Last month, writing about Wagon Train, I advanced the theory that long-running series sometimes wound their way into strange tangents that only a combination of ratings invulnerability and creative fatigue could explain.  Now that all of Wagon Train’s seventh and penultimate season has been releasteed on DVD, alongside a selection of episodes from all the others, there is ample opportunity to study that phenomenon in practice.

By its sixth season, Wagon Train had experienced the sudden death of one lead, Ward Bond, and the departure of the other, Robert Horton, to pursue other opportunities (mostly dinner theater, as it worked out).  The actors who replaced them were not stars.  Veteran supporting player John McIntire (then best known as the sheriff in Hitchcock’s recent hit Psycho) became the new wagonmaster, and blond ex-movie Tarzan Denny Miller took over as the train’s scout.  I guess NBC figured that the real attraction was the guest stars, although by 1962, Wagon Train wasn’t even spending much money on those.  Judging by the evidence on the screen, Wagon Train barely had enough money to get a completed film in the can.  Episodes routinely opened with stock footage montages, overlaid with meaningless narration by McIntire, in a blatant move to pad their length.  In one case, this drivel runs for a full six minutes before the show gets around to an actual storyline.  I’m convinced that something so shockingly lazy could get on the air only in a  “flyover show” – one so unhip and purely commercial that none of the network or studio executives in charge actually watched it.

In other words, after five years, Wagon Train was a case study of a show that had outlived every reason to endure other than ratings.  Occasionally this creative exhaustion led to fascinating oddities like “The Abel Weatherly Story,” a January 1963 episode with a Twilight Zone-like flavor in which a shipwreck survivor (J. D. Cannon, very good) may or may not be haunted by the ghost of an artist he killed some years before.  Robert Yale Libott’s script takes place, variously, in a New England whaling city, on a ship and then a deserted island, and finally in a small Kansas town – everywhere, in other words, except on the wagon train.  McIntire and Miller do not appear at all; Cannon must make do with the show’s bit players as his interlocutors.  I wonder how Wagon Train’s loyal audience reacted that week, confronted as they were with neither of the show’s stars, and nothing resembling its original premise.

Yuck: Art Linkletter and friends in “The Sam Darland Story.”

I enjoyed “Abel Weatherly” for its sheer strangeness, but a more typical example of Wagon Train’s sixth year was the preceding week’s outing, “The Sam Darland Story.”  Sam Darland, played by Art Linkletter in a disastrous bit of stunt casting, is an evangelical layman who attempts to settle a ghost town, in hostile Indian territory, with no one other than a band of young orphaned boys.  The one spinster (played by Nancy Reagan!) who ventures that the children should be removed from Sam’s care and adopted by the families in the wagon train is treated an antagonist rather than a voice of sanity.  Religiosity abounds and, needless to say, a modern audience could not watch this show and view Sam as anything other than a deranged pederast. 

In 1963, in an effort to imitate the successful The Virginian, Universal expanded Wagon Train from the sixty minutes it could barely fill to a whopping ninety, and began to be film the show in color.  Robert Fuller, fresh off the studio’s cancelled Laramie, joined the show as a rotating star, effectively demoting Scott Miller back to sidekick.  The same production team, led by Howard Christie and comprised of a small pool of regular freelance writers (Norman Jolley, Steven Ritch, Gene L. Coon, Allen H. Miner) and directors (William Witney, Virgil W. Vogel, Miner), remained the same as during the previous season.  There was no reason to hope that the changes in length and hue might give Wagon Train a shot in the arm, but somehow – and to my considerable relief, because the DVDs contain all thirty-two of these things – it did. 

To skip straight to the top, Wagon Train produced one undeniable masterwork during its supersized year.  This is “The Robert Harrison Clarke Story,” which features Michael Rennie as a master hunter (with a Sikh attendant, played by an unrecognizable Henry Silva) who tags along with the train in search of American game.  Clarke hunts for sport, and the cowhands’ mechanical methods of rounding up cattle and slaughtering them for sustenance sicken him; at the same time, the westerners are put off by Clarke’s exoticism and veddy British hauteur.  Brian Keith takes a small part as a world-weary cavalry scout, and his presence is a mystery until some of the parties end up trapped in a ruined fort, under siege by Indians.  As this group contemplates its limited options, Gene L. Coon’s script turns into a thoughtful study of courage in the face of death.  Clarke and the Americans, represented by Keith’s taciturn Sergeant Galt, come to accept their differences once they realize that they share a kind of Hawksian stoicism and masculine competence.  At first Coon aligns our sympathies against the unbearably arrogant Clarke, but then he gradually redeems the character; it is Clarke’s fancy hunting rifle, seemingly useless on the rough-and-tumble frontier, which fires the shot of salvation.

John McIntire, Robert Fuller, and Michael Rennie in “The Robert Harrison Clarke Story.”

Coon, best known as one of the producers of Star Trek, was one of the finest writers of westerns during the fifties and sixties, and sort of a secret weapon for Wagon Train (even though he also claims credit for “Clyde,” the unsuccessful comedy that I mocked in my earlier post).  Coon also wrote the seventh season’s premiere, “The Molly Kincaid Story,” which stars Carolyn Jones as a white woman reclaimed from captivity among the Indians.  The story is familiar, but Coon’s treats the subject with a startling toughness, beginning with the gruesome facial scarring that Molly suffered during her ordeal.

After Coon, Wagon Train’s other noteworthy auteur was Allen H. Miner, one of the few freelance writer-directors to work as a hyphenate on a multitude of fifties and sixties shows without ever creating his own.  (Douglas Heyes and John Meredyth Lucas, both overlooked talents, were among the others.)  Miner’s segments tend to start off with a catchy premise and then lose their way, either through a gradual dissipation of narrative tension or a sharp left turn into conventionality.  In “The Sam Pulaski Story,” Miner stages some effective comedy by dropping a trio of Runyonseque Brooklyn toughs into the old west, but the fun stops as soon as an element of genuine menace is introduced.  “The Kitty Pryer Story” begins as a dark, perverse love triangle, then shifts into a more conventional tale of lovers (Diana Hyland and Bradford Dillman, both superb) on the run.  Miner also wrote and directed the season finale, “The Last Circle Up,” which nostalgizes the camaraderie of the wagon train and suggests (without really explaining why) that the settlers may fall upon each other now that they’ve arrived at their destination.  John Ford, in his westerns, often addressed these notions of community versus individualism, but Miner does not know what to do with them.

Some of the other ninety-minute segments work because of an inspired guest turn.  Ronald Reagan, in one of his final acting roles, is surprisingly good as an army officer torn between his professional responsibilities and his duty to his alcoholic wife in “The Fort Pierce Story.”  Peter Falk, marshalling a steely restraint absent from his Columbo-era persona, faces off against McIntire after leaving the wagonmaster for dead to save his brother’s life in “The Gus Morgan Story,” an episode that espouses an admirable commitment to reason over vengeance and anger.  Even some of the failures are bizarre enough to hold one’s interest for an hour and a half.  “The Widow O’Rourke Story,” for instance, casts Broadway star Carol Lawrence as an elderly Chinese woman who runs her western plantation with an iron fist; flashbacks, in which Robert Fuller assumes a second role as the red-headed sailor who purchased her from slavers, explain how she ended up so far from home.

Carol Lawrence and Robert Fuller in “The Widow O’Rourke Story.”

None of the ninety minute episodes that I’ve seen so far proselytizes as blatantly as “The Sam Darland Story.”  But Jesus does make a cameo in enough of them to make me wonder if Christie had a message to send, and no qualms about using a wagon train instead of Western Union.  “The Michael Malone Story,” written by my friend Gerry Day (who is in fact a devout Catholic), chronicles a priest’s crisis of faith without ever contemplating that the priesthood might not be right for him.  (Personally, I was rooting for Michael Parks and Joyce Bulifant, one of television’s stranger romantic pairings, to blow off those vows and get it on.)  “The Whipping,” bearable only due to Martin Balsam’s sensitive performance as a self-hating drunk, builds its story around the assertion that atheism and alcoholism are morally equivalent.  (Faith and sobriety, we are told, are also interchangeable).  The story’s climax contains an unambiguous miracle which, somewhat atypically for television, does not bother to offer an alternate, earthly interpretation of the events.  At least the writer, Leonard Praskins, had the courage of his convictions.

That may sound like I’m anti-religion – and I am.  But I’m capable of enjoying programs that examine faith with respect and intelligence, and from more than one point of view.  Wagon Train does not take this approach; it simply turns preachy now and again.  Commentators who actually believe we have a “liberal media” ignore not only the underlying truth that our media companies are all controlled by wealthy conservatives, but that there have always been popular television shows which espouse a semi-overt, pro-religious agenda.  This is just as true today (this decade’s Joan of Arcadia was especially obnoxious) as it was in the era of Wagon Train.  And then there’s the “new” Battlestar: Galactica.  Watching the series’ finale this year, I was bemused to discover that the answer to many of that show’s long-running mysteries was, in essence: God(s) did it.

