The natives are restless tonight...

The other night I screened another old favorite which I hadn't seen in years, "Island of Lost Souls". A 1932 opus released in 1933, it melded popular genres of the day; the horror movie ('Dracula', 'The Mummy', 'Frankenstein', 'Freaks'); the horror movie subset of the mad doctor-crazed evil scientist movie ('Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde', 'The Mask of Fu Manchu', 'Chandu the Magician', 'The Invisible Man'), and the Island picture ('Tabu', 'Bird of Paradise', 'The Most Dangerous Game', 'King Kong'). All of the above (as well as a number of others) were released during the first few years after the use of sound was mastered, between 1931 and 1933. Even Mickey Mouse got into the act as in the following: (I always recommend using the full screen option)



All of these movies were released before the production code began to be enforced. Various church groups, as well as other moralist busybodies, had become upset at some of the content of the movies; a censorship was implemented to keep the movies from being censored. If you have trouble with the logic of that statement, I would advise against following the news in this era of Trumpenstein.

Many of these horror stories had originally appeared as novels, with subtexts intended to provoke thought on social movements and concerns of the day. In the hands of the early sound filmmakers, they were turned into grandly visual entertainments with thought provoking subtexts regarding the human condition. That particular horror film cycle occurred during the darkest days of the Depression, and often seem to send a message that some of the people who had created the monstrous worlds in which we found ourselves were victims, too. (The capitalists of industry must have breathed quite a bit easier without the showing of distressed populations in revolt.) In that era of such stories, a satisfactory conclusion often depended upon groups of people working together towards a satisfactory resolution; often including the creators of the monsters. A new horror cycle started in the early 1940's. With the rise of fascism, Nazi Germany, and Imperialist Japan, resolution began to depend on Super Heroes. ( I left out the Italians - no one really paid attention to them, unless they were stock comic relief characters.) The heroes of both eras had egalitarian American values, stood up for their neighbors, as well as anyone being oppressed, and took action without thinking too much about it. A sock in the jaw often started the richly deserved payback. The monsters in our stories are now usually aliens, and resolution is out of our everyman hands - the only role for 'the people' is as victims. These new horrors can only be stopped by the intervention of deus ex machina superheroes, who are now tortured souls full of self doubt and dark thoughts. This is all off the cuff generalization; perhaps it will become its own blog entry some day.

"Island of Lost Souls" is based on H. G. Wells', "The Island of Dr. Moreau". Mr. Wells was not happy with this first adaptation of his 1896 novel. He felt that stressing the horror elements downplayed his themes, which included moral responsibility, human identity, tampering with nature, vivisection, pain and cruelty. The film had changes from the book, one of which, the inclusion of sex in the form of the Panther Woman, was incorporated into later tellings of the tale. The story centered on a (mad?) doctor, who uses his private isolated South Seas island as a research center for his work in speeding up evolution. It will not give much away to note that this process is accomplished by operating on animals and turning them into human beings. The operations are performed without anesthetics. Unsuccessful experiments are ejected from the Doctor's compound, and forced to live on the island. The film struck pay dirt in costuming Dr. Moreau and other (upper class) persons of authority in white, which immediately conjured images of colonial authority over those considered lesser beings than themselves. (In the book, the Doctor and his men are described as wearing blue work clothes.)  By the way, the release of the movie in England was delayed by censorship until the late 1950's, and I think in Australia it didn't see the light of a projector until the 1980's (but I can't find my note on the date). The print broadcast on Tuner Classic Movies, which I believe is available as a Blu Ray DVD from Criterion, was made from a variety of 35mm prints, including a few frames from 16mm. It is easily the best quality I've ever seen on this title. Watching it is still a disturbing and eerie experience.

The role of Doctor Moreau was performed by Charles Laughton. While the movie itself can't be accused of much subtlety in its 70 minutes, Laughton's doctor is part visionary genius, and part insane sadist, sometimes expressed with childlike glee. It set a standard for such roles that has not been often equaled. I seem to recall that Laughton once stated that he based his character on his dentist.

Bela Lugosi played a leader of the island's rejects, the "Sayer of the Law". The Law had been set down by the good doctor. Lugosi and "the natives" would chant in call and response fashion, "What is the law?" "Not to spill blood. Are we not men?" "What is the law?" "Not to go on all fours. Are we not men?" The law is something each creation must learn after it has left "The House of Pain". If you're recognizing a few things that would later show up in association with various 1970's and 1980's rock bands, I should probably note that the movie was also the source of a once popular saying, "The natives are restless tonight." That, by the way, was not a good thing.

 

The green light at the end of the dock...

