Garfield minus Garfield

It's been clear for some time that Garfield can be improved by removing Garfield's thought balloons. More recently, it's become clear that Garfield is better still — funnier, richer, stranger — when one removes Garfield.

Let us begin with familiar Garfield territory. A stupid man! A snarky cat!



Alas, the punchline self-destructs: if Garfield himself is indeed good at doing nothing, why must he imply that? Why must he even think? Remove the thought balloon and the scene changes drastically:



Now Garfield's eloquent silence tells us all we need to know about what it's like to be stuck in a comic strip with this man. There's no need for words. But remove Garfield and things are even better:



Now Jon is all alone with his thoughts, such as they are. He's Estragon without Vladimir, or a figure from The Waste Land. He seems to realize that in the final panel, "Looking into the heart of light, the silence."

Reader, try this strategy at home, and see if it gives you a value-added comics experience.

And to the creator of the Garfield-minus-Garfield reading strategy, wherever you might be: Thanks!

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Blondie minus Blondie
Thoughtless

Garfield minus Garfield

[Garfield, May 23, 2018.]

A carrier left a free copy of the local newspaper in our driveway today, and I ended up noticing Garfield on the comics page. And having noticed, I had to play Garfield Minus Garfield.


[Garfield revised, May 23, 2018.]

That dog must have magical powers. Clearly an improvement.

Related posts
Blondie minus Blondie : Garfield minus thought balloons : Garfield minus Garfield

Thoughtless

There's a wonderful hypothesis making its way through the world -- that Jim Davis' Garfield strips can be improved by removing Garfield's thought balloons. My son Ben and I have been testing this hypothesis by means of the scientific method (i.e., by reading Garfield in the morning). Here's one experiment:



Removing the thought balloon from the final panel removes Garfield's lame quip -- "You'd think staplers would come with a manual." (No, you wouldn't; Jon's just a klutz.) And without the thought balloon, it's not as clear what's happened to Jon, especially as his staple is no longer very recognizable as such. And "THUD," along with Garfield's impassive stare, is a sufficient punchline. Thus the strip becomes funny and surreal and even tragic -- Jon stumbling about, Garfield enduring, like Shakespeare's Gloucester and Lear, or Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon. O agony! O Garfield!

Altered Garfield comics reveal truth about cat's pathetic owner (Boing Boing)

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Blondie minus Blondie
Garfield minus Garfield

Garfield, with, without

Here’s a strip that I think is better minus thought balloons but with Garfield.

[Garfield, May 18, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

But maybe not:

[Garfield, May 18, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

There’s also a Marie Kondo version, with Garfield and Odie in a box on a faraway shelf. Or maybe they’ve gone to the Goodwill:

[Garfield, May 18, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

No more Garfield for me after today. My tolerance is limited. Maybe yours too.

Previous examples
Thoughtless : “Look at me” : Odie with sunglasses : Sofa, Jon’s back

Blondie minus Blondie

I think it's an improvement, though I'm not sure it will work on a regular basis.

In this instance, with Daisy on hand, subtracting Blondie turns the strip into Garfield with Garfield's thought balloons removed: Daisy becomes Garfield (take that, Garfield), and Dagwood becomes Jon, speaking blandly to no one. Subtracting Blondie makes clear how little genuine communication there is between Bumsteads: here, as in so many strips, Blondie functions as the silent audience for Dagwood's "observational comedy." Let her go out and live her life, says I.

Subtracting Blondie also calls attention to the waste land in which Dagwood struggles. That wall: is it a wall, or is it empty space? That piece of furniture: very like a coffin. And those speech balloons: it took a lot of work to get them looking semi-right with Blondie out of the picture.

Related posts
Garfield minus Garfield
Telephone exchange names on screen ("Dagwood Rumstad")
Thoughtless

Garfield minus Garfield

I somehow got to thinking about Garfield minus Garfield, a self-explanatory strategy for greater reading enjoyment. Does it still work?

[Garfield, May 9, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

[Garfield, May 14, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

I think so.

Previous examples
Thoughtless : “Look at me” : Odie with sunglasses

The Far Side minus Garfield

As the title says, The Far Side minus Garfield.

Garfield minus Garfield
Thoughtless : “Look at me” : Odie with sunglasses : Sofa, Jon’s back : Minus everything

One mini-series, eleven movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, Hulu, Netflix, TCM, YouTube.]

The Crooked Circle (dir. Joseph Kane, 1957). One thing about a Republic Pictures picture: you know you’ll never see anything remotely like the grotesque mansion of Anora — no money! Here’s a modestly made movie with a familiar premise: clean-cut young fighter Tommy (John Smith) breaks into the big time, with an ex-fighter brother (Don Kelly), an in-need-of-a-Women’s-Studies-class girlfriend (Fay Spain), and a sportswriter (Steve Brodie) behind him. When a crooked manager (John Doucette) and promoter (Robert Armstrong, all the way from King Kong) want Tommy to take a dive, there’s trouble. Okay script, surprisingly good acting, surprisingly realistic (to my eye) fight scenes. ★★★ (YT)

*

‌Castle on the Hudson (dir. Anatole Litvak, 1939). A cocky little gangster (John Garfield), a compassionate figure of authority (Pat O’Brien): where had I seen that before? Oh, right, in Angels with Dirty Faces (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1938). As Tommy Gordan, Garfield channels the James Cagney of Angels; as Sing Sing warden Walter Long, Pat O’Brien channels himself. Ann Sheridan has little to do here; Burgess Meredith, as a Sing Sing inmate, has much more, and he takes over the film in the middle. ★★ (TCM)

*

Dangerously They Live (dir. Robert Florey, 1941). “Listen, the world is turned upside down; words don’t mean what they’re meant to mean; people aren’t what they should be”: so says Jane Greystone (Nancy Coleman), a British agent in New York, suffering from amnesia and targeted by Nazi agents determined to find out what she knows about ship movements. One agent (Moroni Olsen) claims to be her father; another (Raymond Massey) is a distinguished medical man looking to take over her care. A scrappy hospital intern (John Garfield) is all that stands between Jane and doom. A solid story from the brothers Warner, with a trace of Foreign Correspondent, a scene that anticipates Casablanca, and a brief appearance by the great character actor Murray Alper. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever (dir. Chris Smith, 2025). A largely uncritical documentary portrait of the entrepreneur and venture capitalist Bryan Johnson, who’s spending millions in a personal effort to reverse aging and live for an “indefinite” amount of time. Johnson presents as a man in his forties who dyes his hair, wears few clothes (yes, he’s fit), has had work done, has a parasitic relationship with his teenage son (plasma transfusions of younger blood), and is always selling, with branded products and Amazon affiliate links everywhere. “You sound like an infomercial,” someone says off-camera. Yes, much like this documentary itself. ★ (N)

[As The New York Times reports, there’s been lots of trouble for Bryan Johnson that postdates the movie. And Johnson is much stranger than the documentary or Times article suggests: he wants, for instance, to start a country, start a religion, and become God.]