*

Continuing on with the third season of Ironside, one of my favorite undemanding popcorn shows of its era, I find it harder than ever to ignore the budgetary constraints that are so obvious on screen.  Universal was always cheap, even going back to Wagon Train; those ninety-minute shows cut back and forth between outdoor locations and unconvincing soundstage “exteriors” in the same scene, with complete indifference to the jarring lack of resemblance between the two.  But it wasn’t until 1969 or 1970 that the studio’s legendarily penny-pinching production department really clamped down, hobbling the efforts of even the most creative or defiant producers.  Except for some second unit shooting, I don’t think Ironside left the backlot once during the whole season. 

The nadir is “Good Will Tour,” a romance in which Eve (Barbara Anderson) gives a visiting prince (Bradford Dillman, sporting a stillborn mittel-European accent) a lengthy rear-projection tour of San Francisco.  It’s a decent if slight script by another writer friend, the late Norman Katkov, but why on earth would the producers commission such a location-dependent story?  Ironside overlapped with The Streets of San Francisco for three years of its original run (on the same night of the week), and I can’t understand how the contrast with the actual Bay Area locations of Quinn Martin’s superior cop drama didn’t get Ironside laughed off the airwaves.

On the other hand, I can report that Ironside returned partly to form in the latter half of its third season, offering a few of the traditional cop stories that distinguished its first two years.  One such episode is “Programmed For Danger,” in which Ironside and undercover singleton Eve go up against a dating service operator cum serial molester (slick Roger Perry, well cast) who uses a punch-card computer to select his victims.  Along with the computer, True Boardman’s script places an odd emphasis on gadgets like Ironside’s telephone answering machine and the portable cassette player that Perry carries along on his attacks.  Did you have something you wanted to say about modern technology, Mr. Boardman?  The message was clearer in that Twilight Zone where Richard Haydn gets taken out by a homicidal electric razor.

*

Also during my staycation I pulled down a pair of memoirs that had been gathering dust on the bookshelf for a couple of years: Richard L. Bare’s Confessions of a Hollywood Director (Scarecrow, 2001) and John Rich’s Warm Up the Snake: A Hollywood Memoir (University of Michigan Press, 2006).  Bare and Rich (insert name joke here) were two of the very top television directors of the sixties.  Their books complement each other in a rather amusing way. 

Richard Bare directed the pilots for Cheyenne and 77 Sunset Strip, thereby launching both the western and detective cycles that swelled the coffers of Warner Bros. and ABC in the late fifties; he later helmed nearly every episode of another certified classic, the subversive Green Acres.  John Rich directed the first three years of The Dick Van Dyke Show, and the first five of All in the Family.  Before James Burrows, he was the undisputed king among sitcom directors.  At his peak, Rich could command huge fees just for consulting on finished pilots and pointing out what was wrong with them.  Rich’s brief association with Gilligan’s Island amounted to little more than that but, according to Warm Up the Snake, Sherwood Schwartz rewarded him with a ten per cent ownership of the series.

Rich has given a lot of interviews about Dick Van Dyke and All in the Family, but even if you’ve read or heard them already, his book offers a concise, revealing portrait of both series from a director’s point of view.  Rich’s stories about shows with which he is less often associated, like Gunsmoke and MacGyver, have even more value.  Unfortunately, Warm Up the Snake is padded with a lot of really stale jokes and anecdotes that have little to do with Rich’s own career, and those will be old news for most readers.  There’s a whole chapter devoted to explaining odd industry terms like “M.O.S.” and the “Abby Singer shot,” and when Rich finally explains his title, it’s not exactly a gutbuster.  (In fact, Walter Grauman, another veteran director, told me a much funnier story about defrosting a snake for a TV scene, which I will share one day.)  Rich and Bare even recount one of the same old Hollywood jokes, about the director who ordered a crowd of spear carriers to “Lunge!” and instead the whole company went to lunch.  But Rich says the director in question was Michael Curtiz, while Bare fingers Cecil B. DeMille!

Rich’s prose has an impersonal, smoothed-over feel to it, and he includes hardly anything about his childhood or non-professional life.  The closest he comes to a confessional tone is a good-natured admission that he sometimes wielded a bad temper on the set.  (He once broke his foot by kicking a chair during an All in the Family table read.)  I found Rich’s reticence particularly disappointing, because I would haved liked to know more about his older brother, David Lowell Rich, a director of television dramas who did some fine work on M Squad, Route 66, and Kraft Suspense Theater.  David Lowell Rich retired to my home town of Raleigh and, while I was in college, he drove me crazy by turning down repeated requests for an interview.  After I sent him (without being asked) some tapes of his rarer shows, Rich thanked me and finally agreed to a meeting – but then died before my next trip back to Raleigh.  I have heard, from several sources, that the Rich brothers did not get along, and that they were not on speaking terms for much of their adult lives.  So I guess I’m not surprised that David receives nary a mention in John’s autobiography.

In contrast to Rich’s approach, Confessions of a Hollywood Director focuses mainly on Richard Bare’s personal life.  He’s still in film school (at my alma mater, USC) on page 100, and when he gets to Green Acres around page 290, Bare has only a handful of anecdotes to tell.  That may make the book sound as dull as unbuttered toast and, indeed, I wish Bare had chosen to share more about his contributions to Maverick and The Twilight Zone and The Virginian.  But Bare’s memoir is so breezy and detailed, and his enthusiasm for old friends and childhood shenanigans so infectious, that I thoroughly enjoyed it.  A Modesto native, Bare (whose childhood friends included George Lucas’s father!) was a true Zelig of the California coast, who stumbled into amusing encounters with everyone from Walt Disney to Dwain Esper to Langston Hughes to Marilyn Monroe. 

Richard Bare is still with us, and his name made the rounds on the internet recently because his last birthday, on August 12, was alleged by many sources to be his one hundredth.  Except that when I chatted briefly with Bare ten years ago, he insisted that he was actually born in 1913, and even named the reference book (Ephraim Katz’s The Film Encyclopedia) in which he felt the inaccurate date had originated.  Bare expressed anger at the error, because he felt it had cost him work toward the end of his career.

At the time, I was convinced.  But Confessions of a Hollywood Director gives no birthdate for Bare, and his narrative remains a bit, well, slippery on the subject.  At one point Bare claims that he was nineteen in 1934, and a subsequent mention of his age also supports a 1914 or 1915 birth.  If Bare was willing to cheat his age forward a little in the book, could he have been fibbing to me as well?  In the book Bare states that Julio Gallo, the winemaker, sat next to him in an algebra class at Modesto High School.  Gallo was born in March 1910, so either he was an unusually slow math student, or . . . well, with all due respect to Mr. Bare, let’s just say that I’d welcome a peek at his driver’s license.

We want to get hammered on Prohibition-era hair tonic and open a hotel on the moon and make the rock full of cheese as American as possible (and be greeted as liberators)(before we blow it up) and maybe, just maybe, Conrad Hilton agrees with us. With a little bit of “wow!” as a lady friend of mine once said, between our dreams and our desires, we existed with last night’s new episode of Mad Men in the “Wee Small Hours.”

August Bravo: That Betty sure is a dreamer…

Marco Sparks: You may say she’s a dreamer, but she’s not the only one…

It’s really shaping up that this season is all about the meeting of dreams with desires, two things that aren’t necessarily the same thing.

August: So it seems. Betty is afraid to give into these desires. Don, however, is not.

Marco: I think Betty’s a smart person, a worldly person of sorts, but not a person of depth. Is she really afraid to to combine her wants and dreams of a silver fox lover from the Governor’s office, or is she just trapped within the boundaries of her princess mindset? It seemed like she would’ve fucked that guy (had the show been set in the present day, they would’ve been twittering naughty little missives towards each other) as long as it hadn’t been so “tawdry.”

But that aside, I loved that the episode started off with Betty laying in the dark with her dreams and ended with Don finally asleep in bed with the thing he wanted.

August: I think she’s still trying to see if she still has it. Don neglects her because, let’s face it, he doesn’t seem to give a fuck anymore…

Marco: They’re practically roommates raising kids together.

August: Yeah, and she wants some attention. Some naughty play on the side to get excited about. Reminds me of my ex-girlfriend, actually.

Marco: Which one?

August: Actually, all of them!

Marco: Yikes. Betty just reminded me of my feeling for this show, at least this season, when she’s patronizing  her nanny/housekeeper Carla about “her station” and talking about those four dead girls in Birmingham. “This has really made me wonder about civil rights. Maybe it’s not supposed to happen right now.”

