In my early teen years I was a fan of Rod Sterling’s anthology series Night Gallery.  Usually consisting of tales of  horror, on December 15, 1971 something different was broadcast for Christmas.  Edward G. Robinson gives a moving performance of the eternal Jewish longing for the Messiah, and how, whether we realize it or not, we are always in God’s hands.  The episode may be viewed here.

They called her “The First Lady of South Main.”

My grandmother, Virginia Musterman Tschudin, and my grandfather, Albert, started their antique business in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1937. The first store was on Olive Street Road in unincorporated St. Louis County, but they later opened a shop down the street from Selkirk’s Auctioneers in an area that became known as Gaslight Square. In 1960,  Grandma decided to make the move to St. Charles. Her friends, colleagues, and even her husband told her she was making a mistake, but Virginia loved the architecture and possibilities. “They told me the people out here [in St. Charles] were hidebound and wouldn’t work with me,” she said in a 1982 interview.

Virginia’s shop, The House of Yesterday at 903 South Main Street, was the first to open in the St. Charles historic district.  (Virginia lived at Tayon House, 119 McDonough, when she owned the shop.  One of the photos at the St. Charles Preservation Journal website shows the house during the time she lived there, when it was white with a wrought-iron railing.  Virginia had added the railing, a style she liked that was popular in New Orleans.) At the time Grandma first opened her antique business, that section of St. Charles was a row of deteriorating residential buildings. The Lindenwood College (now Lindenwood University) girls weren’t even allowed to go down there. But Grandma’s business was successful, and she eventually bought and renovated other buildings, which she sold to area merchants.

Grandma’s interest in antiques began during the Depression. There was no money to buy toys for her children, but one day she was walking by Selkirk’s and noticed a man auctioning off a pasteboard box filled with toys for a nickel. She found a Wedgewood brooch at the bottom of the box, which she immediately sold for $5.

After that, she never stopped digging in boxes. She taught herself the antique trade by reading library books on period furniture. Her six children learned the differences between the types of furniture and helped in the family business. Grandma and her family drove through the Missouri countryside looking for bargains. They used the word “rapping,” which is an old English term, to describe how they did business. They looked for houses whose residents might have something old and valuable to sell; aging lace curtains in the windows were a tip-off. Then they “rapped” on the door and introduced themselves.

Eventually, Grandma dealt in everything from period furniture to art glass, while spending summers driving all over the country looking for merchandise. Always she came back to St. Charles, where her “regulars” waited to see what treasures she had found this time.

Virginia became known for her knowledge about antiques and her sense of fairness, according to a niece who often traveled with her on buying trips. In the early years, she occasionally negotiated sales with celebrities like Vincent Price and Errol Flynn, my dad says. His favorite story: On one buying trip during the 1930s, the family pulled over to ask directions from a gentleman on a street in southern California. The man was none other than famous actor, Edward G. Robinson. (Whenever Dad retells this story, he imitates Robinson’s whiney growl: “Now, see heerre…you turn left…yeah, see.”)

After Grandma died, a plaque hung in the building at 519 South Main in St. Charles. The plaque read: “In recognition of Virginia Tschudin (1906-1987) for visualizing the dream of the South Main Historic District.” I don’t know where that plaque is now, although I was fortunate enough to get a glimpse of it not long ago while it temporarily resided in a Main Street restaurant owned by one of Grandma’s old friends. But the antique chandelier still hangs at 519 South Main. I don’t know its history or its age. It glowed on winter evenings when I was a young girl visiting Grandma on South Main, and it glows still.

Many years ago, Grandma penned a poem titled, “Greetings From Old South Main.” I have quoted it in part, here:

The first old street near the river’s edge
With ancient houses side by each,
Whose windowed eyes, over rocky ledge
Into tomorrow peer and reach.

(What would Grandma think of Main Street now, with its strolling carolers in period costume at Christmas time and its Corps of Discovery reenactors in the spring?)

In your mind’s eye you still may see
A weathered trapper trudging in
Laden with pelts to get his fee
According to what his catch has been.

Not only were such simple men
The ones who trod this street
But fabled heroes walked it when
They recognized each one they would meet.

So very fortunate are we
Remains this same old street,
The houses here for all to see
A historic picture will complete.

© Virginia Tschudin

Special note: Many thanks to cousin Todd Christine, Reference Specialist and Speakers Bureau Coordinator at the State Historical Society of Missouri, for sending me the additional information about our grandmother’s first shop on Main Street and her home on McDonough after this post was originally published. The article is much better and more complete now, thanks to him!

On December 12:

627 Battle of Nineveh: A Byzantine army under Emperor Heraclius defeats Emperor Khosrau II’s Persian forces, commanded by General Rhahzadh.

Heraclius and his son Heraclius Constantine on a Roman coin

1769 French explorer Jean François Marie de Surville first sights New Zealand near Hokianga.

1779 Madeleine Sophie Barat, French saint was born.

1805  Henry Wells, Founder of American Express, was born.

1812 The French invasion of Russia ended.

Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, painted by Adolph Northen.

1821 Gustave Flaubert, French writer, was born.

1862 USS Cairo sank on the Yazoo River, becoming the first armored ship to be sunk by an electrically detonated mine.

1863  Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter, was born.

Self Portrait with Skeleton Arm,

1893 Edward G. Robinson, American actor, was born.

1870  Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first black U.S. congressman.

 

1900 Sammy Davis, Sr., American dancer, was born.

1901 Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal at Signal Hill in St John’s, Newfoundland.

1911 Delhi replaced Calcutta as the capital of India.

1915  Frank Sinatra, American singer and actor, was born.

 1927  Robert Noyce, American inventor of the microship, was born.

1929 John Osborne, English dramatist, was born.

 1935  Lebensborn Project, a Nazi reproduction programme, was founded by Heinrich Himmler.

 

A Lebensborn birth house

1936  Xi’an Incident: The Generalissimo of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped by Zhang Xueliang.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and senior members of the KMT after their arrest.

1938  Connie Francis, American singer, was born.

1940 – Dionne Warwick, American singer, was born.

1941  Adolf Hitler announced the extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery.

1948 Batang Kali Massacre – 14 members of the Scots Guards stationed in Malaysia allegedly massacred 24 unarmed civilians and set fire to the village.

1949 – Bill Nighy, English actor, was born.

1950  Paula Ackerman, the first woman appointed to perform rabbinical functions in the United States, led the congregation in her first services.

1956 Irish Republican Army’s “Border Campaign” began.

1961 The first Golden Kiwi draw took place.

1963 Kenya gained its independence from the United Kingdom.

1964 Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta became the first President of the Republic of Kenya.

1965 Will Carling, English rugby union footballer, was born.

1979  Rhodesia changed its name to Zimbabwe.

1982 Women’s peace protest at Greenham Common – 30,000 women held hands and formed a human chain around the 14.5 kilometres (9.0 mi) perimeter fence.