*

How I Escaped My Cult (2025). The stories of believers, almost all of them women, who escaped from a variety of groups: the FLDS, the House of Yahweh, the Nuwaubian Nation, NXIVM, and others. At the heart of each group, an improbably charismatic leader — an angel, a prophet, an ET, a self-styled human-potential expert — who sees her or his followers as things to be used. A certain sameness sets in after two episodes: landscape shots via drone, too-quick cuts from archival image to archival image, commentary by cult experts and prosecutors, and, always, a story of exploitation and escape, which sometimes is a matter of packing and leaving. What’s missing from this series is an unpacking of belief systems and an exploration of how the believer came to believe and obey. ★★ (H)

*

From the Criterion Channel feature Three Noirs by John Farrow

Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948). A supernatural noir, in which a stage mentalist, the Great Triton (Edward G. Robinson), finds his power to see the future becoming real. The story centers on the fate Triton foresees for the daughter (Gail Russell) of his old partners in show business (Virginia Bruce and Jerome Cowan). My favorite bit: Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill and the room near Angels Flight in which the tormented Triton hides away for twenty years, fashioning magic tricks and novelties to sell by mail. From a novel by Cornell Woolrich. ★★★★

Alias Nick Beal (1949). Another story of the supernatural, in which a deeply ethical district attorney, Joseph Foster (Thomas Mitchell), meets Nick Beal (Ray Milland), a suave tempter who seems to come from nowhere to help in Foster’s effort to prosecute a gangster. And before long, the prospect of running for governor is within Foster’s reach, and yes, it’s a variation on the legend of Faust. Milland, Audrey Totter (as a prostitute turned politician’s mistress), and George Macready (as a white-haired minister) are brilliant, and this movie might be Thomas Mitchell’s finest hour. Extra credit goes to Lionel Lindon, whose scenes of fog and silhouettes are unforgettable. ★★★★

[Nick Beal: I blacken? I think so. The third movie in this feature is The Big Clock.]

*

A Complete Unknown (dir. James Mangold, 2024). Timothée Chalamet stars in something of a Classic Comics version of Bob Dylan’s early years. Chalamet gives a great performance as an aloof, needy, fabulating, chameleonic young man, but so many moments in the movie made me cringe, starting with the in-hospital performance of “Song for Woody” that floors Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) and Pete Seeger (Edward Norton): torch, passed! So many details of the folk world are left out: if, for instance, you don’t recognize Dave Van Ronk (Joe Tippett), this movie won’t tell you who he is: he appears, speaks, but is never identified (he's one of the movie’s complete unknowns). Biggest cringe: the wholly invented episode of Pete Seeger’s television series Rainbow Quest, with a fictional gin-drinking bluesman and young Bob crashing the show. ★★ (H)

*

From the Criterion Channel feature Starring Penélope Cruz

Jamón, jamón (dir. Bigas Luna, 1992). The movie debut of Penélope Cruz, and at first I thought that the only point was to show her in as little clothing as possible, as often as possible. But the story developed into a charged, loony-tunes tangle of sexual relationships — a mother (Anna Galiena), another mother (Stefania Sandrelli), a father (Juan Diego), a suitor (Jordi Mollà), another suitor (Javier Bardem) — that finally gets sorted out, with a final tableau that made me laugh out loud. I’d describe Jamón, jamón as a movie that out-Almodóvars Almodóvar — and recall that the name of Almodóvar’s production company is El Deseo, The Desire. Don’t miss the closing cast credits: for an English-speaking viewer with even a modest command of Spanish, they’re a delight. ★★★★

*

From the Criterion Channel feature French Poetic Realism

Hôtel du Nord (dir. Marcel Carné, 1938). It’s not a four-star hotel: its residents include a sex worker, Raymonde (Arletty), and her procurer, Edmond (Louis Jouvet). New to the hotel are Renée and Pierre (Annabella, Jean-Pierre Aumont), lovers who have readied themselves to end their lives. But nothing goes according to plan, and, as Edgar says in Hamlet, “The worst returns to laughter” — more or less. The opening and closing scenes suggest to me a theater curtain opening and closing: we end where we began. ★★★★

They Were Five (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1936). Five out-of-work pals hit it big in a lottery and pool their winnings to transform a dilapidated building into a guinguette. Complications ensue. A beautifully bittersweet story of success and failure, comic and tragic by turns. Jeannot (Jean Gabin): “We had such a beautiful idea.” ★★★★

[Criterion gives the title in English. In French, it’s La Belle équipe, the beautiful team.]

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

“Case Closed!”

[Zippy, August 26, 2018.]

Is Mark “someone”? He doesn’t resemble Mark Newgarden (co-author of How to Read “Nancy”). Whoever Mark may be, he goes on to praise Ernie Bushmiller as “a Zen master! In a class by himself!” By the third panel of today’s strip, the talk turns to Garfield: “a funny animal strip — or the coming of the Antichrist?”

Bill Griffith’s dislike of Garfield is well established. See for instance this strip, or this one. Yes, Garfield appropriated the Zippy koan “Are we having fun yet?”

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy, Nancy and Zippy, and Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Force of Evil

Force of Evil (dir. Abraham Polonsky, 1948) stars John Garfield as an attorney involved in a scheme to take over the numbers (policy) rackets in New York City. Martin Scorsese, who introduces the film on DVD, thinks of it as a neglected noir masterpiece. I’m not sure I agree: the scheme and the romantic subplot are not exactly convincing. But George Barnes’s cinematography is aces. And the film has something for everyone, or at least for me. Click any image for a larger view.


[A Phi Beta Kappa key.]


[A locked drawer. Holding what?]


[A private line.]


[A Dixon Ticonderoga.]


[A Chemex coffeemaker. That’s Beatrice Pearson with Garfield. She worked mainly in the theater and appeared in just two films.]


[A pocket notebook. A “bank” is a numbers operation. Check.]


[A telephone booth, as seen from a lunch counter.]


[The same telephone booth and Beatrice Pearson. That’s her white glove above.]


[A notebook in a key case. (Huh?) Left , right , left , right : the combination for a safe.]


[A bakery, open late.]


[Mr. Hooper, moonlighting. This is the second time I’ve seen Will Lee as a bit player.]


[More Ticonderogas!]

Related reading
More Ticonderogas: Bells Are Ringing : Harry Truman : Lassie : The Dick Van Dyke Show : The House on 92nd Street

More notebook sightings: Angels with Dirty Faces : Cat People : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dragnet : Extras : Foreign Correspondent : Home Town Story : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The Lodger : Murder at the Vanities : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Palm Beach Story : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : State Fair : T-Men : Union Station : The Woman in the Window

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers.]