And I feel like when you really get down to it, everything Don does is a reaction to something. Quite probably everything.

August: Betty may actually want the guy from the Governor’s office, but she’s just reacting too, I think. Betty is slowly becoming a more interesting character to me as this season progresses. And more like Don.

Marco: He is one of the most influential characters on TV or in real like in, like, forever.

August: I think Betty wants without thought towards consequences, and last night she got lucky in her covering of them and not getting too caught up by them.

Marco: I loved that Betty A) of course had a hard time discussing civil rights with Carla, but B) threw that fundraiser pretty much to cover herself with Carla, who had Henry Francis, the man from the Governor’s office, coming over for an illicit hello.

August: I don’t think Betty’s going to be so lucky in the future. And yeah, Don does just react. I don’t think he starts a lot of the situations he finds himself in. They just present themselves and he does what he can to craft them, to shape them. He is crafty. But for now, Don isn’t going to stop doing, getting, or taking what he wants. He’s in that 1960s mindset, and why wouldn’t he be?

Marco: The 1960s were like a theme park for insecure men with money to walk around just being better than everyone. Especially their women. And the women of Mad Men have to be careful because they can be let go when they reach their full potential.

August: Yeah, really. Don is the man, quite literally, so therefore he’s accepted as being better than Betty. He deserves more.

Marco: And takes more.

August: He brings home the bacon. And sometimes he wants a woman to play with that bacon. And why shouldn’t they?

Marco: He is Don Draper, after all.

August: He works hard, he plays hard. I think that’s how he feels.

Marco: Don Draper is secure enough in his awesomeness to show up to work late pretty much all the time.

August: But usually because he’s at home reading the bible with his family, of course.

Marco: Oh, of course. You’re really feeling Don, aren’t you? So is Don beginning the relationship with teacher, the very “close to home” relationship, based on the disapproval of his new father figure with unrealistic desires (like the moon), Conrad Hilton?

August: Oh yeah, definitely. I think Don’s just fed up with everything lately. “Give me more ideas to reject,” he says.

Marco: “Now that I can finally understand you, I am less impressed with what you have to say.”

August: Having to say things like that daily and put up with your underlings while constantly being jerked around by a powerful man like Hilton can stress a guy out. At that point, Don really needed something his life to go right, and go right the way he wanted it to. He needed a good powerfuck.

Marco: And the teacher was perfect for him because she presents herself to the world he lives in like she’s from another planet. And I’d like to think that, deep down, she’s outing herself as being from the same planet Don is from, or heading to as the show progresses, but who knows.

She jobs along lonely stretches of highway at all hours of the night, she lives above somebody’s garage, and she advocates not staring right into the sun. And she’s seen their entire affair, and knows exactly how it’s going to end. Who knows what Don Draper’s views on fate and predestination are, but I think he knows the one thing he can control, whether doing so is a reaction or something else or not, is to fuck this woman’s brains out, especially if there’s a higher risk of him being caught than ever before. “Doesn’t that mean anything to a person like you?”

August: You can tell that Don’s giving less and less of a shit about Betty, it seems. She asks if it’s okay to have the fundraiser there and he says sure, as long as he doesn’t have to go. Don’s a little like Betty in that he wants what he wants, and right now it’s the teacher. He’s drinking too much coffee, he’s not sleeping, he’s giving more and more of himself over to Connie, I don’t know.

Marco: Everyone’s walking around hunched over, with burnt fuses sticking out of their necks.

August: Exactly. Everything, especially everything with Don is a ticking time bomb at this point. Especially when it comes to Conrad Hilton. Don may want Connie’s approval, but I don’t he’ll be able to give Connie the love he wants.

Marco: Speaking of time bombs, I feel like yet another fuse was lit last night in the coming hardcore show down with Roger and Don.

August: Seriously. Even though Don and Roger technically agreed on aspects of the Sal situation last night, there’s still going to be a showdown. I’m hoping for a fistfight!

Marco: More American bloodlust as usual, huh?

And Don did cause all of us to step back a little with the way he treated Sal in this episode, wouldn’t you agree?

August: He knows about Sal, knows about what went down on in that hotel room with the bellhop and Sal, or was about to go down in that hotel room when they were out of town together. Sal’s being bit in the ass for not having given in. Don’s a cool guy with a lot of the things that flow outside what is currently considered the social norm of his time, but it seems he doesn’t trust that lifestyle. The way he mutters to Sal, “You people.”

Marco: It was absolutely chilling, wasn’t it? It’s kind of funny that when Don is mean to people like Pete Campbell or Ken Cosgrove or Kurt or Smitty, Kinsey and Crane, and the rest, we kind of cheer it on. We want to see more of it. Maybe even with Peggy, a little. But when I said that Joan was the spine of this show in a lot of ways, I think you could make the argument that Sal’s part of the ribs of the thing.

From his first scene in the first episode, when he walks in and you can tell he’s gay, and you instantly know how hard his life has to be in this time period, I think there was too much of a chance that this character could’ve been a joke, but he’s always been written well and Bryan Batt has played him with such class. And I think we’ve come to realize how much we like Sal this season just by watching him suffer so. Especially at the hands of Don Draper.

August: But Don had to do what he had to do. Lucky Strike is their biggest client, after all.

Marco: They were there since the pilot too, weren’t they? They’re “toasted.” But in Lee Garner, Jr. we have a villain you can really hate. A bully. He wants what he wants, as do all the characters on this show, and he won’t be told no too.

August: You upset him and Lucky Strikes and you’re fucked. Like Sal is now.

Marco: I blame it all on Harry Crane, who looks more like young Isaac Asimov to me than Perry Mason.

August: When I said that Sal was fucked, well, it was Harry Crane who did the fucking. He should’ve done something when he got that phone call, and his silence is what did Sal in.

Marco: Yeah, it is. It’s funny to me that a majority of the other characters all have better gaydar than Sal, in that they can all tell that Sal is gay and he’s clueless about them. But then again, that commercial was super homoerotic, so maybe it wasn’t so hard to figure out.

But, to be fair to Don, it seemed like Don and Sal never talked about Sal’s sexuality, so with Don witnessing Sal’s hookup with a bellhop out of town, he may’ve assumed that it was a regular thing with him (as I think you could call all of Don’s extramarital partying around) and Don may be upset that Sal didn’t follow his vague advice of: “Cover your exposure.” Eh… then again, maybe not.

I just hope that Sal finds some temporary solace there in Central Park…

August: Seriously.

Marco: …and then teams up with Joan for a comeback at Sterling-Cooper.

August: Is it too late to make a comment about Sal being shafted? Sal got shafted!

Marco: I guess it’s never too late.

What about the moon?

August: And you reminded me, where the fuck was Cosgrove? I think I liked Roger’s line the best, the one about what the company is going to be known for…

Marco: ”That’s what you want this place to be known for? That and some guy losing his foot in the lawnmower.”

August: Yes!

Marco: I think that Betty actually got not just the line of the night, about the meta-statement of the season, maybe the entire show itself when she was referring to Baby Eugene and Connie at the same time…

August: “‘I want what I want when I want it,” as she feeds the baby in the wee small hours…

Marco: “…and you don’t care what it does to the rest of us.”

Whenever you hear Bill Bennett start a sentence with “Americans are a tolerant people, Americans are a decent people”, you know there’s a big ol’ BUT coming.  Tolerance and decency don’t jibe with Bennett’s patented brand of basso profundo blowhard-ism. (If he shows his softer side, people might start confusing him with Raymond Burr.)

Today on CNN’s State of the Union, Bill’s BUT was all about how marriage is between a man and a woman, and it must be defended, and the culture is under attack – blah, blah, blah.  Bennett and the Family Research Council crowd are all excited about another “values” campaign in 2010.

Whatever, guys.  Knock yourselves out.  Young people already think you’re ridiculous, and nationwide, the fear of gays is receding every day.

Besides, there’s a little thing called “the economy”.  It’s kind of an important issue these days.  Nobody has time for your nonsense.

by Andrea Burke

If you don’t feel like getting out on the town after your long work week, you’re in luck because one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best movies is coming on Turner Classic Movies at 8:00 central time.

Rear Window stars Jimmy Stewart as a photographer whose recent injuries confine him to a wheel chair and has nothing to do but look out his window into the secret lives of his neighbors. Grace Kelly plays the love interest, and if you keep your eyes open, you’ll see TV’s ultimate lawyer, Perry Mason (Raymond Burr in real life), in an important, but mostly silent role.

If you’ve never seen much of Hitchcock’s work (which is almost always superb), this is a great film to start with. And great news for you who are prejudiced against black and white, it’s in color!

Even Better News: if you like Rear Window, there’s more-You can make it a Hitchcock double feature with Shadow of a Doubt which comes on right after Window. (Did I mention TCM doesn’t do commercials during movies?)