1985 Arrow Air Flight 1285 crashed after takeoff in Gander, Newfoundland killing 256, including 248 members of the United States Army’s 101st Airborne Division.

1988 The Clapham Junction rail crash killed thirty-five and injures hundreds after two collisions of three commuter trains.

1991  Russian Federation gained independence from the USSR.

2006 Peugeot produced its last car at the Ryton Plant signalling the end of mass car production in Coventry, formerly a major centre of the British motor industry.

Sourced from NZ HIstory Online & Wikipedia.

P.S. – If you’ve got a feeling of deja vu, it’s because I must have typed 12 when searching for December 2 so most of the people and events mentioned today were noted 10 days ago.

My friend Jim lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico, which is almost but not quite a suburb of El Paso. It’s a sleepy Mexican town of 90,000 incidentally caught on the U.S. side of the border when civil engineers forced the Rio Grande into its current course in the early 20th century (it used to flip its banks occasionally, so that sometimes Las Cruces was in Chihuahua and sometimes in New Mexico). Las Cruces still feels Mexican, though America’s retiring seniors have discovered it, so it’s only a matter of time before the pronunciations of the street names change. . .

Jim’s mother Lucy was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s four years ago, and she has been sliding surely into dementia ever since; this last weekend, Jim was making arrangements to move her into a 24-hour care facility, the last step before eventual hospice/hospitalization/death, although how soon that will happen is anybody’s guess: days, months, years? I drove to Las Cruces to offer moral support.

Las Cruces sits on a high plateau of the Chihuahuan desert that gets about 9 inches of rain per year, so I was surprised to see water pooling in the fields at the side of the highway on my drive over. The usually sepia-toned scrub was a vibrant green, and lush grasses were glutting crevices carved into the rolling hills by rivulets of rain. Low clouds moved across the plain as I drove in, and parts of the horizon were already black with rain. The weekend I was there, two inches of rain fell on Las Cruces, adding to the three inches that had already fallen earlier that month, extremely unusual weather.

Occasionally during my visit, the rain would let up enough for us to walk Jim’s dog, Layla, an Alaskan sled dog that was abandoned in the desert before Jim got her. On Saturday afternoon, while the sun struggled to break through a bank of dark thunderheads, we took her to Valley View Park, a grassy sward surrounding an arroyo fed by underground streams and runoff. As Layla bounded around the park and Jim and I chatted, the sun suddenly gave up its fight and the rains came back with a vengeance. In a moment, we were standing in a torrential downpour. As soon as the storm started, we began to hear low moaning honks over the splashing of raindrops, honks that sounded like geese in the arroyo. The arroyo is surrounded by a six-foot high chain-link fence, and the fence is overgrown with thick vines and brambles, so that you can’t see the water from the park. But the geese-honking was like a siren song, so we walked the fence till we found a hole in it, slipped through with Layla and fought past the brambles till we stood on the lip of a sodden mudhill the consistency of unset cake frosting. The muddy water of the arroyo was fifty feet below; after all the rain, it was really more a standing pond than anything, and high grasses ringed the banks. Sunflowers towered in the middle of the water, their faces cast down to shield them from the rain. The honking was now a chorus of loud, disharmonious moans, from hundreds of different places at once, but there were no geese.

Jim and I looked at one another. “Frogs,” we said in unison.

Layla was already careening down the hill toward the water, barking, and we followed, our shirts clinging to our wet skin, our shoes taking gashes out of the hill. At the edge of the pond, we stood and listened, our shoes now sinking and sucking into the mire. We would later find a field guide to amphibians, which would tell us that we were standing next to a pool full of Texas Barking Frogs, but their name seems a misnomer: the “barks” are actually slow, steady enunciations, like Edward G. Robinson in the movie Double Indemnity, chomping a cigar saying “myeaaah” to Fred MacMurray. “Myeaaah, see?” Robinson would say. “Everybody’s looking for a crooked angle. See?” “Myeaaah,” the frogs said now, agreeing. “Myeaaah. Myeaaah.” Every so often, seemingly by accident, a hundred or so of the frogs said “myeaaah” in harmony, creating the mysterious effect of a chorus of Tuvan throat singers. After a while, Jim started yelling, “Myeaaah, myeaaah, myeaah,” and the frogs would follow him, so we both started shouting “myeaaah,” and then changing the call, “maaah,” “nyayayahh,” “nawaaaaa.” We found that, if you called loudly enough and didn’t include any long “i” or “o” sounds, the frogs would always follow you, until they were interrupted by the accidental chorus of “myeaaahs” from a hundred frogs simultaneously, which would re-set the pattern. We had become Frog Kings. “Maaahh. Meuuaah. Myeaaah,” we said. “Maaahh. Meuuaah. Myeaaah,” they said back.

Texas Barking Frog

Layla was splashing in the shallows and grasses, flinging herself at the critters, so we joined her. No matter how close we got to the source of one of the “myeaaahs,” though, we never saw a frog. They were there, right there in front of us somewhere, invisible. We looked at each other, blinking through the downpour. “Myeaaah.” We slopped back up the hill.

That afternoon, we visited Jim’s mom at the Alzheimer’s center. We were taking her out of the facility to see a movie: though it’s hard for her to follow plots or dialogue, she likes to sit close to the big screen and watch the colorful spectacle unfold. It doesn’t even matter what the movie is: we took her to see a second-run revival of “Mamma Mia,” a film she had seen already, which was easy for her to follow because of its screechingly obvious emotions, upbeat mood and many saccharine songs (not a good movie, by the way, for non-Alzheimers sufferers). After the movie, we took her to a restaurant, where she tried to discuss the film, but her sentences often trailed into gibberish. “I liked that movie. It margle chustle taga.” Usually, I just nodded and agreed. “Yeah. Uh-huh.” “It uh, labba (laughs and shakes her head) no, grap pug awra.” “Right. I thought so, too, Mrs. Bennet.” “Do you remember the- the- the- polla cretta?”

I first met Lucy in 1993, when she was a surprisingly spry seventy-three year old. She may or may not remember me now. Of the people in her everyday environment, she recognizes Jim reliably, but it’s not clear how much or who else she knows. She has no idea when it is or what she has done in the last five years.

After we returned Lucy to the care facility, Jim and I went to International Delights, a Turkish coffee house. Jim showed me old family photographs on his laptop: his great-grandparents and grandparents, his parents in their family home in Illinois, his brothers and sister, Jim himself in Tucson in 1991, when I met him. There’s a picture of Jim in his backyard in Tucson, when he was 31, the month before we met at the University of Arizona. In the picture, he’s skinny and boyish with a thick red beard and a shock of dark red hair, a wild look in his eyes. He’s forty-seven now, gray, with a paunch and deep lines around his eyes. I looked from the picture, to him sitting next to me in International Delights, back to the picture. Both of his parents are dying of Alzheimer’s. It’s a disease with a strong genetic component. Based on what researchers know now, Jim is a good candidate to get the disease, though by that time they may have a cocktail of drugs to ward off the effects. Maybe not.