Scandal Sheet (dir. Phil Karlson, 1952). I’m always thankful to film fans who upload movies (no doubt only those in the public domain) to YouTube. Here’s an example: a not especially celebrated story of tabloid journalism and murder, with Broderick Crawford as the ethically challenged editor of the lurid New York Express, John Derek as an ethically challenged reporter, and Donna Reed as a plucky sidekick. It’s something of a cross between Double Indemnity and The Big Clock. Watch for Harry Morgan as an unmistakably Weegee-like photographer. ★★★★

*

The Case Against Brooklyn (dir. Paul Wendkos, 1958). Another YouTube find: a police procedural that follows an undercover investigation of Brooklyn “horse rooms.” Darren McGavin is the Glenn Ford-like rookie cop who risks everything to bring down the syndicate. Maggie Hayes (the lonely teacher in The Blackboard Jungle) complicates his investigation, with unforeseen consequences. With noir-like cinematography by Fred Jackman Jr. and a great final sequence in an industrial laundry. ★★★★

*

Mysterious Intruder (dir. William Castle, 1946). And here the streak ended, with something from a movie series inspired by the radio serial The Whistler. Things start out well, with a courtly old-world music-store owner hiring a sketchy private detective to find a young woman who disappeared from the neighborhood seven years earlier. And then fiendish Mike Mazurki shows up in the music store, a low-budget affair made from a few guitars, some sheet music, and brilliant composition and lighting. But when the interesting characters are killed and the plot abandons plausibility, this movie turns into a dud. ★★

*

Violent Saturday (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1955). Many stories: that of a trio of bank robbers, and those of the disparate residents of a mining town and its environs whose lives are changed one Saturday morning. The movie takes a long time to get going, but the wait is worth it. Standouts: Margaret (Maggie) Hayes as a wife and self-styled “tramp,” Virginia Leith as an object of the male gaze, Lee Marvin as a feral criminal, J. Carrol Naish as a bespectacled criminal (reminiscent of Sam Jaffe in The Asphalt Jungle), Tommy Noonan as a Prufrockian bank manager, and Sylvia Sidney as a librarian in money trouble. Watch also for Ernest Borgnine as an Amish farmer. ★★★★

*

Little Fugitive (dir. Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, 1953). I didn’t think when we watched this movie three months ago that we’d be we watching it again with my mom, who saw it back in 1953 and remembered it as both happy and sad. Says my mom, “Nothing bad happened to the boy, and he ended up back with his family, so that was good. But to me it was very sad.” Thank you, Criterion Channel, for making it possible to discover or rediscover this film. ★★★★

*

The Fallen Sparrow (dir. Richard Wallace, 1943). My dad used to amuse us by dragging his foot around like a character in this movie, so I thought I should finally watch and find out what it’s all about. It’s about Kit McKittrick (John Garfield), a Spanish Civil War vet whose investigation of the death of a friend brings him into contact with society swells and eminent refugees, some of whom might spell trouble. Garfield is excellent in scenes in which he describes and relives his experiences being tortured. But it’s never clear just who McKittrick is (a swell himself? someone who just happens to own evening clothes?), and the plot is wildly improbable. ★★

*

It Happened One Night (dir. Frank Capra, 1934). It has to be my favorite Capra film, cutting the Americana with plenty of eros, courtesy of Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable. It didn’t occur to me until this viewing that it’s really two movies: one of daylight scenes on roads and in offices, and one of nights on snug buses, in cozy cabins, or outside in luminous, misty darkness. Oh, to eat a hamburger and ride the night bus to New York, even without Colbert and Gable aboard. My favorite moments: hitchhiking, “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.” ★★★★

*

Now, Voyager (dir. Irving Rapper, 1942). How could I have missed this film? Well, as I used to tell my students, we come to things when we come to them. Better late than never — no shame. Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, many cigarettes, and an ending that suggests an imperfect happiness as enough happiness. ★★★★

*

Only Angels Have Wings (dir. Howard Hawks, 1939). Cary Grant is Geoff Carter, aka Papa or Pop, manager of an air freight company flying mail through the dangerous Andes. The outside air is thick with fog; the air inside the hotel/bar/restaurant where most of the movie takes place is thick with bromance, particularly between Papa and the Kid (Thomas Mitchell, born twelve years earlier than Grant). Enter singer Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur), pilot Bat McPherson (Richard Barthlemess), and McPherson’s wife Judy (Rita Hayworth), each of whom complicates the bromance. Spectacular flying scenes, and a farewell scene with Papa and the Kid that recalls William Wellman’s Wings. ★★★★

*

Phantom Lady (dir. Robert Siodmak, 1944). From a novel by Cornell Woolrich. Ella Raines is a loyal secretary trying to clear her boss of a murder charge by tracking down a mysterious woman in a strange hat. Elisha Cook Jr. steals a scene as a manic drummer. Franchot Tone steals the movie as a twitchy killer. ★★★

*

Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers (dir. Les Blank, 1980). Do you remember the cookbooks of times past that suggested rubbing a clove of garlic around a wooden salad bowl, presumably because no one would want any more garlic flavor than that? Hahahahaha, and sheesh. I love garlic. This documentary has lots of garlic, lots of cooking and eating, lots of music — in other words, lots of life. ★★★★

*

The Lonedale Operator (dir. Michael Almereyda, 2018). John Ashbery, three-and-a-half months before his death, talking about his childhood, his love of movies, and his poetry. In an interview for the Criterion Collection, Almereyda (the director of the great, strange 2000 film adaptation of Hamlet ) explains how he came to make this short film. You can read Ashbery’s poem “The Lonedale Operator” here. Thank you, Criterion Channel. ★★★★

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, September 9, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

No masks, no distancing in today’s Hi and Lois ? Okay, it’s the comics. But no legs on the desks? There’s a way to fix that problem.

[Hi and Lois revised, September 9, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

If you look closely, you’ll see that I’ve made another revision that all self-respecting teachers should appreciate.

*

An observant reader points out that the dog on the poster is Odie from Garfield. Thanks, Kevin. And we agree, given that it’s a Garfield poster, it should come down.

[Hi and Lois revised again, September 9, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

I found today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, surprisingly easy. I sat down with a Rhodia pencil and had to use its cap eraser just twice.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, four letters, “Outmoded agenda savers.” Where’s mine?

2-D, six letters, “Marxes’ frequent female foil.” A gimme for me.

9-D, six letters, “Garfield frenemy.” Sad that the first Garfield that comes to mind is a cartoon cat and not an actor (John), bluesman (Akers), or president (James).

17-A, fifteen letters, “Digitally overwhelmed declaration.” I wrote in the answer with no hesitation. Not that I’ve ever had to make such a declaration.

31-A, six letters, “Tear-down artists.” I must be on Matthew Sewell’s wavelength today.

35-A, eleven letters, “MLB debut in 2025’s spring training.” What, really? Yes, really.

36-D, eight letters, “Garland’s Wizard of Oz dress.” Quaint.

40-D, six letters, “Ball atop a flagpole.” For some reason I know this word.

55-A, fifteen letters, “Carter Center observer.” And what might the current occupant do in his post-presidency, if he has one?

61-A, five letters, “Gretzky Pinot Grigio measure.” Wayne Gretzky has a winery? With 35-A, it was the answer that challenged my grasp of reality. Here it’s the clue that does so.