Happy Viewing!

“It’s a hippie wagon, and it’s real far out”: Ironside joins the post-Woodstock era (“Eye of the Hurricane,” 1969)

*

What did people do back in the years before someone invented the term staycation?  Personally, I passed the dog days of summer lounging around, reading, and watching old TV shows, just as I do now.  But I didn’t have such a handy term for it back then.

I had to send away to Australia for the third season of Ironside, after Shout Factory conceded that it has given up releasing the series on DVD in the United States due to disappointing sales.  I guess that means not enough consumers share my belief that the differently abled detective and his not-so-mod squad are, like, way hip, man.

For an already formulaic show, Ironside experienced a curious case of mission drift during its third year.  Gone were the standard outings in which Chief Ironside (Raymond Burr) bogarted a high-profile homicide case and then either solved the mystery or played cat-and-mouse with the killer.  Instead, the third season delivered a string of “very special episodes.”  Ironside finds himself in jeopardy, kidnapped as a hostage in a prison break (“Eye of the Hurricane”).  Or Ironside goes on a special mission, as when he’s appointed head of security for a political delegation in Red China (“Love My Enemy”). 

The biggest change was that in the majority of episodes, Ironside or a member of his team gets drawn into the week’s case through a personal connection to the victim.  If you were a San Franciscan and Chief Ironside owed you a favor, something bad was bound to happen to you, whether you were an old girlfriend (“Goodbye to Yesterday,” writer Sy Salkowitz’s sequel to his first season script “Barbara Who”), an aunt (“Alias Mr. Braithwaite”), a pupil (“Stolen on Demand”), a former schoolmate (“Ransom”), or an even older girlfriend (“Beyond a Shadow”).  Apart from casting aspersions on the objectivity of the San Francisco Police Department, this new storytelling mandate gradually undermined the plausibility of the stories.  And, let’s face it, a show about a man in a wheelchair who happens to be named Ironside needs to hold on to as much credibility as it can.

The same producers (Cy Chermak, Joel Rogosin, Douglas Benton, and Winston Miller) who oversaw the second season also managed the third.  So either they were starting to get bored, or else they caved in to network pressure to fix what wasn’t broken.  The surest sign of someone’s command for cosmetic change was the destruction of Ironside’s vehicle, a converted paddywagon (which was, I concede, ridiculous), in a fiery crash in the episode “Poole’s Paradise.”  For the rest of the season, Ironside upgraded to a snazzier cream-colored van decked out with a whole lot of slatted wooden window shutters.   I like to think this got him laid a little bit more often, and presumably the new wheels also garnered the show a few lines in that week’s TV Guide.  Did audiences ever really care about stuff like that, even when they only had three channels to choose from?

*

Years ago I watched most of the Wagon Train episodes that Columbia House released on VHS, and found the show rather bland.  Wagon Train was a traditionally written western with a medium-to-low budget, constructed mainly as a star vehicle for whatever A- and B-list guest stars MCA could seduce into headlining the episodes.  Most of the segments were titled after the name guest’s role (“The Willy Moran Story,” etc.), which should give you an idea of the extent to which Wagon Train was willing to sideline its putative stars (ex-John Ford court jester Ward Bond and pretty-boy Robert Horton).  Ideally, this backdoor-anthology format would have been an opportunity to emphasize character drama over the B-movie action that, say, Laramie or Tales of Wells Fargo favored.  In practice, though, the stories usually took too long to find their way toward obvious, uplifting resolutions, and the show leaned more on Native Americans as stock villains than any of the other “adult” TV westerns of the late fifties.

But Wagon Train was a long-running series, and Columbia House focused just on the first two or three of its eight seasons.  Shows which last that long sometimes evolve from one thing into another; CBS’s Rawhide, which was probably closest in content to Wagon Train than any other major TV western, also ran for eight seasons and went through some radical on- and off-screen changes during that time.  Last year Timeless Media, the indie outfit with the keys to Universal’s tape vault, released two giant boxes of Wagon Train episodes in a typically eccentric fashion.  The emphasis was on Wagon Train’s penultimate year, the only one shot in color and expanded to a weekly ninety minutes (in an effort to copy Universal’s 1962 hit The Virginian, which had begun to trounce Wagon Train in the ratings).  But Timeless also rounded up a random grab-bag of segments from all the other seasons to complement the thirty-two ninety-minute Wagon Trains.  Ordinarily this compilation would run afoul of my compulsive nature, but I took it as a way of setting out some trail markers to chart the direction the show took over the years.

I wish I could report that the results were something other than dire.  But here’s how most evenings went.  First I cued up an episode entitled “The Ah Chong Story.”  Then I realized that Arnold Stang played the title character, and figured I’d need a Vicodin to get through that.  So I skipped to the next episode, “Clyde,” which turned out to be a comedy about trail cook Charlie Wooster (Frank McGrath, a tenth-rate Walter Brennan) and the pet buffalo he shields from hungry settlers and Indians.  The buffalo was so mangy that at first I mistook it for a pony draped with a woolly throw rug.  I can’t remember now whether or not Clyde got eaten in the end, because by then I was having one of those occasional crises in which I become paralyzed by the question: Why again did I decide to specialize in early American television?

Change is coming in Geyserville, California.  You may not see it yet, but you can feel it.  The town’s excitement – and anxiety – about the very near future is tangible.  The tiny community of about 1,600 wine-loving souls is on the verge of significant changes.  Geyserville’s burgeoning wine industry has produced star-quality product for decades.  Now, at a time when wine has taken a much higher profile in our society, Geyserville is on the precipice of cashing in.

The citizens of Geyserville have a palpable attitude of hope – hope that change is coming, and hope that the change will be good.  They are a small town – downtown is not much more than a wide spot in the road.  But the change these people are hoping for is a change that will widen that road, and populate it with more and more businesses to serve the tourism that the change will bring.  It would be easy to read a little desperation into all that hope, but that’s not how it comes across.  These people know what they have – a collection of extremely good wineries and vineyards which are responsible for wines of a very high quality.  But they know that is not enough.  What they need now is for people to notice.  And people are noticing.

The former Chateau Souverain was purchased by the Francis Ford Coppola wine empire, and the change has already started there.  Coppola is moving his public profile in the wine biz from his Rutherford property to the Geyserville facility, which makes a huge statement all on its own.  His Oscars are already there, and his expansion – more on that in a bit – is set for completion by the summer of 2010.  Nearby River Rock Casino has expansion plans of its own.  Although their hotel plans have been put on the back burner due to the economy, they are at least still on the stove.  Just a small economic upturn could be the spark that relights the fire.  This sort of change will bring more people to the area, and a higher profile to a wine region that richly deserves a little more notice.

Geyserville has the good fortune to sit in one of the most amazing grape-growing regions in the world.  The Alexander Valley of northeastern Sonoma County is blessed with great soil and several diverse microclimates that rival the most prominent wine locales in France and Italy.  The wineries in Geyserville produce wines of a consistently high quality, easily able to stand alongside the bottlings of any other California appellation.  The grape growers and winemakers of Geyserville and the surrounding area are just as smart and just as passionate as their brethern from other locales, and probably a lot more down to earth.  Aside from a few big names situated here, most of the wine producers in Geyserville are small boutique wineries with limited production.  Big name or small, some pretty fantastic wines are being produced around Geyserville.

As I wandered about the community I couldn’t help but notice how friendly and open everyone was.  Each winery I visited seemed to be one of the nicest places in the state in which to hang out.  I could ask anybody any question and get an answer that was thoughtful and insightful.  Everywhere I went, “laid-back” was the prevailing attitude.  There wasn’t an Italian sportscar in sight the whole time I was there.  In fact, it would have been no surprise at all to see a horse tied to a hitchin’ post.

Wineries To Watch

 Geyserville is home to several of the bigger names in winemaking.  The old Chateau Souverain now bears the impressive name of Francis Ford Coppola Presents Rosso & Bianco.  It sounds like it should be spoken with a fanfare accompanying it.  Coppola is known as an idea man.  His ideas are being made into reality at Rosso & Bianco, and when he’s done, he will have changed the face of Geyserville dramatically.  His plans – which are frequently emended as the work progresses – call for the winery to be made into a wine resort, with dining, swimming, lounging and even activities and a play area for the kids.  Coppola’s changes will attract more people to Geyserville and, with a hotel not included in his plans, will push eager tourism dollars out into the community.

One of the many boutique wineries that populate Geyserville, Trione Vineyards and Winery, has developed such a reputation with the wine alone that they can place a tasting menu on the counter which features nothing but award-winning wines.  Only one of them was produced in a quantity greater than 600 cases, and two of them were made in lots of less than 500 cases.  The tropical Sauvignon Blanc, the apple pie Chardonnay, the earthy Pinot Noir and the Cabernet Sauvignon which spent 24 months in French oak barrels are big highlights on a roster that has only winners.