Last week one of those anniversaries that media outlets love to note occurred. Network tv stations, as well as various internet outlets, showed about 30 seconds worth of fuzzy film footage before moving on to something else. But that little bit of 'soft news' gave me pause. The warm glow of nostalgia, as fuzzy as the images, began to flow. Yes, I had been there. I had seen. I had experienced. I had lived.

You see, on April the 23rd, it was 50 years to the day since the New York World's Fair of 1964 - 1965 opened. A couple of times, it was referred to as "The World of Tomorrow". That phrase was, we were told, the slogan of the fair and was solemnly intoned while a picture of the Unisphere was shown. Except it wasn't. That  was the slogan of the 1939 - 1940 fair, held at the same location. In fact, the symbols of that earlier fair, the Trylon and Perisphere, were in the same exact spot where the Unisphere was built. The Unisphere was the largest model of our planet ever constructed, made out of the finest U.S. Steel. It was at the center point of the fair in a reflecting pool, surrounded by fountain jets of water which reached upward to the sky mirroring our hopes and ambitions for "Peace Through Understanding",  the fair's actual motto.

I knew all of this for the simple reason that I was 13 years old and desperate to escape (even for a few paltry hours) from my ordinary little home town in the southern part of New Jersey. This wasn't just a World's Fair, it was a New York World's Fair. Baghdad on the subway. Visions of delightful (but unspecified) decadence floated before my mental eyes like those conjured by the Devil to tempt the Christ during His sojourn in the desert. I knew this for a fact; I had seen the movie.

I managed to get to the fair twice. If memory isn't playing a trick or two to embroider the sense of stultification I was experiencing in my hometown, there was an excursion with the Methodist Youth Fellowship, and a trip with the Boy Scouts. I was that desperate to go. It is a wonder I remember that part at all. I remember the long bus journey there. I remember walking down a seemingly endless boardwalk, through an awning of stylized wings that seemed poised to take off . Without warning, rising from a sea of color, it loomed in front of me, a vision, a dream, a temptation - the Unisphere. I had arrived.

There had been months spent in expectant, torturous, exquisite waiting. My father allowed that he hated New York and would get nowhere near the place, but that as a teenager he had gone to the 1939 fair and loved it. I had already found the jig saw puzzle he had purchased as a souvenir. It was a map of the fair, and was missing pieces. I had still put it together, and fallen in love with the Trylon and Perisphere symbols. After a bit of outright begging, he allowed me to use his 8mm Bell and Howell camera to take movies while I was there. The camera was a little finicky as to settings in strong daylight, so he also allowed me to use his light meter. Weeks later I would discover that the light meter was no longer working properly and the footage of the fair was horribly overexposed. For the 1965 edition, he allowed the use of his new super 8 movie camera, after the requisite repeated begging of course. One of these days I must get those put into digital format. I didn't take still pictures, but I did take slides  - with my new Instamatic camera, purchased at Mr. Duper's Hobby Shop on my town's Main Street. The Hobby Shop was next to the storefront that was the Greek's diner where I used to purchase my cherry cokes after the soda fountain at the Rexall was removed. If the place had a real name, I never knew it. Everyone called it "the Greek's", a bow to the ethnicity of its proprietor. It was on such an excursion that I'd noticed the arrival of the new Kodak camera on display in the Hobby Shop window, and began to save my pennies.

When the Kodak pavilion was included in the 50th anniversary news reports, only one mentioned that it displayed the largest color photos made up to that date. No one mentioned that the rest of the building's roof was a futuristic moonscape - with spots which had placards which noted them as being perfect for taking pictures of the fair. Which brings up one other little matter, best illustrated with this commercial:



The reason I wanted to post that is very simple - it is in black and white. So was television then. In fact, it was at the fair's RCA pavilion that color tv was first demonstrated for eager dreamy eyed buyers. (Movies had been black and white, too, with color saved for big budget spectaculars and musicals.) Quite a bit of what has turned up documenting the fair is in black and white, which does it a great disservice. It was the early 60's, the world had become color, and the circus had come to town.

One of the exhibits which fascinated me the most was the IBM pavilion. Floating above what seemed like a sea of metal treetops was a giant egg. I've never been sure what that was supposed to represent, or what meaning was attached to it. Perhaps it was an expression of the Dadaist sensibility inherent in the newly emerging corporate environment. Here's the advertisement for it from my 1964 guidebook to the fair. Notice the color wall in the center - it was row upon row of seats, steeply raked. The wait to sit there seemed like it would take you clear into 1965. After every seat was taken, the wall was raised via hydraulic lifts into the egg where a movie was exhibited on a series of giant screens. It was wonderful.