After coffee, we went to Jim’s friend’s house, near Valley View Park, and sat out on his porch drinking wine. The rain was a fine mist now, a pleasant cool dense fog, like having a wet cheesecloth draped across your skin. When it was very quiet, we could hear the frogs chanting from the arroyo in the park, tirelessly. “Myeaaah,” they said. “Myeaaah.” Their meaning was not intended for us. The Frog Kings had abandoned their thrones.

Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder will never be mistaken as optimists.

In fact, their movies reflect the thoughts of famous crime writer
Raymond Chandler. The Big Sleep author was a fan of writers that “gave murder back to the people who committed the crime.”

He respected writers like Dashiell Hammett because they created a
world without hope and without elements of synthetic uplift. He probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the screenplay to Freedom Writers. But an era of film grew out these ideas and began to represent a darker image of the great depression: film noir.

The genre lasted roughly from 1940 and 1960 and was synonymous with murder, passion, revenge, sex, cigars and fedoras (think Humphrey
Bogart and not Jason Mraz).

Here are my top 10 favorite film noir pictures.

1. Double Indemnity (1944) — This might be the best fast-paced screenplay ever written. Chandler and Wilder wrote the script together, and even though they hated working with each other, they created a timeless piece. Fred McMurray delivers his lines with sexual arrogance that wasn’t seen in his family pictures prior to the film, Barbara Stanwyck is the perfect femme fatale and Edward G. Robinson is phenomenal. The unsubtle sexuality in this film is awesome, and it’s surprising that Wilder got away with the shot of McMurry and Stanwyck ready to get busy.

2. Strangers On A Train (1951) — This is my favorite Hitchcock picture. Robert Walker is very creepy and awesome. The homosexual undertones of his character probably went over everyone’s head in 1951. Farley Granger is very good, but not as good as in Rope — and some might argue his adult films in the late 70s. I’d give to much away if I gave plot details. This is a must-see.

3. Sunset Boulevard (1950) — I know, it’s boring to have two Wilder films in the top three, but what other movie starts with William Holden floating in a swimming pool? Exactly.
Aging Gloria Swanson is perfect for the role of a psychotic movie star who is … well, aging.
Also, it’s a great film for one liners like “Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up,” and “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small.”

Raising Kane: Orson Welles is as bad as they come in the extremely underrated Touch Of Evil.

4. Touch Of Evil (1958) — Orson Welles at it again. This movie goes in about 20 different plot directions much like The Big Sleep, which makes it chaoticly cool. Janet Leigh is hot, which is somewhat awkward to say. Charlton Heston rocks a classic ’stache and plays a Mexican (I’m not making this up). Supposedly, there was a lot of tension between Heston and Welles behind the scenes.

5. The Maltese Falcon (1941) — This is just a movie where Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) walks around San Francisco and says cool things. It’s also a film where it’s as good as the book. Anyone who says otherwise is the type of person who wants Hooper to die at the end of Jaws. John Huston did a great job recreating Hammett’s novel.

6. Notorious (1946) — A classic Hitchock film where you see Cary Grant actually playing an unpleasant character. In fact, his character (T.R. Devlin) is kind of a dick. Personally, Ingrid Bergman has always annoyed me, but the movie is fantastic anyway. The Master of Suspense does is again.

7. The Big Sleep (1946) — This time Bogart walks around L.A. and says cool things. This is a great adaptation of Chandler’s novel by Howard Hawks. Bogart and Bacall have awesome chemistry here.

Here's Looking at You: Humphrey Bogart was a film noir icon

8. Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) — This is clichéd James Cagney here, but what else do you want from him? Don’t miss the ending of this one.

9. Out of the Past (1947) — This might be Robert Mitchum’s best role, and Jane Greer rivals Stanwyck for best noir femme fatale. The plot is Hitchcock, like where a gas-station owner has an extremely shady past. But if you think about it, isn’t that most gas-station workers?

10. The Killers (1946) — This classic noir flick is based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway which is perfect for the genre’s bleak view — mainly because Hemmingway shot himself. This is the screen debut of Burt Lancaster, who is a personal fave.

On December 2:

1779 Madeleine Sophie Barat, French saint, was born.

1805 Henry Wells, Founder of American Express, was born.

1862 USS Cairo sank on the Yazoo River, becoming the first armored ship to be sunk by an electrically detonated mine.

1863  Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter, was born.

Self Portrait with Skeleton Arm, 1895

1870  Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first black U.S. congressman.

1893 Edward G. Robinson, American actor, was born.

1900 Sammy Davis, Sr., American dancer, was born.

1901 Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal at Signal Hill in St John’s, Newfoundland.

1911 Delhi replaced Calcutta as the capital of India.

1915  Frank Sinatra, American singer and actor, was born.

1917 The six o’clock swill began.

 1927  Robert Noyce, American inventor of the microship, was born.

1929 John Osborne, English dramatist, was born.

 1935  Lebensborn Project, a Nazi reproduction programme, was founded by Heinrich Himmler.

1938  Connie Francis, American singer, was born.

1940 – Dionne Warwick, American singer, was born.

1941  Adolf Hitler announced the extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery.

1948 Batang Kali Massacre – 14 members of the Scots Guards stationed in Malaysia allegedly massacred 24 unarmed civilians and set fire to the village.

1949 – Bill Nighy, English actor, was born.

1950  Paula Ackerman, the first woman appointed to perform rabbinical functions in the United States, led the congregation in her first services.

1963 Kenya gained its independence from the United Kingdom.

1964 Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta became the first President of the Republic of Kenya.

1965 Will Carling, English rugby union footballer, was born.

1979  Rhodesia changed its name to Zimbabwe.

1982 Women’s peace protest at Greenham Common – 30,000 women held hands and formed a human chain around the 14.5 kilometres (9.0 mi) perimeter fence.

1988 The Clapham Junction rail crash killed thirty-five and injures hundreds after two collisions of three commuter trains.

1991  Russian Federation gained independence from the USSR.

2006 Peugeot produces its last car at the Ryton Plant signalling the end of mass car production in Coventry, formerly a major centre of the British motor industry.

Sourced from NZ HIstory Online & Wikipedia.

.

Name: The Ten Commandments
Release Year:  1956
Genre:  Adventure, Drama
Cast: Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo, Debra Paget, John Derek, Cedric Hardwicke, Nina Foch …
Director:  Cecil B. DeMille
Language: English
RunTime: 150 min

.

Description:

To escape the edict of Egypt’s Pharoah, Rameses I, condemning all first-born Hebrew males, the infant Moses is set adrift on the Nile in a reed basket. Saved by the pharaoh’s daughter Bithiah, he is adopted by her and brought up in the court of her brother, Pharaoh Seti. Moses gains Seti’s favor and the love of the throne princess Nefertiri, as well as the hatred of Seti’s son, Rameses. When his Hebrew heritage is revealed, Moses is cast out of Egypt, and makes his way across the desert where he marries, has a son and is commanded by God to return to Egypt to free the Hebrews from slavery. In Egypt Moses’s fiercest enemy proves to be not Rameses, but someone near to him who can ‘harden his heart’.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049833/

.