Jim Rickards of J Rickards Winery would probably bristle at the mention of the word “boutique” in connection with his operation, but that’s the cattleman in him talking.  His interests turned from bovine to old vine when he bought his vineyard in the 1970s and began selling grapes to other area winemakers – Silver Oak, Geyser Peak and Dry Creek Vineyards to name a few.  His plants date back to 1908 and he has augmented the originals with newly planted clones of old vines.  He and his wife Eliza began producing extremely small batches of handmade wines in the early ’90s for friends. The reception was enthusiastic enough that they finally decided to start bottling on their own with the 2004 vintage.  That move made them a lot more friends.

The Pedroncelli family runs the oldest winery in the Alexander Valley, and is one of a handful of Italian-American families in the wine business there.  The Pedroncellis were around when the Dry Creek Valley floor was all prune trees.  They’ve done quite well with the grapevines, though.

TV legend Raymond Burr didn’t really want his vineyards to bear his name.  But when Burr passed away his longtime partner Robert Benevides decided it was only right.  Today, a very limited amount of top-notch wine is still made with care.  One look at the view from the tasting room door and you’ll know why Burr didn’t mind that long drive up the hill.

Stryker Sonoma’s showcase tasting room literally puts the vineyard on display, with ceiling-to-floor glass for walls. Murphy-Goode Winery is in Geyserville, although their tasting room is located in Healdsburg.  Clos du Bois and Geyser Peak both have names that are familiar to California supermarket shoppers.

 ***

Now, Geyserville is presently about as big as a street corner – at least the downtown business district is.  But it’s nice to know that you can get plenty of tastes without wandering too far from your accommodations.

Locals tasting room was one of my favorite spots.  There you can sample from 75 different wines by 11 local producers like Dark Horse, Eric Ross, Atrea and Hawley, just to name a few.  They like to pour a “varietal comparison flight,” several tastes of one kind of grape from different producers.  It’s a great way to experience the differences and similarities of various wineries side-by-side.  Of course, they also pour what ever you’d like to try, so skip around the extensive two-page tasting menu all you like.  Everything you taste is for sale by the bottle in the store.  The shop is funded by a collective of the wineries, and the staff knows what they’re pouring, so any questions you may have about what you’re tasting will be answered.

Terroirs Artisan Wines handles only four local wines, Godwin Family Wines, Hughes Family Vineyards, Palmeri and Pena Ridge.  I tasted both the Godwin and the Hughes while I was there, and they both impressed me.

You should also try and get into Route 128 Vineyards and Winery tasting room.  Pete and Lorna Opatz opened a tasting room in what was once the parts department of one of the first Ford dealerships in the country.  Their 60 combined years of experience with grapes pays off well in their boutique wines.  They produce less than 500 cases per year, the standouts being a crisp and lovely Viognier, a lively Zinfandel and an award-winning Syrah which mixes chocolate and blueberry flavors in a delightful way.  In the tiny room, you may find art from local Twyla Gettert or even a pairing event with nephew and culinary artist Rian Rinn.  Route 128 is a definite “must taste” in Geyserville.

***

Some people consider “wine futures” to be a good investment.  I think the time is ripe for some enterprising entrepreneurs to buy futures in Geyserville.  Services are needed now, and the need will grow exponentially when the Coppola project and the casino hotel are reality.  The town lacks a true grocery market and needs a bakery and a coffee shop that open early.  Although Diavalo and the Hoffman House are hard to beat, a couple of extra dining choices would be nice and more lodging will be needed, too.  Oh, and that little downtown area could use some sprucing up.  Geyserville has great wine.  Now it just needs to get dressed up a bit before the company comes over.  Keep an eye on the Alexander Valley, and Geyserville in particular.  You’ll be seeing a lot more of them in the future.

By Rev Ed Hird

 Raymond William Stacy Burr  was born on May 21, 1917 in New Westminster, BC.  Raymond started in theatre in his late teens, as well as having other jobs to help the family and earn a living for himself.  Joining the Armed Services during 1943, he was injured by shrapnel and discharged in 1946.  After his movie role in the 1948 film “Pitfall”, Raymond became stereotyped as a portrayer of vicious vindictive “villains”.  He went on to work in over 90 flicks in the next 11 years before landing the part of Perry Mason.

The original Perry Mason TV series first aired on CBS on September 21, 1957. The series was based on the famous “Perry Mason” books written by Erle Stanley Gardner.  Raymond Burr played the remarkable attorney Perry Mason who never, except sort of once, lost a case.  Running from September 1957 until May 1966, the series had 271 episodes, all but one filmed in black and white.  Perry Mason is being seen in endless reruns all around the world, and is promoted by numerous Internet pages dedicated to Perry Mason.

As I thought about the enormous, lasting appeal of Perry Mason over the years, I realized that Perry Mason taps into that desire we all have for a father who is really willing to stick up for us.  All of us need a father who will use his strength to protect and provide for his family.  Some men are more known for their attacking and crushing, rather than for their protecting and providing.  I am thankful for my father who defended me when I was being unfairly attacked, who believed in me when others turned their backs on me.  Thank you, Dad, for being a Perry Mason to me.

The Perry Mason courtroom drama always had a set pattern to it. In the first half hour, a murder was committed and the police arrested the wrong person. One way or another, Perry was recruited for the defense. A trial or hearing followed.  The police and prosecuting attorney were frequently baffled by Perry’s fancy footwork and almost illegal shenanigans. Perry always won the case, dragging a confession from the murderer, usually in court.  His clients always went free. And of course, there was always the famous ending scenes, often ending with some sort of bad joke or humour.

What is it about the Perry Mason courtroom drama that still draws people year after year?  All of us want to believe that life is fair and good.  Yet very often tragedy and injustice crush our hopes for our future.  Perry Mason represents an outside force that cares and has the power to really change our lives.  In the midst of horrendous tragedy and injustice, Job cried out in the words made famous by Handel’s Messiah: “I know that my Redeemer Liveth”.  Having finished two years of studying Hebrew, I discovered that the word Redeemer(go’el) in the Hebrew actually means “Defense Attorney”.  Job was really saying: “I know that my Perry Mason, my Defense Attorney, lives…I know that he will have the final word in court and set me free.  I know that he will baffle the prosecuting attorney.  I know that Perry Mason will have me vindicated, and proven innocent.”

When Handel’s Messiah sings out the words: “I know that my Redeemer Liveth”, the redeemer being sung of is of course Jesus Christ.  Most of us have never linked Perry Mason and Jesus Christ in our minds.  But in fact, that is what Job is really saying:  “I know that my defense attorney, my ‘Perry Mason’, liveth”.  Is it any co-incidence that Jesus is described as a defense attorney, an advocate who will speak in our defense in court (1 John 2:1)?  My prayer  is that each of us may discover that we are not alone, that there really is someone out there willing to stick up for us.

Rev. Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Coalition in Canada

http://www3.telus.net/st_simons

-author of the award-winning book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’

http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com

-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier

EDWARD ASNER

I always wonder what people in various professions think of how their field is portrayed in television dramas. I spent a lot of years in the newspaper business, and I cannot recall any show that presented an accurate picture of everyday life in that arena. The key, I suppose, is “everyday,” which might not be interesting enough to hold the interest of a television audience. I have heard folks suggest that the “Lou Grant” series was realistic, but I found it laughable — and Lou Grant himself an absurdity. Of course, I also think Ed Asner is a pompous windbag, so that might color my opinion.

There was a series in the early days of television, “The Big Story,” that dramatized the reporting of actual news stories — not all of them from large newspapers. I remember, in fact, that one  episode in that series was based on an annual charity drive conducted by the Paterson Morning Call, which was a small paper in its best days. “The Big Story” was nominated for an  Emmy in 1953.

RAYMOND BURR

What calls this to mind is a report that a 12-member jury of the American Bar Association has named the best law series of all time, and it wasn’t Raymond Burr’s “Perry Mason,” nor yet his “Ironsides” — to both of which I was devoted before I became so jaded about television. The ABA choice was ”LA Law,” a show I have never seen.

You can read about the ABA jury’s reasoning at this link:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/07/sorry-sonia-but-perry-mason-is-second-chair-to-la-law.html

Word: jabberwocky [jab-er-wok-ee] n. 1. a playful imitation of language consisting of invented, meaningless words; nonsense; gibberish 2. an example of writing or speech consisting of or containing meaningless words ∞ adj. 3. consisting of or comparable to Jabberwocky; meaningless; senseless

Birthday: Albrecht Dürer (1471), Henri Rousseau (1844), Armand Hammer (1898), Fats Waller (1904), Raymond Burr (1917), Leo Sayer (1948), Al Franken (1951), Mr. T (1952), Judge Reinhold (1957), The Notorious B.I.G. (1972), Fairuza Balk (1974)

Standpoint: Thursday is the day I address your suggestions for Annoying Sayings & Misused Words. Let’s have at it.