 

I no longer remember anything about the movie, just the experience of it. After the wall of people was lowered, the exit took one past something almost unbelievable. It was a machine that ingested cards. One was invited to write a date on a card, and the machine would not only read the handwriting, it would tell you what happened on that date, as per the headlines of the New York Times. I wrote September 7th, 1950. I was born on the 6th, The Times was a morning paper - if it worked, the headline would tell me what had happened on the day I was born. This was no mere sideshow gimmick, this was the future. The device was called a "computer".

 

Not quite 20 years and a lifetime later would come a particular Christmas. A few years before, I had rebelled against the standard family gift giving of useful socks and ties, to give things that were fun and hopefully enjoyable. That year, my father and stepmother finally gave in and asked me what I would like that was something fun rather than a necessary item. I told them they couldn't afford what I wanted. After all, it cost over a hundred dollars! Amused, they asked what had so caught my imagination. I told them. It was a Commodore 64c computer. The "c" after the 64 meant that it had a display that was in color. After a couple of weeks they called me back and proposed we split the cost - they would pay half, but there would be no other gift that year. I agreed. I've been at it ever since.

 

There are so many memories of the fair knocking around in my brain, impressions really. But as soon as I see a picture, I can usually tell you what the object was, what  pavilion housed it. After the internet got started, I would perform occasional searches for graphics of the fair. I began collecting the few things that turned up of the 1939 version as well as the 64. There was never much to be found. Over the last few years, a number of pictures and You Tube videos have happily appeared. I've long intended to start posting the ones I've collected, and hopefully I'll now follow through.

 

It was at that fair that I saw visions of the future. It was at that fair that Walt Disney introduced "audio animatronics" (one of Abraham Lincoln stood up and gave a speech!)(and I still have the recording of it), it was at that fair that Ford introduced the Mustang, it was at that fair that I marveled at the exquisite curves and lines of Michelangelo's Pieta and discovered a desire to see art in person rather than in picture books, it was at that fair that I was given a copy of the Book of Mormon, it was at that fair that the world learned the joys of the Belgian waffle, topped with cream and strawberries, it was at that fair that a new type of telephone was on display - you could see the person you were talking to on a tiny screen. Nah, it'd never catch on.  

 

In 1968 I attended college in northern New Jersey, an hour's train ride from New York City. My first excursion was to the Museum of Modern Art to see a silent movie. Train trips are great for reading and pondering. On the trip back from that first day in the city, I finished reading "The Great Gatsby". I closed the cover with a sigh and a great deal of satisfaction. I was only able to afford one year of college. I didn't get the scholarship I needed to continue. I went to Ocean City NJ for the summer, and stayed as I began working to support myself. In the fall of 1972, I moved to Manhattan. It had become the place of my dreams, the center of learning, museums, culture, theatre, music,  movies, bookstores, it was where the world of tomorrow was being born. I would live there on a voyage of discovery for 15 years. Somewhere around 1975 or so, I headed out on the subway to a special stop, a park that had once been an ash heap which had featured prominently in "The Great Gatsby". It was all a bit derelict and sad. Here and there patches of grass peeked through barren soil.  In the center of the park, in an empty fountain, stood a giant globe made out of steel.

 

 

I drifted away, and never went back.

 

Years later I moved on, "a boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”.

 

               

 



"I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it."

My movement away from the psychic chatter of unfettered electronic abandon progresses. As I suspected, the most difficult thing to winnow down is my wholly integrated computer internet experience. Go to a news site, get advertising geared to something I searched for a month ago. Go to a new web page whose content promises to pique my curiosity, and find myself greeted by one of my avatars imploring me to "discuss". I don't want to "discuss", thank you. Although the second syllable does resemble my immediate response. Actually, both syllables work as long as they are separate.

One of the things I like about the internet is the ability to instantly look things up. I used to keep my own library to be able to do that, and if my volumes didn't contain the information needed, I would make a trip to the closest large Public Library. Unfortunately, that usually involved planning. And notes. One of the problems I have with the internet is that things change, sites disappear, information itself is malleable. Review a muckraking Wikipedia entry after a month and you'll see what I mean. It is harder to change the printed word, at least when it is printed on papers bound together with a spine.

