussy. Every now and again, names fail me. One such day, when wishing to refer to someone in particular, I searched for her name but couldn't access that part of my personal gray morning matter data bank and simply blurted out, "You know - The Hussy." I believe I was speaking to the proprietress of Austanspace at the time, and she knew immediately just whom I meant. As did everyone in town.

So it's mid to late January, very cold, and I broke a favorite mug - a perfect time to get grumpy. ("Did you wake up grumpy?" "No, I let him sleep". Ba da dum.) Since I'm about to return to the subject of the internet meme, I should probably make that " - a purrfect time" to get grumpy. You see, if you spend much time on the internet, you will run into cats. Hundreds of cats. The effect is multiplied when one is on Facebook. On Facebook, you "friend" people, whose posts you then see on your "wall" like so much over-applied graffiti on a 1980's New York City subway car. Many people post pictures and videos of cats. Stupid cats, funny cats, silly cats, bizarre cats, allegedly cute cats, punny cats (although no cat o'nine tails - at least that I've seen). Cats who seem to think and talk in some bizarre and insulting pigeon English redolent of minorities in older Hollywood south sea island movies. There is even a song about internet cats, but I won't post it as it is even less amusing than the onslaught of cats, although it is easily better than a certain musical based on a T. S. Eliot poem.

In the final months of 2012, there appeared one of those ubiquitous internet memes I referenced in my last post - a grumpy cat. Normally, I'd find something of this nature to be sufficient cause to "unfriend" someone (which I probably wouldn't do, even though it might be well deserved). Something about the grumpy cat, however, resonates with me. In my late teen years, I worked very hard at preparations to eventually be both a dirty old man and a gloriously grumpy curmudgeon. In those days, I was young enough that I didn't expect to live past my early twenties, so I figured I should work it while I could. It's odd then, that I have ended up as a cheerful optimistic old fart machine. (And I hope my friends disabuse everyone of that notion.)(Or at least the cheerful and optimistic part). Heck, I've managed to reach a point in which I'm not even wondering if there is a meaning to a dream in which I swallow a tack, and then break my radio cup. At any rate, for some horrible reason, I find that the grumpy cat makes me smile. Maybe it's because I recognize a fellow traveler when I see one.