•  “OMG” - (submitted by Fred T.) – “OMG” started out as a chat acronym for “Oh my God!’ But, I’m sorry to report that it has snuck out into the spoken word. I think it’s a great thing to teach children to say instead of, “Oh my God!” Otherwise, unless you’re using it ironically (something I’ll always support), congratulations. It’s official. You’re a tool.
• “It’s” vs. “Its” – (submitted by Cheryl F.) – When it comes to “it’s” and “its”, I’m ever vigilant. Definitely easy to make a mistake here with just an apostrophe (‘) making the difference. “It’s” is a contraction for “it is” or “it has.” It’s going to be a great day. ”Its” is possessive pronoun meaning “of it” or “belonging to it.” The bear got its foot trapped in the rocks. These two words are confused and misused mainly due to lack of attention to detail. Make sure to keep an eye out. One of the easiest grammatical mistakes to miss.
• “I know, right?” – (submitted by Harold W.) – I’m reasonably sure, without my knowledge, a law was passed that every woman under-30 in this country is obligated  to utter this phrase exactly 85 times per day. First, if you’re agreeing with something someone said by saying, “I know,” there is no need to follow it with, “right?” The other person already agrees with you. By itself, it’s not that bothersome. But the way it’s said most of the time can make my skin crawl. I think it all has to do with the 2-octave jump the voice does when emphazizing  the last word “right,” making it sound like, “I know, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight?”

How about you? What things do you hear or read that bother you? Let us know.

Quotation: Never mistake motion for action. - Ernest Hemingway

Tune: I read about Harlem Shakes‘ song “Sunlight” on a friend’s Facebook status update. Great driving-to-the-beach song.

Gallimaufry: Today might be remembered for a long time as President Obama and former VP Dick Cheney will both give speeches on the state of terrorism in this country. Cheney thinks Obama has left the country wide-open for a terrorist attack and will give his thoughts in a speech titled “Keeping America Safe: An Address by Dick Cheney.” Obama’s speech is called, “How’s Dick Cheney Still Alive?” ∞ Human piece of garbage Michael Vick was released from prison yesterday after serving 18 months for admitting sharing responsibility for brutally murdering several dogs. The former NFL star will server the last two months of his sentence under house arrest in Hampton, Virginia. Vick is reportedly ready to join a Humane Society of the United States campaign designed to discourage urban youth from pitting angry dogs against each other in fights to the death. ∞ Oscar-winning director Cameron Crowe understands how to make music work in movies. If you’ve ever watched the scene from Say Anything where John Cusack plays Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” outside Ione Skye’s house, you know exactly what I mean. Anyway, Crowe has compiled a list of some of the best music moments in film history. Pretty solid, in my opinion.

Incoming: Tomorrow – It’s my birthday. But it’ll also be Friday so you’ll get my 3 Things To Do In Philly When You’re Dead plus some birthday-related list. Come back and check it out.

I saw a 1956 crime movie over the weekend on TCM called The Houston Story. It was vaguely entertaining but mostly mediocre, a half-baked drama of a mobster wannabe played by Gene Barry. But it had two memorable elements in it: Edward Arnold as a chuckling mob kingpin, and Barbara Hale as a platinum-haired nightclub thrush and femme fatale.

This is one of my concepts of the perfect woman.

I kinda remember Barbara Hale from playing Della Street, the Gal Friday on the old Perry Mason show with Raymond Burr in the 50s and 60s…but actually I don’t remember that show very well because while I was growing up I was more interested in the Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Ben Casey, and 12 O’Clock High and magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland and giant comic book creatures like Fin Fang Foom. But I loved Barbara as a naughty minx in this movie when I saw it last night in my current state of maturation as a 57-year-old connoisseur of noirishly deceptive doxies. Yes, my eyes have been opened to an actress whose other works I must readily explore.

Barbara sings the same song in The Houston Story that made Rita Hayworth famous in Gilda a decade earlier, “Put the Blame on Mame,” and Barb’s equally sexy in a sultrier, more “MILFy” kind of way.

This is from the trailer for The Houston Story.

I don’t know if Miss Hale really sang the song or it was dubbed, but the camera stays on her in closeup the whole time, and her facial expressions, and the way she moves her mouth and the way the light flatters her gorgeous cheekbones, made it something I’m glad I recorded on the DVR. If you get to see this movie when it shows up again on TCM, watch how she moves her lips on the word “boys” in the lyric, “Put the blame on Mame, boys…”

In her other scenes in the flick, she really brings the tough babe to rich life with everything from the smallest furrowing of her brow to the freshening of her lipstick. What a dame!

Looking her up on the web after seeing the movie, I found some of these shots at a great tribute site called Big Dave’s Barbara Hale Annex. I also read somewhere else that she may have been a model back in the 1940s for the famed pinup calendar painter Gil Elvgren, the creator of timeless works like this (which can be found at the fine site Pinup Files).

It's a sad day when a grown man envies a cocker spaniel...

Well, with Barb’s stems and that wholesome but saucy face, I can sure believe that Elvgren, who was to pinups what Michelangelo was to ceilings, would have loved her!

With women like this on their side, how could our World War 2 soldiers NOT have beaten the Axis?

Mason in the Pokey?

Perry Mason?

Perry Mason in Jail: Perry Mason always won.  Well, I think once he lost. Of course I’m referring to the lawyer character played by Raymond Burr in the TV series Perry Mason. So, there’s this guy in Houston.  His name is Perry Mason.  Apparently he’s been nabbed for practicing law.  Trouble is this Perry Mason doesn’t have a law license.  There’s not much out on the story yet, but one thing is for certain…this guy doesn’t look like Raymond Burr.  Here’s what little there is from the Houston Chronicle.

Giannini in 1928 with Wife and Daughter

On This Date in History:  Amadeo Peter Giannini isn’t a household name, but perhaps it should be and perhaps the company that he founded needs to go back to his philosephy.  You see, he didn’t see money as the worlds greatest resource.  Instead, he saw people as the greatest commodity on the globe.  While it was not his objective, his humble attitude resulted in his founding one of the nation’s most powerful financial institutions.

He worked in San Francisco for his stepfather in a produce market and by the age of 19, he became a full partner.  He invested his money wisely in real estate and at the tender age of 31, he was wealthy enough to retire.  But, his version of wealth was different than others as he was able to earn $250 a month from his investments, which was fine by him.  Philosphically, he said, “I don’t want to be rich.  No man actually owns a fortune; it owns him.”  I guess he must have gotten bored though because his retirement lasted all but a year. 

1929 Check From Bank of Italy

In 1902 a small bank in the Italian section of the Golden Gate City made him its director.  He was interested in banking but he detested the practices, which he felt ignored the common man.  So, two years later, he started his own bank and called it the Bank of Italy…even though he was in San Francisco.  His investors were small shareholders but the practices that he used would alter banking practices in America…until perhaps the late 20th and early 21st centuries.  One thing he did that is still common today was that Giannini solicited business.  This was unheard of in 1904.  Through advertising and he own personal persuasion he convinced people it was safer to have their funds in his bank than hidden in a shoe box or under their mattress.  He put the money back into the community by giving small loans to local individuals with only their wages as collateral.  He then thought that banks could better distribute capital so he pioneered branch banking.    Then, disaster struck.

Fires Burn after Quake

Street Split By 1906 Quake

On this date in 1906, the city of San Francisco was almost destroyed by a massive earthquake and a following fire that burned for several days.  The firestorm only was halted when sections of the city were dynamited to form a fire break.  The earthquake was estimated to be 7.8 on the richter scale.  Death toll estimates vary but it is generally assumed about 3000 lost their lives.  Giannini acted quickly and removed all of the money from his bank and put it in a secret hiding place.  The very next day, his bank was the only financial institution in the city to be open for business.  He set up shop on a wooden plank and began dispensing loans.  By 1907 with rebuilding going crazy, a wave of untempered financial speculation took hold and many banks were left in ruins. (sound familiar?) But, Giannini had speculated that a

The Mint Stands Tall Amidst the Rubble

crash was coming and he had spent his time hoarding gold.  He stacked the gold in teller windows so everyone could see it.  Customers saw the glittering substance and it gave them confidence that their money was safe with him.    By the time he really retired in 1934, his bank was the world’s largest commercial bank with about $5 billion in assets.  Yet, the humble Giannini never sold out.  He didn’t give himself or a golden parachute.  His bank was to serve the public not its officers.  When Amadeo Peter Giannini died in 1949, his estate was estimated to be the same as it had in 1904 when he started his own bank.