I did not expect to be back here at the blog quite this quickly. I gave in to checking an online almanac, damn that Mercury ruling planet curiosity. I've returned to mark the birthday of one of my literary heroes, one of the guys who put words on paper. Two of my favorite wordsmiths, both storytellers of the highest order, have birthdays this week. Radio legend Jean Shepherd's birthday is this coming Friday. I have to work very hard to not attempt to imitate him. One of the problems I encountered when I used to write with any frequency was that I often assumed the voice or style of whomever was my most recent obsession. I probably shouldn't have read all that Dickens, I don't get paid by the word. For awhile there, I had a problem worse than florid Victorian sentences. I tried to write like Raymond Chandler. For all three of these guys, the joy isn't necessarily in the story itself, but in the way the story is told.

Raymond Chandler, whose birthday is today, drank. A lot. When he finally gave in to writing in a desperate attempt to make money at the age of 44, he was rewarded by publication in the once famous pulp magazine, "Black Mask". His first story was entitled, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot". Chandler was a guy who made similes smile, his metaphors were verbal film noir. One of his earlier short stories, "Red Wind", opens with this;

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge."

Mention Chandler and someone will mention the opening of "Red Wind". Nobody seems to remember the next few lines describing a cheap new dive, and the young barkeep worried about a guy who was "doing his next week's drinking too soon", who probably watered down the guy's next because he looked, "as guilty as if he'd kicked his grandmother."

"The kid said: "I don't like drunks in the first place and in the second place I don't like them getting drunk in here, and in the third place I don't like them in the first place."
"Warner Brothers could use that," I said.
"They did." "

One of the instant gratification problems of the internet is that one can easily find collections of Chandler's well turned phrases. While they are a joy to those of us who know them, as rewarding as a 50 year old malt beverage, it cheats the novice out of stumbling into their own discoveries, of having the scene set with the clean muddy simplicity of,

"It was a cool day and very clear. You could see a long way--but not as far as Velma had gone",

or a note that

"dead men are heavier than broken hearts".

It's been a long time, and I don't quite remember anymore, but if the opening of "Red Wind" didn't get me hooked, I dare say it was this bit from "The Big Sleep";

“I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights.”



If you read Chandler, you'll find more than a few things like these:

"She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight."

"From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away."

"Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be." "Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her."

"I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard."

"The General spoke again, slowly, using his strength as carefully as an out-of-work show-girl uses her last good pair of stockings."

I could go on, but I don't want to spoil a reader's fun.
Try a little Chandler on for size, you'll find a line that draws you in...

"I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday."

"The streets were dark with something more than night."

Happy Birthday Mr. Chandler, thanks for Philip Marlowe, The Long Goodbye, The Little Sister, Trouble Is My Business, dames with names like Velma, and those hot dry Santa Anas...

Criminy!

criminy - used as a mild oath or to express surprise. probably euphemism for Late Latin Jesu domine Jesus Lord! First Known Use: 1681

 

 

Uh, oh. After using that divider I'm having a sudden flashback to Dover Books and their volumes for decoupage and copyright free Victorian illustration. Sigh. I loved those books and always made sure to carry them in bookstores I ran. Most people never knew it, but Dover had their own bookstore - if memory serves it was on 7th Avenue South in New York City, and on a second floor.  Of course I just had to go online and see if Dover still exists, and gloriosky and beJesus they do. They're in Mineola now, poor things Thankfully, they have a website - where one can sign up for free samplers! (I just did, woo-hoo.) Suddenly visions of my younger self slaving over graphics presentations, using fine edge tools to cut stencils for the hand cranked Gestetner float through the air... it's the heat.

 

Forget what the calendar says. Weather wise, over the last couple of days we jumped from early May right to late July. Well, in their "old school" incarnations anyway. It's cooler outside than it is in my apartment, which is a toasty 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Criminy! My head is full of images of older adults in sweaters, always feeling cold, moving to Florida where it's warm. That stereotype does not fit me, I'm afraid. With each passing year I take the heat with lessening degrees (!) of equanimity. I used to love basting in the sun, but that activity was often accompanied by a cool ocean breeze. Now I find it difficult to work in the garden after 10am. Double Criminy!

My garden is a mess. Back when I lived in Boston, I was lucky enough to get a plot in the community garden in the Fenway. To anyone who lives in Boston, those are the "Victory Gardens". During World War Two public lands, including parklands, were turned into "Victory" gardens. Food was needed for the war effort, for feeding soldiers, for our allies in Europe, and for our home front. Of all the land across the United States given over to such use, the only one left is the Victory Gardens in Boston. After the war, the cranky old Yankees of the Back Bay and the Fenway refused to give them up. When I left Boston to move to Brattleboro in 1995, that was still an ongoing fight. The city has finally stopped trying to get the land back, and the Victory Gardens now have a website! And if you've noticed that they are in the "Fenway" and are wondering, yes the classic home ballpark of the Red Sox is just a block away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be continued...