.

.

Watch Now Full Movie

.

Part 1/5

[ Full Screen ]

.

Part 2/5

[ Full Screen ]

.

Part 3/5

[ Full Screen ]

.

Part 4/5

[ Full Screen ]

.

Part 5/5

[ Full Screen ]

.

085. The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)
Following up The 39 Steps, considered today to be his first “major” film, Hitchcock made yet another “traveling” thriller. Hitch had a big thing for trains. From The Lady Vanishes to North by Northwest to Strangers on the Train, it was one of his favorite settings for mischief and mayhem. In this film, nearly all of the story unfolds on a train. The film is also notable for having a female leading the way in the plot. Margaret Lockwood is charming, lovely, and all around watchable. Her eagerness to uncover the truth is totally believable, and at her side is the equally charming and sometimes endearingly irritating Michael Redgrave. The pair try to discover what’s happened to a woman who Lockwood swears she talked to on the train who seems to have vanished without a trace. The plot has been copied in various ways many times since (most notable in Flightplan, perhaps most successfully in Bunny Lake Is Missing.) Knowing someone who has vanished, and then being led to believe that maybe they didn’t exist at all, is the stuff psychological thrillers are made of.

084. Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931)
The Pre-Code era was the golden age of the mobster film. Not only were filmmakers much more free to make their films violent and their villains sympathetic, but America was also in the midst of the Depression, and people were looking to unconventional movie characters to idolize. So filmmakers were able to make their gangsters into not just sympathetic hoodlums, but even into tragic anti-heroes. Perhaps the most sympathetic of the bunch is Edward G. Robinson’s Rico. In 1931, his rise to power could be seen as almost inspiration, despite the illegal and quite violent way he did it, and despite the fact that the character is something of a monster, loyalty and friendship aside. There’s also some of that wonderful pre-code homosexual subtext, and an amazing final line from Robinson.

083. Wuthering Heights (William Wyler, 1939)
1939 is considered Hollywood’s Golden Year because so many amazing movies were released, but the only two that really get any attention these days are Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, while other films, like Wuthering Heights, which I think is better than both of those other movies, are hardly ever discussed. Wuthering Heights is kind of the grand-daddy of messed up love stories. It’s the story of how a strong and passionate love can sometimes destroy two people rather than save them. It’s dark, it’s not happy, but it’s has its own dark beauty, and this film captures it so well. It’s true, it only tells part of the story, but if you’re going to make a feature length film version of the story, I’d personally rather have a part of the story cut out to allow what’s there to fully develop as it should, rather than trying to cram it all into a two hour running time and rushing things, like that mess that was the 1992 version.

082. Possessed (Clarence Brown, 1931)
Kept woman films were popular in the romantic melodrama genre during the pre-code era. Naturally the idea of a kept woman was something that would have to be done away with completely when enforcement of the code began. But while it was allowed, the subgenre allowed for some very interesting romances. One of them paired Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, one of the all time great pairings (on and off screen) as the kept woman and the man who keeps her. A lot of these stories are about the woman falling in love with a poor man, a man who isn’t the one keeping her. This one is different because it’s about the love between the two characters. It’s not about them falling in love, it’s about their love changing and their acceptance of it.

081. Employees’ Entrance (Roy Del Ruth, 1933)
One of the sexiest movies of the decade, Employees’ Entrance is about all manner of workplace indiscretions, and it crams just about all the pre-code you can get into one movie. Loretta Young is charming as always as the sweet girl who sleeps her way into a job at a department store by way of sleazy yet oh-so-sexy Warren William, but then falls in love with good guy Wallace Ford.  Watching it now with 70+ years of history, it’s an interesting look back at the way life was back in the 1930s. But even without the historical context, it works remarkably well as a romantic drama, with an entertaining supporting ensemble. But the show belongs to the often forgotten but always awesome Warren William. He completely owns this movie in every way. It takes quite an actor to play such a horrible character with so much commitment.

By Katie Richardson

Een tijd geleden zag ik op zondagnamiddag ‘The apartment’, één van de 26 films die regisseur Billy Wilder in zijn carrière ooit regisseerde. Gisteren zag ik alweer mijn zesde Wilderfilm. In zijn tijd werd deze film een beetje gezien als de blauwdruk van het ‘film noir genre’, vandaag de dag spreekt deze film alweer minder tot de verbeelding. Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray en Edward G. Robinson doen het nochtans niet slecht in hun rol.

De praatgrage verzekeringsagent Walter Neff ontmoet de aantrekkelijke Phyllis Dietrichson wanneer hij bij haar aanbelt om de autoverzekering van haar man te verlengen. Ze voelen zich meteen tot elkaar aangetrokken. Ze verzinnen een plan om Mr. Dietrichson te vermoorden en zo het geld van zijn levensverzekering op te strijken. Helaas gaat niet alles zoals gepland…

Deze film staat nochtans hoog genoteerd in diverse toplijstjes van de filmgeschiedenis (om een idee te krijgen: op 57 in de top 250 van imdb, op 66 in de top 250 van moviemeter). Voor de aardigheid krijg je van mij nog de trailer.

Cincinnati Kid è un film del 1965 diretto da Norman Jewison, con Steve McQueen e Edward G. Robinson.

Leggi altre notizie su: | Drammatico | Norman Jewison | Steve McQueen | Edward G. Robinson | Ann-Margret

Double Indemnity
d. Billy Wilder / 1944 / USA / 107 mins
Viewed at: A3.03 @ UEA (Norwich, UK)

I often wonder what contemporary audiences made of certain films, particularly ones that have long been considered to be undeniable classics. There is, of course, the famous case of Citizen Kane, currently getting yet another cinema reissue in the UK thanks to the BFI. These days, Orson Welles’ directorial and starring debut is viewed as an unparalleled slice of groundbreaking cinema, perennial topper of cinematic ‘best of’ lists and the closest we’ll ever get to a certified ‘Best Film Ever’. But in its day – despite Welles’ notoriety, fairly widespread critical approval and a bunch of Oscar nominations – Citizen Kane was anything but a commercial success, barely recouping its production budget and supposedly sparking a wave of adverse reactions from exhibitors and audiences, attracting regular cinema walkouts.

Thus, while attempting to understand the opinion of contemporary audiences is a valuable exercise, it can be rather fruitless. As a task, it is nearly impossible, and even if you can establish how long a particular film ran in key markets or provide a rough estimate of total box office, you will never know what contemporary audiences actually ‘thought’ of a film. Gaining any indication of ‘true’ contemporary audience reactions is difficult enough, but it goes without saying that to make an assumption as to how these audiences reacted is – as within any historical field – a largely pointless and foolhardy endeavour.