A baffler, that I understood only after finishing the puzzle and looking it up: 18-D, three letters, “Shuttle propeller.”

My favorite in this puzzle: 41-A, three letters, “It plugs away 24-7.” Talk about a value-added clue.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

The scene of the crimes

Last week’s photograph of a Gowanus diner led me to a story about its proprietor, Michael Tolopka, being robbed of $240 at 4th Avenue and Union Street. My friend Slywy snagged the Daily News article with more details:

[Daily News, November 11, 1941.]

Tolopka was robbed outside a bar and grill. There was only one such establishment at the intersection of 4th Avenue and Union Street: the College Restaurant.

[224 4th Avenue, Gowanus, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Between 1930 and 1944, at least five other Brooklyn restaurants had the word college in their names, each establishment apparently independent of the others. My guess is that the name of the College Inn restaurant in Chicago’s Hotel Sherman inspired copycats.

In 1961, the College Restaurant on 4th Avenue was the scene of a crime far more spectacular than the Tolopka robbery.

[Brooklyn Daily, October 6, 1961. Click for a larger view.]

In June 1961, Joseph Magnasco (b. 1925), was among those convicted of hijacking a truckful of linen. He was shot and killed before being sentenced. A Getty-owned photograph shows a priest administering last rites to the dead Magnasco on the sidewalk. All the hijacking convictions were later reversed.

This Wikipedia article, though it doesn’t mention Magnasco, gives some context for his killing: a battle between the Gallo and Profaci crime families. A 1961 newspaper article calls Magnasco a “top level Gallo mobster.” A 1963 article identifies Magnasco as a “Gallo henchman”; another calls him a “Gallo mobster.”

And there’s a complication: Magnasco seems to have defected from the Profaci family.

[Newsday, October 5, 1961. Click for larger views.]

Magnasco’s killing appears to have gone unsolved.

Joseph Magnasco previously made the news in 1947, when he attempted to rob a railroad-station safe in Lynnbrook, Long Island. An May 19 article from the Nassau Daily Review-Star reports that “Woman Routs Thug Saving $1,600 At Railroad Station.” Magnasco attempted to take money from an open safe and fought with a female ticket agent before fleeing. A May 20 article reports that a police officer noticed a man walking along a road with a bloody handkerchief around one hand. That was Magnasco. The officer was rewarded with a day off to go fishing. Magnasco later pleaded guilty to possession of an automatic pistol. It’s not clear that he faced any other charges.

[Nassau Daily Review-Star, May 20, 1947.]

Here’s a better likeness, most likely a mug shot from a later arrest:

[Joseph Magnasco, n.d.]

There’s just one Joseph Magnasco in the 1940 census who was born in 1925. He was a fifteen-year-old resident of The Children’s Village, a home for orphans and troubled boys in Dobbs Ferry, New York. From the Children’s Village website:

1958: The Children’s Village was officially designated a Residential Treatment Center. This came as the culmination of the evolution from an orphanage to a residential school for troubled boys to a true clinical program capable of meeting the needs of seriously disturbed children.

I wonder if this Joseph — who must be the one I’m writing about — was the son of Pietro Magnasco, a Brooklyn union organizer and racketeer who was arrested for murder in January 1930 and was shot to death in May 1930. With each man, a five-month gap between arrest and murder. Pretty eerie.

On a happier note, notice the sign over the College Restaurant: the Scuola Gratuita di Italiano e di Musica. I hope I’m reading the small words correctly.

Also on a happier note, Taheni, a Mediterranean grill, now occupies the first floor at 224.

I would still like to know what Michael Tolopka was doing with $1240 in cash in his pockets.

Thanks to Brian, Slywy, Brooklyn Newsstand, and NYS Historic Newspapers.

*

A few more details: There’s just the one Joseph Magnasco in the Social Security Death Index. Find a Grave reveals an interesting detail: Magnasco served as a corporal in the Marine Corps Reserve in World War II.

A little more: I found Joseph Magnasco in the 1950 census (it’s impossible to link directly to the relevant page). He was then living in a basement apartment at 100 Garfield Place, Park Slope, Brooklyn, with Urbano DeSantis, sixty-three, a bricklayer; Christine DeSantis, forty-five, Urbano’s wife; and Angelo DeSantis, thirty, their son, a photographer. Magnasco, twenty-five, also identified as a son, is listed as unemployed but looking for work. My guess for now is that Christine is his mother, remarried. The distance from the College Restaurant to Garfield Place: three-tenths of a mile.

*

Here’s Christine Magnasco in the 1940 census, thirty-five, widowed, neither working nor looking for work, living in an apartment at 59 Lincoln Place, Park Slope. A puzzle: she’s listed as the head of a household of nine, yet she’s the only person listed at this address. Perhaps she was managing a household of several generations.

*

Just one more bit, again moving backwards: this article identifies the body found on a New Jersey farm in May 1930 as Peter Magnaro. At least that was the name on his driver’s license.

[“Brooklyn Man Is Found Slain on Jersey Farm.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 23, 1930. Click for a larger view.]

So: Peter Magnaro, killed in a bootlegging war, was Pietro Magnasco, husband of Christine, father of Joseph. I’m closing the case.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Eleven movies, one season

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, TCM, YouTube.]

Arson, Inc. (dir. William Berke, 1949). A firefighter goes undercover to investigate an arson-for-hire business. A surprisingly good B-movie, with mild suspense, modest human interest (a teacher who trades off babysitting jobs with her cigarette-smoking grandmother), and a pyromaniac who provides comic relief until he doesn’t. I liked seeing the familiar face of Byron Foulger, a member of Preston Sturges’s stock company. This movie might prompt viewers here and there to recall a local fire or two, never properly investigated, set by a real-estate mogul looking to collect on the insurance and build something new. ★★★ (YT)

*

Insurance Investigator (dir. George Blair, 1951). An insurance investigator goes undercover to investigate the death of an executive. See, there’s a double indemnity claim at stake. Dumb from start to finish. The only redeeming element: a mustached Reed Hadley as a criminal. ★ (YT)

*

While the City Sleeps (dir. Leslie Roush, c. 1940). It’s a film-noir title (dir. Fritz Lang, 1956), but this a short promotional film from the Ford Motor Company is noir of another sort: about people who work at night. “Thousands of men, thousands of trucks,” the narrator says. Yes, they drive by night (as another movie says), working while everyone else sleeps, delivering bread, milk, produce, and what-not to towns and cities. If you enjoy glimpses of people loading and unloading trucks in the wee small hours of the morning (as the song says), you’ll like seeing these glimpses of the dowdy world. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Window (dir. Ted Tetzlaff, 1949). Tommy Woodry (the ill-fated child-star Bobby Driscoll) likes to tell tall tales, so when he claims to have witnessed a murder, no one believes him — except the killers. A great movie, filmed on location, with clueless parents (Arthur Kennedy and Barbara Hale), dangerous neighbors (Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman), and great views inside a New York tenement. Talk about childhood fears: what could be more terrifying than to be locked in an apartment, alone, when someone is out to get you? My favorite moment: the hanger and the key. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Key Witness (dir. D. Ross Lederman, 1947). Milton Higby (John Beal) is a diffident drafter who invents gadgets and fends off his wife’s (Barbara Read) complaints about his earning power. Milton’s life changes when he flees the scene of a murder (which he did not commit), takes to hoboing, and is mistaken for the long-lost son of a wealthy capitalist. Wildly implausible yet somehow compelling. I recognized just one face in this effort: that of Harry Hayden, the character actor who plays the diner proprietor in the (great) opening scene of The Killers. ★★★ (YT)