The bank he started, the Bank of Italy became part of Transamerica in the 1920’s.  In 1934, the bank was merged with another financial institution and the new bank was called the Bank of America.

By the way…on this date in 2008, Louisville felt the effects of an earthquake.  My cats, Nit and Wit, went crazy but I thought that they were fighting.  So I rolled over and went back to sleep.   Here are a few facts that I found after I got out of bed…most likely about the crack of noon…

Devasted City By the Bay 1906

The initial quake was 5.2 on the Richter Scale located about 5 miles NNE of Belmot, Illinois or about 125 miles west of Louisville.  It’s depth was 11.6 kilometers or about 7 miles.  That is relatively shallow and is probably why it was felt with such force at such a distance.  It was apparently felt in Chicago and Atlanta.  According the the USGS, it was at 5:38 AM EDT.

There were 4 aftershocks.  The last was the strongest at 11:14 AM EDT and registered at 4.6. 

The initial quake was considered moderate.  There is typically little or no damage associated with such quakes.  There are about 800 moderate quakes world wide on an annualized basis.

Richter Scale w/Significant Quakes

The force of a quake is not linear, its logrhythmic.  Hence, a quake that is a 2 is not twice as much as one that registers one.  In the two examples cited, the 7.8 quake of San Francisco would release the equivalent of about a half a billion tons of TNT.  Last year’s quake near Belmot, IL of 5.2 released approximately the same energy as 50,000 tons of TNT.  The yield of the Hiroshima atomic bomb was about 20,000 tons of TNT. 

The energy release of the Dec. 16, 1811 New Madrid 8.1 earthquake was approximately 1 billion tons of TNT.  The Mississippi River flowed north for a time after the quake.  Gueysers of sand and water shot skyward in many locations around New Madrid.  It is said that the shaking was felt as far away as Boston, where the vibrations were sufficient to ring the churchbells.

Apparently, the the quake of last year was not on the New Madrid fault but instead initial analysis suggests it was on the smaller Wabash fault.

SPC Sunday Outlook From Friday

Weather Bottom Line: As expected, Friday was great.  Snow White, Lilliputian and I went to the Zoo to help run herd on the 1st graders from Spring Hill Elementary in Clarksville.  The giraffes were fabulous, though I think the baby is still being cared for.  It was a cool start but warmed up quickly and I’m sure there are many kids with pink faces.  We went to the river and saw some practicing  for Thunder Over Louisville.  The F-22 Raptor was cool and did some things that defy the laws of physics.  We also had a B-52 land right over the top of us.  The weather will be great for flying on Saturday though there will probably be some friendly white puffies floating about.  It may be a little more breezy with the wind shifting out of the South.  Keep that in mind for the fireworks.  At Spring Hill Elementary it will probably be pretty smokey by the time its all said and done with but it shouldn’t rain.  So don’t be alarmed if you see clouds increasing in the evening.  The rain will hold off until early Sunday morning. 

MesoNAM for 6Z Tue...Note Short Upstream

Now, Sunday we will have thunderstorms in all liklihood.  The question will be the ferocity.  As of Friday, the SPC had decided to put a slight risk south of our area.  However, the GFS, as usual, is advertising some fairly rambunctious activity.  The NAM is calling for some good thunderstorms but has zero shear which discounts tornadoes.  However, the European and Canadian models both have a track of the low similar to the GFS, which is almost on top of us.  I would not be surprised to see the SPC revise the risk area into the Ohio Valley.  The 18Z NAM does not go out into early Wednesday but, the GFS, Euro and Canadian all show a secondary strong short wave rotating around the low and through the jetstream flow from the northwest moving right over the top of us on Wednesday morning.  The NAM has that feature and if I were to interpolate it would be easy to hypothesize the same solution for the NAM.  So, we could see another round of t’storms on Wednesday morning but the time of day and other elements may not be sufficient to be too exciting.  However, it should be noted that the GFS is…again…getting a little ambitious on the vertical profile prog.  What this all means is expect wet weather of some kind for the Sunday through early Wednesday and then mild conditions for the latter part of the week.

GFS 18Z Sun...Note Short Over Area

DAY 3 CONVECTIVE OUTLOOK 
   NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER NORMAN OK
   0229 AM CDT FRI APR 17 2009
  
   VALID 191200Z – 201200Z
  
   …THERE IS A SLGT RISK OF SVR TSTMS SUN ACROSS PARTS OF THE
   TENNESSEE VALLEY/CENTRAL AND EASTERN GULF STATES….
  
   …SYNOPSIS…
   MODELS SUGGEST THAT AMPLIFICATION WILL OCCUR WITHIN THE MAIN BELT OF
   POLAR WESTERLIES DURING THIS FORECAST PERIOD…WITH A VIGOROUS SHORT
   WAVE TROUGH DIGGING ACROSS THE CENTRAL CANADIAN PROVINCES AND NORTH
   CENTRAL U.S…AS A STRONG MID/UPPER JET STREAK ROUNDS THE CREST OF
   AN AMPLIFYING RIDGE ACROSS THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST AND CANADIAN
   ROCKIES.  IN RESPONSE TO THESE DEVELOPMENTS…A REMNANT SOUTHERN
   STREAM CIRCULATION IS PROGGED TO ACCELERATE MORE RAPIDLY
   EASTWARD…FROM THE SOUTH CENTRAL PLAINS THROUGH PORTIONS OF THE
   LOWER OHIO AND TENNESSEE VALLEYS BY LATE SUNDAY NIGHT/EARLY MONDAY.
   DISCREPANCIES EXIST AMONG THE SHORT TO MEDIUM RANGE FORECAST
   GUIDANCE…INCLUDING INCREASING SPREAD AMONG NCEP SREF
   MEMBERS…CONCERNING THE SPEED AT WHICH THIS OCCURS…AND DETAILS OF
   THE LARGE-SCALE PATTERN EVOLUTION.  BUT…IT APPEARS PROBABLE THAT
   THE SOUTHERN IMPULSE WILL SUPPORT A DEVELOPING SURFACE LOW ACROSS
   UPPER PORTIONS OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY THROUGH THE LOWER
   OHIO VALLEY.  THIS IS EXPECTED TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE MAINTENANCE OF
   AT LEAST A MODEST SOUTHERLY 850 MB JET /ON THE ORDER OF 30-35 KT/ IN
   THE WARM SECTOR TO ITS SOUTH AND EAST… BENEATH A MODERATELY STRONG
   WEST SOUTHWESTERLY 500 MB JET /ON THE ORDER OF 50+ KT/.
  
   …LWR HALF OF MS VALLEY THRU CNTRL/SRN APPALACHIANS…
   HODOGRAPHS CHARACTERIZED BY SIZABLE LOW-LEVEL CLOCKWISE CURVATURE
   AND STRONG DEEP LAYER SHEAR OVER A FAIRLY BROAD AREA OF THE MID
   SOUTH AND CENTRAL/EASTERN GULF STATES PROVIDE SOME CONCERN FOR A
   MORE SIGNIFICANT SEVERE WEATHER THREAT THAN CURRENTLY INDICATED.
   GULF MOISTURE RETURN CHARACTERIZED BY 60F+ SURFACE DEW POINTS AND
   PRECIPITABLE WATER OF 1.25-1.5 INCHES SHOULD BE SUFFICIENT…BUT
   CONSIDERABLE UNCERTAINTY EXISTS CONCERNING THE POSSIBLE STABILIZING
   INFLUENCE OF A STORM CLUSTER ALONG CENTRAL/EAST GULF COASTAL
   AREAS…LEFT OVER FROM THE DAY 2 FORECAST PERIOD.
  
   IF THIS SYSTEM WEAKENS BY OR SHORTLY AFTER 12Z SUNDAY…AND
   ASSOCIATED MID/HIGH LEVEL CLOUD COVER AND SURFACE COLD POOL DO NOT
   BECOME TOO PROMINENT…IT APPEARS A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY MAY
   DEVELOP FOR A FAIRLY SUBSTANTIAL SEVERE THREAT.  SOUTH OF A BAND OF
   WARM FRONTAL CONVECTION SPREADING THROUGH THE LOWER OHIO VALLEY AND
   SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS…THERE ARE INDICATIONS THAT A PRE-FRONTAL DRY
   LINE TYPE STRUCTURE COULD PROVIDE THE FOCUS FOR DISCRETE STORM
   DEVELOPMENT IN AN ENVIRONMENT FAVORABLE FOR SUPERCELLS.  THIS
   APPEARS MOST PROBABLE FROM PARTS OF CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI THROUGH
   WESTERN TENNESSEE BY MID DAY SUNDAY…BEFORE DEVELOPING EASTWARD
   ACROSS MIDDLE TENNESSEE AND NORTHERN/CENTRAL ALABAMA SUNDAY
   AFTERNOON…WHERE LARGE HAIL/LOCALIZED DAMAGING WIND GUSTS AND
   TORNADOES WILL ALL BE POSSIBLE.
  