Amongst the contemporary reactions to Hollywood cinema, however, there is one segment of society of whose opinion we can be fairly certain: the humble, ever-dependable film critic. And with Double Indemnity undoubtedly existing as one of those rarefied Hollywood ‘classics’ – regularly held up as a pioneering example of the femme fatale driven film noir cycle – it is interesting to note what some contemporary critics made of it.

From an East Coast perspective, the Variety review of Double Indemnity in April 1944 was quick off the mark (and even quicker to pun) claiming that the film was ‘certain boxoffice insurance. And double indemnity with such marquee names as Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson.’ Making much of its relationship with the sensational Snyder-Gray murder of the 1920s, Variety praises Double Indemnity as ‘rapidly moving and consistently well developed’ and ‘a story replete with suspense’, a factor they largely attribute to Billy Wilder’s handling of the dual-role of Director and Co-writer.

Of course, Variety exists in very close proximity to the industry – both geographically and ideologically – and can therefore come across as more lenient on certain films depending on the levels of industry-wide investment. Whilst Variety praises Fred MacMurray, noting that he ‘has seldom given a better performance’, it tempers its plaudits for Stanwyck who – although ‘not as attractive as normally’ – is nonetheless ‘consistent though the character in the final reel would have been stronger had not the scripters sought to reflect some sense of human understanding for her.’

When the film begun its East Coast run at the Paramount Theatre, Times Square in September 1944, Bosley Crowther in the New York Times gave Double Indemnity a rather mixed review, making reference to its ‘long dose of calculated suspense’ and adding that ‘Such folks as delight in murder stories for their academic elegance alone should find this one steadily diverting, despite its monotonous pace and length.’ In fact, Crowther’s reaction to the film remains fairly ambiguous – if mildly displeased – until, having discussed Wilder’s direction, he points out that he has ‘No objection to the temper of this picture; it is as hard and inflexible as steel’ but that ‘the very toughness of the picture is also the weakness of its core, and the academic nature of its plotting limits its general appeal’. Providing a contrast to Variety’s boosting of MacMurray, Crowther singles out Edward G. Robinson for particular praise: ‘As a matter of fact, Mr. Robinson is the only one you care two hoots for in the film. The rest are just neatly carved pieces in a variably intriguing crime game.’ Crowther’s disapproval toward the low-lifers that populate these gritty crime pictures is fairly self-evident.

Similarly, the irrepressible James Agee – writing in Manhattan-based periodical, and champion of the liberal-left, The Nation – introduces his Double Indemnity review of October 1944 with an acerbic invocation of what he terms ‘bourgeois adultery’. Agee expands on this idea with an indictment of the film and what he sees as its invocation of America’s near-religious fervour for money, sex and violence: ‘The James Cain story, under Billy Wilder’s control, is to a fair extend soaked in and shot through with money and the cooly intricate amorality of money…among these somewhat representative Americans money and sex and a readiness to murder are as inseperably interdependent as the Holy Trinity’.

Having dispensed with the political/moral approach, Agee settles into a more traditional critical analysis of Double Indemnity, giving tempered praise to Wilder and his cast but complaining that ‘the picture never fully takes hold of its opportunities, such as they are, perhaps because those opportunities are appreciated chiefly as surfaces and atmospheres and as very tellable trash’. The reference to ‘very tellable trash’ might infer that, although somewhat loathe to admit it, Agee actually quite enjoyed Double Indemnity. In fact, he closes his review by essentially giving over to the pulpish persuasions of this ‘tellable trash’, and providing a rather astute encapulation of the critical consensus amongst many of his contemporaries:

‘In many ways Double Indemnity is really quite a gratifying and even a good movie, essentially cheap I will grant, but smart and crisp and cruel like a whole type of American film which developed softening of the brain after the early thirties. But if at the same time you are watching for all that could have been got out of it, you cannot help being disappointed as well as pleased.’

And yet, just two months after his review of Double Indemnity, Agee seems resigned to its significance in a review of Farewell, My Lovely – another classic ‘noir’, this time adapted from a novel by Wilder’s co-writer on Double Indemnity, Raymond Chandler. In spite of his preference for the ‘messiness and self-accomplishment’ of Farewell, My Lovely, Agee is forced to concede that Double Indemnity is ‘much better-finished, more nearly unimpeachable, but more academic and complacent’. It is Agee’s indication that the film is ‘nearly unimpeachable’ which clearly suggests that Double Indemnity had begun to exert its privileged status almost immediately.

From a historical perspective, James Naremore’s excellent article for Film Quarterly entitled ‘American Film Noir: The History of an Idea’ (a forerunner to his book on the subject) traces the troubled evolution of the ‘film noir’ label. Naremore notes that for the most part, contemporary American critics ‘made no attempt to invent a new term’ for this cycle of films, and this is certainly true of the reviews outlined above. Using Double Indemnity as an example, Naremore quotes critical references to it being everything from a ‘murder melodrama’ (in The New Yorker) to an ‘intellectual exercise in crime’ (in the Los Angeles Times). And so it remains that, whilst the notion of ‘film noir’ is little more than a historical label – a retrospective construct imposed on an otherwise disparate group of films, such terms can be as misleading as they are convenient. And with or without the ‘film noir’ label, Double Indemnity seemed destined to remain in the public consciousness for years to come.

“Suppose this is some of the best dialogue of all time”:

Richard Fleischer representa uno de los casos más claros de cineasta cuya popularidad siempre ha estado muy por debajo de la de sus películas. Muchísimos espectadores han visto y disfrutado sus grandes obras, pero son muchos menos los que podrían relacionarlas con su autor. Nunca ha sido un director-estrella, al estilo de Hitchcock, Welles, Almodóvar o, en su momento, Frank Capra, el primer director cuyo nombre apareció en los créditos por delante del título de la película.

         Fleischer es el responsable de Los vikingos (The vikings, 1958) y El estrangulador de Boston (The Boston strangler, 1968), dos portentosas obras maestras, y de un buen puñado más de magníficas películas. Una de mis preferidas es Cuando el destino nos alcance (Soylent green), una historia a medio camino entre la ciencia-ficción y el policiaco, que si no está a la altura de las dos citadas es en parte porque el argumento detectivesco y su desarrollo no se plasman con la suficiente fuerza en la pantalla, y en parte por esa estética pop que contaminó gran parte del cine norteamericano de los 70 y que aquí aún molesta más que en otras ocasiones, ya que la película pretende mostrar la ciudad de Nueva York en el año 2022.  