*

Shack Out on 101 (dir. Edward Dein, 1955). Deliriously odd: the setting is a California diner, whose waitress, Kotty (Terry Moore), interests everyone — proprietor George (Keenan Wynn), feral cook Slob (Lee Marvin), and nuclear scientist/shell collector Sam (Frank Lovejoy). The plot concerns sensitive secrets being passed to the Communists. But what’s really important here is the improvisatory shape of things: whole scenes appear to have been filmed as ad lib sketches. Best moment: weightlifting (Wynn and Marvin) and a beautiful legs contest (Wynn, Marvin, Moore). ★★★ (YT)

*

Valley of the Dolls (dir. Mark Robson, 1967). Just ridiculous, with lousy acting, and dialogue that sounds like the work of AI, minus the I. And it’s as if no one was aware that the 1960s were well underway: Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, and Sharon Tate, whose characters are the focus of this tawdry story of show biz and pills (“dolls” are downers), seem like throwbacks to another era with their bouffant hairdos and elegant outfits. The best/worst moments: Neely O’Hara’s (Duke) All About Eve metamorphosis into a next-generation Helen Lawson (Susan Hayward). It’s vaguely troubling to see Paul Burke (Naked City) and Martin Milner (Route 66, Adam-12) in these surroundings. ★★ (TCM)

*

Mona Lisa (dir. Neil Jordan, 1986). Out of prison (we never know what he was in for), George (Bob Hoskins) takes on work as driver and bodyguard for Simone (Cathy Tyson), a high-priced call girl. George and Simone’s time together is at the heart of the movie, as a working non-relationship develops into an ambiguous alliance complicated by other allegiances, by the assumptions governing the world of sex work, and by George’s profound sense of decency. Michael Caine and Clarke Peters (Lester Freamon of The Wire) provide moments of great menace. My favorite moment: the skipping away. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Lou Grant (created by James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, and Gene Reynolds, 1977–1978). I have an excuse for missing this series the first time around: it was a school night, and I was studying (I think). The first season is great stuff, with strong, still-contemporary storylines (domestic abuse, hospice care, mental illness and health care, neo-Nazis, sexual abuse) and sharply drawn characters full of idiosyncrasies (Mrs. Pynchon and her ever-present dog; Rossi and his orange soda). With Ed Asner, Mason Adams, Daryl Anderson, Jack Bannon, Linda Kelsey, Nancy Marchand, and Robert Walden. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Three from the Criterion Channel’s Ida Lupino feature

Peter Ibbetson (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1935). A mystical love story of children (Dickie Moore, Virginia Weidler) reunited in adulthood (Gary Cooper and Ann Harding) — reunited, at least, in shared dreams. The story of young Gogo and Mimsey looks forward to the pathos of Forbidden Games; the story of the adult Peter and Mary suggests — no joke — Dante and Beatrice and the beatific vision. The luminous cinematography is by Charles Lang. Ida Lupino makes only a brief appearance. ★★★★ (CC)

Out of the Fog (dir. Anatole Litvak, 1941). A Criterion blurb describes it as an allegory of fascism set in “a small fishing village,” and I suspect that the writer was going on a 1939 New York Times review of Irwin Shaw’s play The Gentle People (the source for this movie). The film though is a working-class drama of the Brooklyn waterfront (no village!), where a cocky small-time gangster (John Garfield) is able to shake down a tailor and a cook (Thomas Mitchell, John Qualen) for weekly payments by threatening to destroy their humble motorboat. The sordidness heightens when the gangster begins wooing Stella, the tailor’s daughter (Ida Lupino), and schemes to take her for a vacation to Cuba on an additional $190 extorted from her father. Dreadfully stagey dialogue, a great performance from Lupino, and dark, misty cinematography from James Wong Howe. ★★★ (CC)

The Sea Wolf (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1941). Edward G. Robinson stars as Wolf Larsen, the sadistic captain of a scavenger. When he’s not stealing other ships’ seal hides, he reads Darwin and Nietzsche and brutalizes and humiliates his crew members (Barry Fitzgerald, John Garfield, and Gene Lockhart are among them). Also on board: two travelers rescued from a downed ship, an escaped convict (Ida Lupino) and a genteel writer (Alexander Knox). All the ship’s a stage on which Larsen gets to play out the creed underlined in his copy of Paradise Lost: “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.” ★★★★ (CC)

Related reading
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Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Amazon Prime, Netflix, TCM, YouTube.]

Crazy, Stupid, Love (dir. Glenn Ficarra and John Recqua, 2011). Ovid would understand the premise: eros makes people do all sorts of things. The cast full of famous names — Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone, Marisa Tomei — but nothing here amounts to very much. And plot elements that seem highly dubious in 2026 were just as dubious in 2011. A shark moves through the waters from early on, but wait for the mini-golf. ★★ (N)

*

Loose Ankles (dir. Ted Wilde, 1930). Ann, an heiress (Loretta Young, then seventeen at the most), is set to inherit a fortune, so long as she avoids scandal and marries someone of whom her priggish aunts approve. Ann isn’t having it and gets a man (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) with whom to create a scandal. Mayhem follows. Best moments: the drunken aunts in the company of two gigolos in the Circus Café. ★★★ (YT)

*

[Here’s “Loose Ankles”, by Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy. Arrangement by Mary Lou Williams.]

*

The Irishman (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2019). I had avoided this movie because of its length (three and a half hours) and the use of CGI to deage the actors, but I gave in, and am happy to have done so. The real Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), who is here a Zelig-like presence in one crime scenario after another, was likely a bit player who created a grandiose past for himself, but that past makes for a compelling story. Funny and chilling, and the violence is blessedly brief. With Joe Pesci as a minor mob boss and Al Pacino as a hilariously unhinged Jimmy Hoffa. ★★★★ (N)

*

Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere (dir. Adrian Choa, 2026). Exactly what it sounds like: interviews with prominent influencers in the so-called manosphere. Their female partners are either silent or seemingly complicit; their male followers (one of whom spent time living in his car) appear sadly deluded about their own prospects for success. Theroux: “It struck me that the matrix [the influencers] rail against more accurately describes the algorithmic prison they’ve created for their followers, an illusion of wealth and power that actually only enriches a few at the top.” So many deluded men and women on display here. ★★★★ (N)