   ..KERR.. 04/17/2009

http://alphainventions.com/

alphainventions

Hello Spring [sneezes] Wesus,

The weekend just passed. Rest in peace. A most beautiful one. I am covered in calamine lotion from head to toe. This due to a clusterfuck of spring stings, as I sat in the grass using a billowing buzzing blooming lavender bush as my back pillow. The Folly Bowl was filled with classical Indian music. This is my favorite thing in all the world. It makes me write poetry and lets me imagine myself as an exotic Anne Sexton–so odd, yet valuable–intelligent and tragic. I like to forget that I am an ordinary forgettable, believe in the hype. It’s all a big mystery.

A mystery that may end soon; another step of ice just melted off the global glacier.

This was a concert to benefit the Sangeet School of World Music in Highland Park.

As the sun descended, I rushed to the playhouse to see Mauritius. I heard from Raymond Burr’s ghost. On the way in he kissed me. I became instantly feverish and couldn’t sleep all night.

The bout of insomnia enabled me to finish the library book that is due today, Julie & Julia by Julie Powell. GREAT BOOK-soon to be a movie. Julie’s experiences reminded me of my own foray into French cooking, and how seriously I took it. I was absolutely as obsessed as she with Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking (“MtAoFC”) but I was never as funny or as clever as Julie Powell. I had marriage troubles and the opposite of infertility problems. Yeah, and there were no blogs or even internuts then-except if you count the geek secret IRC channels (forget I mentioned that).

Stay bendy & mind the bees,

MG

Watching the Turner Classic Movies’ presentation of 1951’s blockbuster hit “A Place in the Sun,” with three other pre-war WW II-vintage friends, my own deconstructions of how the film had not aged all that well over the intervening fifty-eight years, raised some hackles with one of my fellow viewers. She had loved the movie in 1951, and did not appreciate hearing the ironic delight as we pointed out the now campy, corny and embarrassing aspects of the production.

Great art supposedly can transcend time, but a popular movie like “A Place in the Sun,” it picked up six Academy Awards, like almost all commercial art, ends up trapped within its context, within its moment. That’s not to say it’s not a good movie, maybe it’s a great movie, but whatever it is, it’s embedded irrevocably within the conventions, assumptions and the craft of movie-making as they existed in a time and a place. It is difficult to watch “A Place in the Sun” without being reminded constantly that it was made in Hollywood in 1951.

Think of the carpet-chewing performance by Raymond Burr as the prosecuting D.A., or of the sound track that telegraphs every emotional transition, and there’s the pre-feminist, pre-pill “American Tragedy” underlying the screenplay goes back to a 1906 novel. Best of all, try and look into the gorgeous gauzy face of a pre-Nicky Hilton Elizabeth Taylor without thinking of what’s yet to come in her life, or gaze upon the terminal handsomeness of a Montgomery Clift, and forget that he’s as yet still in the closet. It’s impossible to deny knowing all that’s been learned since 1951 and watch a movie like this in innocence. That doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyed, but In its presentation, the picture is so heavily laden with its own time and place that it almost necessarily distracts current viewers in a way a well-made contemporary movie can’t; but certainly will, given enough time.

Watching old movies, and I do love to watch them, I am forced by the distance between then and now, to watch on multiple levels, something I don’t or can’t do with contemporary films because the distances are as yet too close. Old movies, movies removed from the zeitgeist of their making, no matter how good, nearly always become artifacts whose incidental details can overwhelm a later viewer from what the creators of the piece were trying to do. I am told that occasionally a movie becomes timeless. I wish I could think of even one, but I keep coming up empty.

Rear Window offers perhaps the best example of what defines a ‘Hitchcock film.’ The Master of Suspense engaged audiences by aligning the viewer’s gaze with that of the central characters. Rear Window takes this motif to its extreme, as we watch a man watching others.

In an allegory of the process of filmmaking, the far side of the courtyard constitutes a screen on which the hero projects his fantasies. The individual events – like the individual shots in a film – only gain meaning through being assembled in a montage that is constructed solely through his point of view.

The experiences and perceptions of L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) mirror our own, as we watch the drama unfold. As Jeffries tries to unravel the mystery, we too are piecing together the plot from the clues we are given. Suspense emanates from not knowing if we can believe our eyes; a moral conundrum stems from whether we should be looking in the first place.

By the close, the wheelchair-bound Jeffries is left shouting that old movie cliché “Don’t go in there!” as he helplessly watches the events his curiosity has set in motion. He is advised not too look if he’s too “squeamish,” and we too can look away if the suspense becomes too much. But we don’t; by this point we cannot help ourselves, any more than he can.

DID YOU KNOW?
•    All of the sound in the film is diegetic, meaning that the music, speech and sounds originate from within the world of the film.
•    The entire film was shot on one set, which was at that time the largest ever built by Paramount studios. All the apartments in Thorwald’s building had electricity and running water.
•    During the month-long shoot “Miss Torso”, lived in her apartment all day, relaxing between takes as if really at home.
•    The film was based on the short story “It Had to be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich, a recluse who spent most of his life sharing a Harlem apartment with his mother.
•    It is possible that Woolrich never saw the film; he was not invited to the film’s premiere and it did not air on television during his lifetime.
•    Hitchcock makes a cameo appearance in each of his films. Keep an eye out for him.
•    The film was nominated for four Oscars, but did not win any. Hitchcock himself was nominated a total of six times in his career, including Best Director for Rear Window.  He never won the award.
•    Four Hitchcock films were listed in the American Film Institute’s ‘Ten Best Mystery Films of All Time”: Vertigo (#1), Rear Window (#3), North by Northwest (#7), Dial M for Murder (#9).

Discussion Questions and Topics
Questions:
•    Did you spot Hitchcock?

•    Do you approve of Jeffries’ voyeurism? Does the fact that Thorwald was a murderer excuse his actions?

•    Why is it that Jeffries becomes so fascinated with his neighbors?

•    Is Jeffries an active or a passive protagonist?

•    Why is it that Jeffries doesn’t ever take a picture of what he sees?

•    Why do you think James Stewart was cast in this role?

•    What do you think of the film’s view of relationships? Is the film romantic or skeptical in its view of the way people interact?

•    How does the relationship between Jeffries and Lisa compare to the other characters we see?

•    What do you think of Stella’s (the nurse) assessment that “we’re a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change.”

Topics
•    Voyeurism
•    Suspense vs. surprise
•    The film’s portrayal of male/female relationships
•    Vigilantism
•    Neighborly etiquette

Library Resources
1) Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen, 35 Great Stories that have Inspired Great Films, edited by Stephanie Harrison. Contains Cornell Woolrich’s original short story “It Had To Be Murder” and information on its adaptation into Rear Window.
Copy                  Material          Location
791.436 ADA             1 Book         Nonfiction
2) The Women Who Knew Too Much, Tania Modleski. Contains a feminist interpretation of the film.
Copy                  Material          Location
791.430233 MOD         1 Book         Nonfiction
3)  Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, Patrick McGilligan.
Copy                  Material          Location
B HITCHCOCK, A. MCG     1 Book         Biography
4)  The A-Z of Hitchcock, Howard Maxford.
Copy                  Material          Location
791.430233 HITCHCOCK     1 Book         Nonfiction
5)  Hitchcock’s Notebooks: An Authorized and Illustrated Look Inside the Creative Mind of Alfred Hitchcock, Dan Auiler.
Copy                  Material          Location
791.430233 HITCHCOCK     1 Book         Nonfiction
6)  Find the Director and other Hitchcock Games, Thomas M. Leitch.
Copy                  Material          Location
791.430233 HITCHCOCK     1 Book         Nonfiction
7)  Rear Window [videorecording (DVD)]. Just in case you want to see it again!
Copy                  Material          Location
DVD REA             1 DVD, Fiction     Audio-Visual – Movies

Online Resources

www.dailyscript.com/scripts/rearwindow.pdf
A PDF copy of John Michael Hayes’ classic screenplay.

http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/rear_window_c.html
An excellent academic essay on the film by Hitchcock biographer Ken Mogg

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/29/rear_window.html
Interesting analysis of the film from the viewpoint of Jeffries’ recuperation

http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9712/11/rearwindow.restoration.lat/
An article about the film’s restoration.

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/8255/filmog/film5.html
Contains audio excerpts from the film.

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/corliss/article/0,9565,557218,00.html
A Time magazine feature on short story writer Cornell Woolrich

http://hitchcock.tv/
A site devoted to Hitchcock, including essays, quotes and upcoming TV screenings of his films.