        A pesar de todo, el film me parece uno de los más importantes de la filmografía de Fleischer básicamente por dos motivos: la visión del futuro que nos muestra -supongo que presente ya en la novela de Harry Harrison que sirve de base a la película-, con una población hacinada que se alimenta a base de galletas de plancton distribuidas por el gobierno, llamadas soylent green, y donde sólo unos pocos con recursos pueden conseguir en el mercado negro frutas, hortalizas o un trozo de carne que sepan a algo, situación a la que, al paso que vamos, conseguiremos llegar; y la inolvidable escena en que Sol (Edward G.Robinson ya muy enfermo, en el que sería su último papel) se dirige a lo que llaman El Hogar, el edificio donde reciben a la gente que decide morir. Allí, tumbado en una camilla y escuchando música clásica, pasa sus últimos minutos de vida viendo en una gigantesca pantalla las imágenes de cómo era la tierra que el conoció y que ha sido destruida, mientras Thorn (Charlton Heston), impresionado,desde una habitación contigua y a través de un cristal contempla llorando las mismas imágenes por primera vez. Un momento cinematográfico impresionante, que resulta aún más conmovedor por ser el último que interpretó Edward G.Robinson, y que resultaría mucho más efectivo que cualquier documental ecologista.

                          Editada en DVD por Warner.

Hello, blog. I’ve little to report from the real-life trenches, but it’s nice to touch base.

Potential new trajectories seem afoot nonetheless. One required a Thursday afternoon haircut (awww), but fear not: Rather than sacrifice the length I’ve so lovingly cultivated, I instructed Herr Scissors to limit her butchery to the drapes against my shoulders. Those had indeed grown tiresome (my locks, not my shoulders), a curtain drop rendering me half-deaf whenever I strained forward.

“Down to the natural hairline,” I said. Many snips ensued. I kept most of the length — minus an inch and a half — and declined the Layer. As a curious result, my hair still believes it’s long. The back thatch curls into empty space, an abrupt cliff. I resemble a 19-year-old girl declaring adulthood after marrying her high school beau. My shadow is my body topped by a bell. I am sensible, with the potential for rogue.

In deference to my financial discipline, I’ve yet to purchase the Beatles remasters. Thank God they didn’t upgrade the catalog ten years ago, when I would’ve sighed at the Last Twenty cowering in my billfold and sacrificed it for Revolver (’cause tomorrow never knows), or stuffed as many digipaks down my Wranglers as possible and made for the nearest unwatched exit, Let It Be against my balls. Instead, the older, wizened me stood at the display, near picked clean, and admired the band’s ceaseless vitality. Not bad for four guys who called it quits two years before I was born. I get older; the Fabs remain timeless. Somewhere right now “Eleanor Rigby” is peeling a preteen’s id from its moorings, a phenomenon that will outlive us all.

My haircut and I spent Friday in Corvallis, sweltering through summer’s insistence on a late-game comeback. An impressive sweat took hold as I wandered through town, apparently befouling my mood as well as my body. I passed a bearded beatnik reclined on a bench, seemingly lost in a private reverie. Upon seeing my scowl, however, he raised a cardboard sign. “SMILE,” it read, so I did. In fact, I laughed. How could such a beautiful day render me glum? “How ya doin’, brother?” he asked as I passed. “Maintainin’,” I replied. “How ’bout yourself?” “Can’t complain,” he nodded, following his own sign’s request. My heart filled suddenly with rays of Dilla. If forever we gonna talk the talk we gotta walk the walk, see? Ladies and gentlemen, Pharoahe Monch as a funky Edward G.

The weekend’s consumed by a strange calm. I exhumed some old DVDs I ain’t watched in years, the highlight being Whatever Happened to Kerouac?, with its footage of a flask souse (Frere Jacques) clashing with an august rummy (William F. Buckley) and kicking some “Flat Foot Floogie” on his Ivy League bean. Time’s been benevolent for a change. Maybe it’s my reward for a semi-productive week spent dousing linguistic fires as in days of yore. “I need paragraphs!” came the call. Then paragraphs you shall have. What a simple pleasure: threading words together, clamping them down with verbs and adjectives. It’s a zone I call home.

On Friday, in an air-conditioned respite from the summertime beatdown, I got to shop-talk with fellow craftsmen, hang around slingers of the written word. Quite a change from my usual freelance seclusion: eyes fused to flat-screen, mind prowling for work, silence my only sidekick. Can’t talk. Must feed the coffers. Pitches, cover letters: a mad, endless science. But “SMILE!” says the sign, so I do. My hair continues its curl to nowhere. I will not.

John Huston is a filmmaker that constantly amazes me, with every piece of his work that I see bringing something new to the table. It’s worth noting that the film of his that I watched most recently prior to Key Largo was 1979’s Wise Blood, a film, or indeed a difference in film that displays Huston’s variety laden career. If one were to note his earlier work, in the shape of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, or The Maltese Falcon, and then were to see his latter work such as Under the Volcano, or The Dead I would be foolhardy to blame them for thinking the two lists of films represented two different filmmakers. And lets not forget that The African Queen and The Night of the Iguana slot into the middle of his career too. Diverse is perhaps too light a word to describe Huston’s oeuvre.

When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.

Key Largo is a situation based drama set largely within the confines of a hotel as a hurricane blows outside. Former-GI Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) holes up in the hotel, alongside the father and wife of his former comrade (Lionel Barrymore and Lauren Bacall) to see out the storm, alongside an extradited gangster (Edward G. Robinson) using the Florida Keys locale as a stop gap between Cuba and his return to the US. As his secret is discovered things turn violent as we see our three protagonists caught between a ferocious act of a nature, and a ferocious act of mankind.

Key Largo would be the fourth and final collaboration between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and as such the chemistry that has built up over the years in which they worked together comes together in this final piece. Bogart provides the usual laidback cool that one expects of him, while Bacall is simply radiant as the mysterious widow that sees him as a replacement of sorts for her deceased beloved. Able support is provided by Lionel Barrymore as the accommodating hotelier and Claire Trevor, the only member of the cast to win an oscar for the film, in her turn as the turncoat moll.

As one would expect with a John Huston film the camerawork is outstanding. One highly original moment consists of a camera being placed on a boat, which is then pulled closer to the figures on screen. Its simple but incredibly effective. I noted during my screening of the film how the entire narrative feels like one long scene, in that each scene has very little in the way of a break, with each one flowing into each other  in real time. This allusion is broken towards the end of the picture, when the action moves away from the hotel, but for most of the films 100 minutes we are rarely given any kind of hold up in the flow of the picture.

Key Largo is a wonderfully evocative picture, that really holds up over six decades on. That Huston produced this in the same year as the magnificent The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is little short of staggering.

August 27, 1939

Hollywood Studios Frantically
Order Stars to Return

Fear Actors Will Be Marooned if War Breaks Out

HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 25—(INS)—Hollywood motion picture studios today sent urgent orders to their stars traveling in Europe to make every effort to return home at once.

Producers, of course, were forced to look at the matter from the standpoint of business, should their high salaried workers become marooned in Europe in the event of war, thousands of dollars in delay to scheduled pictures would result.