*

The Devil’s Mask (dir. Henry Levin, 1946). When I realized that we were watching a film in the I Love a Mystery series, I knew that we were in for a waste of time. The plot, concerning shrunken heads and a missing or murdered explorer/scientist, is preposterous, with nearly every character a suspect. Beautiful compositions in light and dark, reminiscent of Cat People, provide some redeeming value (the cinematographer here, Henry Freulich, is unknown to me). As a fan from childhood of Clifford Hicks’s Alvin’s Secret Code, I did like seeing a scytale carry the day. ★★ (YT)

*

Mr. Nobody Against Putin (dir. David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin, 2025). In the grim industrial town of Karabash (UNESCO calls it the most toxic place on earth), Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, videographer and events coordinator for a primary school, begins to document the transformation of curriculum and school culture as the “special military operation” against Ukraine takes shape. Teachers and students read from government-prepared scripts as Talankin documents it all for the regime and, sometimes, asks for retakes (a teacher stumbles over the Russian for “demilitarization,” and Talankin advises her to skip it and just say “denazification”). Most chilling scenes: the history teacher who speaks of his admiration for Stalin’s henchmen, and the Wagner mercenaries doing a presentation for the children about mines and weapons, followed by marching and shooting practice and grenade-throwing contests, all as former students are dying in Ukraine. Talankin is now somewhere in Europe, and the footage he was able to take out of Russia speaks an urgent message to those of us who wonder what one person might do in the face of fascism. ★★★★ (A)

*

The Booksellers (dir. D.W. Young, 2019). A documentary about the world of buying, selling, and collecting rare books. I realized at some point that the movie is structured like a bookstore: you just move from one topic (one shelf or one book) to another, but the randomness is hardly a problem; rather, it offers the joy of browsing. But there’s relatively little here about the joy of reading. One problem with watching this movie on Amazon Prime: you can’t hit Pause to the read the titles on spines without an advertisement taking over the screen (thanks, Jeff). ★★★ (A)

*

Erin Brockovich (dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2000). Nevertheless, she persisted. The title character (Julia Roberts), an unemployed woman with three children and considerable grit, talks her way into a clerical position at a law firm and ends up the prime mover in a multi-family multimillion-dollar case against rampant polluter Pacific Gas and Electric Company. The most interesting scenes are those that show American class distinctions at work: Erin facing down dowdy coworkers and a power-suited PG&E lawyer, Erin’s boss (Albert Finney) agreeing to stay around and have coffee and cake with a family that’s signed on to the complaint. The story is so inspiring that I can’t imagine anyone new to it taking it as fiction: it’s too good not to be true. ★★★★ (N)

*

Up the Down Staircase (dir. Robert Mulligan, 1967). We were reading A Tale of Two Cities, so we wanted to watch the scene in which Miss Barrett’s class engages in vigorous discussion of the best of times, the worst of times. And we ended up watching the whole movie again. Sandy Dennis shines as a rookie teacher who persists. Three of the teenagers who add a lot to the movie (and went on to appear in virtually nothing else): Lew Wallach (Lew), Ellen O’Mara (Alice), and Jose Rodriguez (Jose). ★★★★ (TCM)

[More sentences, from 2018, 2020, and 2023.]

*

The Others (dir. Alejandro Amenábar, 2001). Post-WWII, Grace (Nicole Kidman), whose husband went off to war, lives in a dark mansion on the island of Jersey with her two young photosensitive children and a newly arrived trio of housekeeper, mute maid, and gardener. One might say that there’s a ghost story just waiting to happen here. And there is, with strong overtones of The Turn of the Screw. But this story veers off in a different, even scarier direction. ★★★★ (CC)

*

We Were Strangers (dir. John Huston, 1949). Cuba, 1933, as a band of revolutionaries led by Tony Fenner (John Garfield) labor on an extravagant plot to bring down the regime of the dictator Gerardo Machado. The movie is short on suspense and long on scenes of conversation among the dirty, sweaty revolutionaries (whose plot requires the digging of a long tunnel). And there’s little chemistry between Garfield and Jennifer Jones, who plays the sister of a slain revolutionary. One unexpected element: an opportunity to see Ramon Novarro late in his career. ★★ (YT)

*

Street Girl (dir. Wesley Ruggles, 1929). A sweet pre-Code story, with homeless immigrant violinist Freddie Joyzelle (Betty Compson) finding a home with and doing housekeeping for The Four Seasons, a jazz band (Elaine immediately caught the Snow White connection). With Freddie’s help the band lands a gig in the swankiest restaurant in town. Compson is a fine comic actor and capable musician (though her playing here is dubbed); Jack Oakie (Joe Spring) and Ned Sparks (Happy Winter) are the faces I recognize among the Seasons. There’s considerable joy in the musical performances (see Jack Oakie dance!), with tunes credited to Oscar Levant and Sidney Clare, and there’s even a prince to complicate Freddie’s growing romance with Season Mike Fall (John Harron). ★★★★ (TCM)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, DVD, Netflix, TCM, YouTube.]

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (dir. Tim Burton, 1985). I was surprised, having never seen it, that it’s less transgressive than Pee-wee’s Playhouse, but I suppose that’s because the movie came first. It’s silly fun, with Paul Reubens as a man-child whose quest to recover his stolen bicycle takes him to the Alamo, a rodeo, a biker bar (home of Satan’s Helpers), and a movie studio. My favorite bits: breakfast à la Rube Goldberg, “Tequila” à la Pee-wee. With Milton Berle, James Brolin, Morgan Fairchild, Ed Herlihy (from the world of newsreels), Prof. Toru Tanaka (the professional wrestler), and many more. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Voice in the Mirror (dir. Harry Keller, 1958). Richard Egan stars as Jim Burton, a commercial artist and, since the death of his daughter, a deeply invested alcoholic. Though the movie never mentions Alcoholics Anonymous, the story is more or less a version of how that group began: with Burton and Bill Tobin (Arthur O’Connell) helping each other and, later, others. Julie London is Ellen Burton, a long-suffering and infinitely patient wife (and wage-earner); Walter Matthau is a doctor skeptical about what Jim’s chances of success. Strong atmospherics: real streets and bars, and what looks like a real and really grim apartment. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Man on a Tightrope (dir. Elia Kazan, 1953). “It’s one of two things: it’s the end for us, or it’s the beginning”: so says a circus master in Communist Czechoslovakia as he schemes his troupe’s way to freedom. Fredric March is Karel Černík, the circus master; Gloria Grahame is his indolent wife; and many circus folk play versions of themselves. Things sometimes get a little too contrived, a little too corny, but the fear and suspicion that permeate life in a police state are chillingly on display, and the grim black-and-white cinematography makes this movie feel unmistakably European, or at least not American. With Paul Hartman (Mayberry’s Emmett Clark), Pat Henning (Kayo Dugan of On the Waterfront) Adolphe Menjou, and Terry Moore (Marie of Come Back, Little Sheba). ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Gentlemen’s Agreement (dir. Elia Kazan, 1947). Philip Green (Gregory Peck), a writer asked to write an magazine exposé of antisemitism in America, decides that the only way to do so is to pretend he’s Jewish and experience discrimination firsthand — which he does, though it’s always of a genteel, mannerly variety. The movie leaves antisemitism as something to be fought with individual acts of conscience: speaking up when someone says something offensive, making a call to ensure that a landlord or employer doesn’t discriminate. Running through the movie is a love story that joins — it’s no spoiler — Peck and Dorothy McGuire, but I think Celeste Holm’s witty Anne Dettrey would be a much more interesting partner. Screenplay by Moss Hart, and also starring John Garfield, June Havoc, Anne Revere, a young Dean Stockwell, and Jane Wyatt. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Greatest Night in Pop (dir. Bao Nguyen, 2024). Well, maybe — I think that the Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show is a worthy contender. But this documentary is about a night, literally, the one during which “We Are the World” was recorded, a night stretching into the small hours of the morning. The song has never impressed me (“We’re saving our own lives”?), and the documentary is more than a bit self-congratulatory, but the details of how the project came together are endlessly fascinating. For instance: Stevie Wonder taught a helpless Bob Dylan how to sing his line, and Prince wrote a song about his non-participation: “Hello.” ★★★★ (N)

*

The Whole Gritty City (dir. Richard Barber and Andre Lambertson, 2013). Made in New Orleans: a documentary following the directors and student-musicians of three marching bands as they prepare for Mardi Gras. There’s childhood humor — two boys arguing about whether one of them can march for 29,000 hours; adolescent determination — a drum major giving his all for a dead teacher (killed in a drive-by shooting); and adult sorrow — a teacher, perhaps forty, who is now the only surviving member of a circle of eight friends: “I’m the last one living.” Running through the movie is a dedication to the joy of music despite all odds. But as you watch, you wonder what might be about to happen every time a car comes down the street. ★★★★ (DVD)

[I borrowed a DVD from a library, but the movie can be found onYouTube, free with ads.]

*

Island of Doomed Men (dir. Charles Barton, 1940). Peter Lorre plays a crazy man: Stephen Danel, the sadistic, ethnically ambiguous, vaguely gay owner of Dead Man’s Island, who purportedly gives jobs to paroled cons but in truth uses them as slave labor. Danel and his wife Lorraine (Rochelle Hudson) live on the island, in a house surrounded by an electric fence — Lorraine too is a prisoner. Things begin to change when “John Smith” (Robert Wilcox) shows up: he’s a wrongfully convicted, now paroled undercover agent (Agent 64) whose recommenced assignment is to smash Danel’s operation. Nagging question: If the authorities already know what Danel is up to, why send one person to infiltrate the island to begin with? ★★ (YT)

*

The Miami Story (dir. Fred F. Sears, 1954). The improbable premise: when Miami is overrun with mob activity, city council members tap a former gangster (Barry Sullivan) to clean things up by pretending to move in on the established rackets. While so doing, our hero also finds time to pursue a romance with a crime boss’s girlfriend’s sister (Beverly Garland, later of My Three Sons). Sullivan gets top billing, but it’s Luther Adler’s movie: as the head of the rackets, he is all brutality, with a girlfriend (Adele Jergens) who’s equally tough. A crime story told in the always appealing semi-documentary style, complete with an introductory talk by a Florida senator. ★★★ (YT)

*

Main Street After Dark (dir. Edward L. Cahn, 1945). A blue star hangs in the window, a mother knits, and a telegram arrives, with the news that a son is coming home — but from prison, not from the war. And when that mother listens to the police radio as she knits, you know you’re in for a darkly funny movie. This one’s about a small-time crime family, led by Ma Dibson (Selena Royle), preying on servicemen in a city’s nightspots. Edward Arnold is a delight as a police lieutenant who, like Porfiry Petrovich, is always showing up; Dan Duryea as Posey Dibson (Posey!) and Audrey Totter as Jessie Belle Dibson are two of Ma’s surly minions. ★★★ (YT)

*

The Houston Story (dir. William Castle, 1956). They were never going to run out of cities: here the crime is a plot to siphon oil from wells and sell it to shady distributors. We wanted to watch this one for Edward Arnold. and his performance as a second-tier crime boss satisfies — shifty eyes, sudden outbursts. But much of this movie remained a muddle, with a leading man and antagonist (Gene Barry and Paul Richards) who looked too damn similar. Adding value: Barbara Hale as a platinum-blonde singing “Put the Blame on Mame.” ★★ (YT)

*

The Barber of Little Rock (dir. John Hoffman and Christine Turner, 2023). A short Oscar-nominated documentary about the good works of Arlo Washington, a young Black Little Rock barber who created a barber school and People Trust, a 501c3 financial institution making small loans to community members. It is the only financial institution on its side of the interstate that divides the city, a point that makes the filmmakers’ larger point about the wealth gap between Black and white Americans. I was moved by the scenes in which residents explain their need for a loan and what what they hope to accomplish with the money. And then we see a mechanic working in his own shop, a beautician walking into her own salon. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Ministry of Fear (dir. Fritz Lang, 1944). From a Graham Greene novel, starring Ray Milland as a man who stops by a village fête, walks away with a cake that was meant for someone else, and finds himself in big trouble. An excellent noirish thriller, with a séance, spies, a great scene on a train, and strong overtones of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. This film makes conspicuous use of doors — one after another, each opening onto new trouble. My favorite moments: the man crumbling cake, Martha Penteel’s doorbell, light shining through a bullet hole. (These sentences mostly borrowed from a 2017 post.) ★★★★ (CC)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, Netflix, TCM, YouTube.]

Perfect Strangers (dir. Bretaigne Windust, 1950). It’s like Brief Encounter meets jury duty, with two members of a sequestered jury (Dennis Morgan and Ginger Rogers) falling in love, but those lackluster two aren’t a reason to watch the movie. The supporting cast is, especially Harry Bellaver as a genial bailiff, Margalo Gillmore as an old snob, Thelma Ritter as a wisenheimer, and Anthony Ross as a weird lecher. Brief appearances by George Chandler (Uncle Petrie from Lassie) are a bonus. One more reason to watch: a demonstration of the arcane procedure of selecting citizens to call for jury duty, which adds a semi-documentary flavor to the opening. ★★★ (TCM).