TYRONE AND ANNABELLA

Stars receiving the summons included Norma Shearer, Tyrone Power and Annabella, Madeleine Carroll, George Raft, Edward G. Robinson, Gene Autry, Gloria Stuart, Bob Hope and Constance Bennett.

Gloria Stuart.....of "Titanic" fame.

Power and Annabella, in France, were ordered to cut short their honeymoon.  They booked passage on an Atlantic Clipper for Tuesday.

Madeleine Carroll received an urgent cable from Paramount studio in Paris.  The blond actress was reported to be dropping a divorce suit she had brought against Capt. John Astley because he has been called to the colors by the British army.

MATTRESS ON DECK

Edna Best, actress wife of Herbert Marshall, sailed from England yesterday aboard the New Amsterdam with her daughter, Sarah.  The ship was so crowded they slept on a mattress on deck, a studio press agent said.

Sonja Henie was reported aboard the Normandie bound for New York.  She has been in Norway.

David Niven, graduate of the British military academy at Sandhurst, prepared to start for England to join the colors at a moment’s notice.  Other British subjects of not in Hollywood include Charles Laughton, George Sanders, richard Greene, Brian Aherne, Ronald Colman, Ray Milland, Boris Karloff, Victor McLaglen, Basil Rathbone, Laurence Olivier, Cary Grant, James Stephenson and Donald Crisp.

Charles Boyer, a French subject, is already in Paris, subject to call to the French army.

The Milwaukee Sentinel

August 26, 1939

Number of Hollywood Film Stars in Possible War Belts of Europe

By Louella O. Parsons

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Aug. 25—With war imminent, Hollywood today realized how many of its important stars are still in Europe.  Tyrone Power and Annabella plan to sail on the Clipper next week.  Charles Boyer, Pat Paterson and Norma Shearer are in Paris.  Robert Montgomery and his director, Dick Thorpe, are in London waiting for Maureen O’Sullivan, who is on the high seas sailing to join them for “Busman’s Honeymoon.”  Bob Hope, who planned a European holiday, is cutting his visit short to hurry home.

The Edward G. Robinsons, the Harry Warners and Harry Cohn are also on the Continent.  Sonja Henie, George Raft and Mack Gray all sailed for home Wednesday.  Geraldine Fitzgerald is in her native Ireland and Merle Oberon and Donald Crisp in England.  The rush for transportation on the boats and the Clipper leaving Europe has been terrific.  Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor have their passports and were planning to leave within 10 days, as were the Jack Warners, Lili Damita and Zorina.  Virginia Field had her ticket bought to visit her parents next month and may go in spite of war.

NEVER ON LAND OR SEA has there been such an epidemic of children’s pictures.  They’ve all descended upon us with one fell swoop—”The Wizard of Oz,” “The Star Maker” and “The Underpup,” and now MGM has developed a new team of youngsters.  Virginia Weidler, who is very good both in “The Underpup” and “The Women,” will be teamed with Gene Reynolds, whom you saw in “They Shall Have Music” and “Boys Town.”  They start Monday in “Looking After Sandy” with Lois Wilson as the mother and Henry Hull as the town drunk. 

The Milwaukee Sentinel

From Wikipedia:

PLOT
A large bird’s-eye view of a city is shown with beams of light moving to a conga beat. The action takes place in the famed Ciro’s nightclub, where the Hollywood stars are having dinner – at $50 ($723.58 today) a plate and “easy terms”. The first stars seen are Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche and, at a table behind them, Adolphe Menjou and Norma Shearer, followed by Cary Grant, seated alone. Grant talks to himself: “What a place! What a place! It’s as pretty as a picture. But if I ever told my favorite wife the awful truth I’d land right on the front page. Yessireee Bobby.” (All these jokes are references to some of his films, except The Front Page which does not star Grant, but was remade as His Girl Friday in 1940, a film that does star him).

Then Greta Garbo comes along selling “cigars, cigarettes, butts”. Grant buys some, tossing a quarter ($3.62 today) into her tray and asks her for a light. Garbo lifts her enormous foot on the table and strikes a match on the shoe, then lights Grant’s cigarette. Garbo is considered even today to have been an extremely beautiful woman, but she did have very large feet.

In the next scene Edward G. Robinson asks Ann Sheridan: “How’s the Oomph girl tonight?” Sheridan responds by uttering the word “Oomph” several times. Her final “Oomph” surprises Robinson. (Sheridan was a sex symbol known as the “Oomph” girl in those years.)

The camera then tracks past some tables: the first one has Henry Binder and Leon Schlesinger sitting there as an inside joke, while the soundtrack quotes “Merrily We Roll Along”. (Schlesinger was producer for the Looney Tunes cartoons and Binder was his assistant.) The camera shows some other tables which are reserved for people: Bette Davis, a large sofa for Kate Smith (a well known singer at the time, noted for her ample girth), and the last table isn’t reserved for movie actors at all, but for comic (and movie and radio) characters: Blondie, Dagwood, and Baby Dumpling, with a fire hydrant for Daisy the dog.

Meanwhile, in the cloakroom Johnny Weissmuller has arrived. He leaves his overcoat behind to reveal his Tarzan outfit – with the single addition of tuxedo collar and black tie. Sally Rand (famous for her striptease acts and fan dance), leaves her trademark feather “fans” behind and leaves presumably naked.

In the next scene James Cagney informs Humphrey Bogart and George Raft that they must prepare to do something risky. The trio, all known for their “tough guy” roles, get ready, run off, and then turn out to be pitching pennies. Harpo Marx, usually the prankster in The Marx Brothers films, sticks some matches under Garbo’s foot, then lights it. Garbo reacts very slowly and coolly to the pain in reference to her serene and cool acting style by slowly saying, “Ouuchhh”. Then Clark Gable spots a girl, whom he follows with his head turning around 180 degrees (Gable was known for his womanizing).

After this, Bing Crosby announces the first act that evening. During his speech he is interrupted by a jockey on a race horse (a reference to Crosby’s fondness for horse racing – he owned several race horses – and his lack of luck in that sport. Jokes about Crosby’s horse racing passion would be referenced in other Warner Brothers cartoons as well, such as The Old Grey Hare). Crosby then introduces the first musical number by conductor Leopold Stokowski. Stokowski, seen with a snood containing his long hair, prepares himself dramatically and seriously to conducting what looks to be some classical orchestral arrangement. However, it’s a conga beat to which he moves rhythmically.

The beat “does something” to Dorothy Lamour, who is seen sitting at a table with James Stewart. She begs him to go dancing with her. Stewart starts stuttering and hesitating, but in the end agrees to follow her to the dance floor. (Stewart was known for his “shy guy” type roles). When she moves her body to the beat he gets scared and runs away, leaving a sign reading Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, the title of one of his best-known films at that time.

The next shot shows Gable again, moving to the beat and at the same time following the girl he saw earlier.