*

Jigsaw (dir. Fletcher Markle, 1949). Franchot Tone plays a DA investigating the Crusaders, a murderous hate group recruiting followers in the big city. A glimpse of the uniformed members, a sample of their rhetoric, would have done much to make the threat vivid. Instead we get the DA and others talking about the group and the danger they represent. The one unusual thing about this movie is the parade of cameos by actors with progressive leanings: Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, John Garfield, Marsha Hunt, Burgess Meredith, Everett Sloane. ★★ (YT)

*

The Crooked Way (dir. Robert Florey, 1949). Eddie Rice (John Payne) is just out of the hospital, a veteran with a permanent case of amnesia, but he comes to understand that he used to be Eddie Riccardi, a Los Angeles hoodlum. And a feral criminal enemy, Vince Alexander (Sonny Tufts), wants revenge. The story is sloppy: one must wonder why Vince doesn’t just have his goons make Eddie disappear. John Alton’s cinematography is the reason to watch: to borrow a phrase I invented to describe the work of another cinematographer, it’s a delirium of shadows. ★★★ (YT)

*

All Fall Down (dir. John Frankenheimer, 1962). Willart family values: a alcoholic father (Karl Malden), a mother (Angela Lansbury) whose desire for her older son is more than implied, that son (Warren Beatty), amoral, manipulative, often absent, and a cheerful, naive younger son (Brandon De Wilde) whose misconceived admiration for his big brother is boundless. Into the Willart world steps a friend’s self-described “old maid” daughter, Echo O’Brien (Eva Marie Saint), and everything goes even more haywire. A great performance from Saint, and a good one from De Wilde, but the movie is a painfully contrived mess: you know that the father is forever calling his older son “you old rhinoceros” just so that he can later say the guy’s a real rhinoceros — that is, a killer. The most unbearable thing about the movie: Beatty’s character is named Berry-Berry (like the disease, get it?), and that name is repeated over and over, with never no explanation, Berry-Berry. ★★ (TCM)

*

Armageddon Time (dir. James Gray, 2022). Circa 1980: two Queens sixth-graders, Paul (Banks Repeta) and Johnny (Jaylin Webb), the one white, Jewish, and moderately well off, the other Black and poor, strike up a friendship born of alienation and snark. The kids are wise in some ways, heartbreakingly naive in others, and their friendship is threatened by realities outside their control. With rotten teachers, inadequate parents (Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong), a wise grandfather (Anthony Hopkins), strange overtones of Huck and Jim, and a surprise appearance by Fred Trump (John Diehl). Low-key and compelling, and the best new movie I’ve seen in a long time. ★★★★ (N)

*

Nora Prentiss (dir. Voncent Sherman, 1947). High melodrama and noir, with Kent Smith as restless, married Richard Talbot, physician, and Ann Sheridan as Nora Prentiss, a nightclub singer. A chance meeting leads to an affair. So far it’s melodrama, but when Dr. Talbot is presented with the opportunity to escape his home life, the noir kicks in. Another great film from a year of wonders. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Highway 301 (dir. Andrew Stone, 1950). It’s a sad day when a movie opens with three real-life governors warning the viewer not to follow the path of the Tri-State Gang, a murderous outfit that operated in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia in the early 1930s, robbing banks, mail trucks, and military arsenals, and murdering with impunity. It’s Steve Cochran’s movie: he’s George Legenza, the leader of the gang, a psychopath who kills anyone who might complicate his work. What gives the movie greater interest: it’s a story of criminals and their wives and girlfriends, with the women — notably Virginia Grey — standing by their men, or not. Best scene: Legenza hunts Lee (Gaby Andre). ★★★★ (TCM)

*

From the Criterion Channel: Douglas Sirk Rarities

Thunder on the Hill (1951). The premise is wild: the rains have flooded Norwich and washed out a bridge, so Valerie Cairns (Ann Blyth), a murderer traveling to her execution, becomes a guest in a convent, along with her chaperones and numerous townsfolk. When a kindly, luminous nun, Sister Mary Bonaventure (Claudette Colbert), becomes convinced of Valerie’s innocence, the story begins to move. Supporting characters include the town doctor (Robert Douglas) and an addled handyman (Michael Pate). Great cinematography by William H. Daniels, with a powerful scene that must have influenced Hitchcock’s Vertigo. ★★★★

All I Desire (1953). Barbara Stanwyck plays Naomi Murdoch, a bottom-of-the-card turn-of-the-century vaudevillian who returns to her small-town husband and children after ten years on the road to see her daughter act in the senior play. The family thinks she’s a great success, but as she will tell them, “I’ve got no glory, no glamour, and bruises on my illusions.” It turns out that you can go home again, but not without facing the past you thought you’d left behind. With Richard Carlson, Marcia Henderson, Lori Nelson, and a sinister Lyle Bettger. ★★★★

The Tarnished Angels (1957). From the William Faulkner novel Pylon. It’s the Depression (though it looks like the 1950s), with air ace turned stunt pilot Robert Shumann (Robert Stack), his ill-treated parachutist wife LaVerne (Dorothy Malone), his maybe-son Jack (Christopher Olsen) his mechanic Jiggs (Jack Carson), and an alcoholic newspaperman, Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson), who’s come in search of human interest and to find out what became of Shumann. Some scenes of dangerous aviation, but the movie is a character study, with a strong contrast between Shumann’s coarse amorality (he married LaVerne on a roll of the dice) and Devlin’s gentleness. The first things Devlin does: he stops some young bullies and buys bullied Jack an ice cream cone. ★★★★

*

The Illusionist (dir. Neil Burger, 2006). It’s from Steven Millhauser’s story “Eisenheim the Illusionist,” so I wanted to love this movie without reservation. But it turns Millhauser’s story of an ascetic uber-magician into a story of imperial intrigue (Rufus Sewell as Crown Prince Leopold), cat-and-mouse with the law (Paul Giamatti as Inspector Uhl), and love (Jessica Biel as Sophie). And all the effects that are better left on the page, for a reader’s imagination to make real, are here the work of CGI. I’m adding a star for the wildly inventive ending. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Wittgenstein (dir. Derek Jarman, 1993). I realized as I watched that I had tried once before — years ago — and had given up. Karl Johnson bears an eerie resemblance to Ludwig Wittgenstein, but that’s about all I found to like about this movie, which to my mind presents a Wittgenstein without interiority, without thinking, a farcical figure making pronouncements and being met with bewilderment or sudden enlightenment (students) or amused condescension (Michael Gough as Bertrand Russell). Factoids from Norman Malcolm’s memoir — e.g., Wittgenstein the Betty Hutton and Carmen Miranda fan — are here in abundance, in one blackout scene after another. There is also a green Martian. ★ (CC)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

“Poor Moon”

Oh well, they might test some bomb
Oh well, and scar your skin
Oh well, I don’t think they care
So I wonder when they’re going to destroy your face

Alan Wilson’s 1969 song turns out to have been prophetic. You can listen to Canned Heat perform “Poor Moon” via YouTube. The song was released on July 15, 1969, one day before the Apollo 11 launch.

For the blues fanatics among us: “Poor Moon” borrows from Garfield Akers’ “Dough Roller Blues” and Blind Willie Johnson’s “Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed.”

[On October 9, 2009, NASA bombed the moon.]

Hi and Lois watch

Credit where it's due: Hi and Lois has had a three-day streak of fine cartooning. It's difficult to think that the hand behind March 1, 2, and 3 is the hand that drew, say, this February 26 strip — with trick door, lengthening curtains, and shifty muntins.

[Update: It's a four-day streak.]

[Update: The streak is over. Yes, there's an inexplicable slab behind Trixie's thought balloon today. But worse than that: Hi and Lois seems to have turned into Garfield.]

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