Tyrone Power dances with Sonja Henie (known for her ice skating movies), who is still wearing her ice skates. Frankenstein’s monster is dancing very stiffly and woodenly. The Three Stooges poke and smash each other in beat to the rhythm in a reference to their famous “poke in the eye” slapstick films. Oliver Hardy dances with someone as well and is shown from the back. When he turns his face to the camera he is revealed to be dancing with two girls at the same time. (A double reference to Hardy’s womanizing within the Laurel & Hardy series and his obesity). Cesar Romero, known for his roles as a Latino lover, dances with Rita Hayworth, in another double reference. In the long shot Romero is shown with extremely large feet. Because of his foot size, Romero’s feet rip fabric from Hayworth’s dress by friction. Also, the two are shown in the long shot to be dancing with almost spastic in-coordination. In reality, Hayworth was a wonderful dancer, and Romero was considered by many to be nearly in a class with Fred Astaire.

The camera then cuts to Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland sitting at a table. The waiter brings an expensive bill, which shocks Rooney. He asks his “father”, Judge Hardy (Lewis Stone), for a favor. In the next scene both are seen washing the dishes to the conga beat. (This is a reference to the Andy Hardy film series in which Rooney played the small town boy who always got into trouble with money and girls. Lewis Stone played the part of Andy’s father: Judge Hardy; Judy played Andy’s girlfriend).

Gable is shown still following the girl. Then Crosby introduces the final act, again interrupted by the same jockey on his race horse. Sally Rand (identified as “Sally Strand”) performs the bubble dance to “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”, a famous scene from her film Bolero, in complete nudity, which is never seen although parts of her body get revealed.

Kay Kyser (a well-known band leader at the time, nicknamed “The Professor” because he and his band were featured on radio’s “The Kollege Of Musical Knowledge”) is excited by the act and shouts out: “Students!” (his catchphrase on the radio show; whenever a contestant missed an answer, he called out to his audience for the correct answer) A group of people look, whistle in unison and exclaim: “Baby!” They are William Powell, Spencer Tracy, Gilbert Roland and Errol Flynn. Sitting down are Wallace Beery and C. Aubrey Smith. Peter Lorre, known for his portrayal of sinister and weird characters, says dreamingly: “I haven’t seen such a beautiful bubble since I was a child.” This is a possible reference to one of Lorre’s first film roles in Europe, a movie titled “M”, in which Lorre played a murderous child molester. Henry Fonda enjoys the act too, but is pulled away by his mother. (This is a reference to the popular radio show The Aldrich Family which always opened with the cry: “Hen-RYYYYY! Henry Aldrich!” by the mother of the teenage title character, Henry Aldrich, who always replied, “Coming, Mother!”) J. Edgar Hoover says “Gee!” several times as a pun to his function as G-man. Boris Karloff, Arthur Treacher, Buster Keaton and Mischa Auer watch the spectacle without any emotion (typical for their film roles; all were known for playing dour, deadpan roles). Ned Sparks, another famous movie “grouch” asks them if they are having a good time. They all respond dryly: “Yes.” Jerry Colonna reacts in excitement to the act and utters his catchphrases “Guess who?”, and the camera reveals an invisible character next to him: “Yehudi!” (“Who’s Yehudi?” was a catch phrase Colonna was famous for, referring to a violinist he could never find, hence an “invisible man”.)

Finally Harpo Marx shoots the bubble with a slingshot. The bubble explodes and Sally Rand is shown wearing a barrel underneath. The conga stops and the cartoon cuts to Gable who has finally caught the girl he was chasing, insisting she kiss him. “She” turns out to be Groucho Marx in drag (“Well, fancy meeting you here!”), which concludes the cartoon.

CENSORSHIP
When aired on The WB!, two scenes are cut: one where Greta Garbo (as a cigarette girl) offers Cary Grant a cigarette and lights it with the sole of her large high heeled shoe and another where Harpo Marx puts a row of matches under Garbo’s shoe and lights them, giving her a hotfoot, only to have her slowly react to the pain.

There is debate as to whether or not there is lost footage involving the running gag where Clark Gable pursues a blond woman who turns out to be Groucho Marx. In some prints when Gable kisses Marx, the music at the end continues to play and then stops abruptly, suggesting that new closing music has been recorded for the reissue. Since this long lost footage hasn’t surfaced, not even in the DVD version shown on second volume of the Golden Collection series, there is no way this claim can be proven.

TRIVIA
When announced for the bubble dance Rand is called “Strand” by Crosby, presumably to avoid infringement. Rand refused permission to copy her dance act.

At the time the cartoon was made, Douglas Fairbanks was already dead.

In the bubble dance scene Sally Rand’s actual nudity is never shown, but rather implied. When she lifts her bubble up in the air in the end the screen rises to follow the bubble, therefore implying her total nudity.

In one showing of the short, there are actually variants as to how the cartoons runs. In some versions, Cary Grant would say “…I’d land it,” but in other versions he would say “…I’d land right on the front page.” In the latter version, this is also the version where it shows a more revealing, erotic bubble dance by Sally Strand. If one slows the part where she lifts her bubble up, one can see much more of her nudity than is shown in the former case. The bubble also immediately comes down after going up a certain distance rather than to the left first before coming down. The short is also in high-quality definition as well in this case.

This is one of the few Warner Bros. cartoons featuring an all human cast.

As of July 2009, Mickey Rooney is the only one of the forty-six stars caricatured still living. To most modern day viewers, quite a lot of stars caricatured in the cartoon are quite obscure now. Even with the more recognizable faces the jokes aren’t always that clear now as they were in 1941.

Kent Rogers voiced all of the male celebrities except for Jerry Colonna who was performed by Mel Blanc.

In a recent post, I alluded to the need to have a meaningful public debate about healthcare choices in America.  Unfortunately, I think that opportunity has now been lost as what could have been an opportunity to forge a national consensus has devolved into a shouting match with our polcymaking class eagerly jockeying for political gain.  So goes Washington…

In our financial planning practice we often talk with clients about “playing the movie” of what happens at their death.  I’m generally a little less diplomatic and go with the “let’s say you’re hit by a bus…” approach.  Either way, while the focus is on estate planning, it also gets into end-of-life choices.  While this is an important to discussion to have, I’m not sure it should government-sponsored in the way that some of the House bills propose.   Depending on which side of the shouting match you’re on, this element of the healthcare debate is either about empowerment and dignity or the promotion of a death culture.

So what’s the good outcome?  This end-of-life discussion has renewed interest in “Soylent Green,” a 1973 movie with Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, in which the government facilitates suicide of the elderly as a population control method.  The whole movie was a great reflection of the zeitgeist of the 1970s — Malthusian visions of limitations, starvation and an environmentally decimated Earth.  As 36 years have passed since its release, we’re now much closer to movie’s 2022 setting, and I’m happy to report that the screenwriters dismal vision of the future is not on track!  I have not seen the movie since being a teenager, but it has always stuck with me, particularly the haunting demise of Edward G. Robinson’s character, Sol.  Courtesy of the healthcare debate, you can now find this scene on YouTube: