Twelve movies

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

I Walk Alone (dir. Byron Haskin, 1947). “Don’t worry about me, Kay — I just got out of prison, not college”: Frankie Madison (Burt Lancaster) just did fourteen years, and he’s come back to Manhattan to get the half-of-everything that his partner in crime Noll Turner (Kirk Douglas) promised him. The problem is that Noll (aka Dink) isn’t okay with that, and Frankie’s pal Dave (Wendell Corey), now Noll’s accountant, is in a tough spot, wanting to do right by Frankie, but in thrall to the boss. And then there’s Kay Lawrence (Lizabeth Scott), a singer and pianist “mentored” by Noll, who feels her loyalties shifting. A solid film noir that becomes surprisingly brutal in its final scenes, and another movie from what seems to be our household’s favorite year in movies. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Lydia (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1941). Merle Oberon stars as Lydia MacMillan, a wealthy woman, founder of an orphanage, never married, reunited in old age (excellent makeup) and in flashbacks with her suitors: a doctor (Joseph Cotten), a football hero (George Reeves), an acclaimed pianist (Hans Jaray), and a seafarer (Alan Marshal). There’s something Stefan Zweig-like about this story — a love story, yes, but ultimately a parable about self-knowledge. But you have to be willing to get past some over-the-top dialogue (by Ben Hecht and Samuel Hoffenstein). To wit: “This love, love that’s part of the hot sun and the salt water, it’s like a feast that leaves you hungrier than a winter wolf.” ★★★★ (CC)

*

Deathtrap (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1982). Well, it was there, on what is now known as Live TV, so we set it to record, watched from the last half hour or so, and went back to the beginning. Clever fun, with one surprise after another. Michael Caine is a playwright with a new flop to his credit; Dyan Cannon, his fragile wife; Christopher Reeve, his promising student; Irene Worth, the psychic next door. If you haven’t watched it for many years, it’s unlikely that you’ll remember all the tricks. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Good Sam (dir. Leo McCarey, 1948). Gary Cooper and Ann Sheridan star as Sam and Lu Clayton: he, a department-store manager and friend to all in need; she, a put-upon homemaker who finds her husband’s charity to all comers erasing their family’s hope for a better future (spoiler: he’s secretly given away the money they’d been saving toward a house). It’s a poor man’s It’s a Wonderful Life (no pun intended), complete with an ending in which money makes everything okay. Hard to understand how the director responsible for Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) could be responsible for this awkward, unfunny comedy. I’m not surprised to see that it appeared on the The New York Times list (December 26, 1948) of the ten worst movies of the year. ★★ (YT)

*

The Dark Man (dir. Jeffrey Dell, 1951). Molly (Natasha Perry), an actor cycling to work at a provincial theater, hears gunshots and sees a tall man in a dark trenchcoat (Maxwell Reed) in a field — and now her life is in danger. A distinct Hitchcock flavor here, but also some dumb plot points. A greater flaw: a marked absence of characterization and an unconvincing instant romance between Molly and the craggy detective inspector (Edward Underwood) assigned to the case. Adding interest: the manhunt on an artillery range. ★★★ (YT)

*

The Man Who Talked Too Much (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1940). It turned out that we had seen the 1955 remake Illegal, with Edward G. Robinson and Nina Foch. Here George Brent stars as Steven M. Forbes, a prosecutor who goes into private practice (with Virginia Bruce as his secretary Joan Reed) after sending an innocent man to the chair. Forbes’s few clients pay him in apples and cheese, but his showmanship in the courtroom draws the interest of gangsters, and he soon goes over to the dark side, making real money while hiding evidence that would convict a murderer. As his kid brother John L. (William Lundigan) tells him, “You’re not a criminal lawyer, Steve; you’re a lawyer criminal” — and the mob then sets up John L. to take the blame for a murder. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Wait for Your Laugh (dir. Jason Wise, 2017). An affectionate documentary about Rose Marie (1923–2017), a radio and vaudeville star at the age of three, a performer on records and film not long after, a nightclub entertainer in adulthood, an actor who achieved her greatest fame as Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show and became a regular on The Hollywood Squares. Here Rose Marie talks at length about her childhood, her brushes with the underworld in Chicago and Las Vegas (Al Capone was “Uncle Al”), her blissful but short-lived marriage, and the frustrations of TDVDS (she thought that the emphasis was always going to be on the writers) and 4 Girls 4 (spoiler: no one liked Helen O’Connell). Saddest line: “Nobody does a good act anymore,” evoking a lost world of showbiz, when an act was a blend of patter, jokes, song, and dance. With commentary from Peter Marshall, Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke and others. ★★★★ (A)

[Rose Marie’s early film efforts surface here and there on YouTube, but archive.org has all her early recordings.]

*

Tomorrow Is Forever (dir. Irving Pichel, 1946). Orson Welles and Claudette Colbert star in a story of the sorrows of war: he, John Andrew MacDonald, goes off to fight in the Great War; she, his wife Elizabeth, receives news of his death, discovers that she’s pregnant, and marries Lawrence Hamilton (George Brent), who becomes a happy stepfather. But John wasn’t killed: he was wounded, so badly that he needed facial reconstruction, though there’s also a strong implication that his wound is something like that of Hemingway’s Jake Barnes. When John returns to the States after twenty years as an Austrian scientist with a new name, he cannot bring himself to let Elizabeth know his true identity — or is his earlier self still his true identity? A grim, grim movie: imagine Odysseus coming back and never letting Penelope know who he is. ★★★ (A)

*

A Dispatch from Reuters (William Dieterle, 1940). Yes, there was a Reuter, Julius Reuter (Edward G. Robinson), whose name is here often pronounced “Rooter” for comic effect. Reuter begins with a carrier pigeon service, beating the mail at carrying messages and news reports. And then of course comes the telegraph. Sad to say, it’s a dull movie, whose main moment of drama is the death of a pigeon (electrocuted by a telegraph wire) — at least until Abraham Lincoln is assassinated, and the race to be first with the news is on. ★★ (TCM)

*

Kind Lady (dir. John Sturges, 1951). Mary Herries (Ethel Barrymore) is the kind, wealthy, forthright, art-loving, widowed or never married lady who opens her door to Henry Elcott (Maurice Evans), a struggling (natch) painter. And before long Henry and his criminal associates (Betsy Blair, Angela Lansbury, and Keenan Wynn) begin to sell off the house’s furniture and paintings while Mary and her maid are locked up in bedrooms. Henry is a monstrous piece of work, cheerfully calling Mary “Aunt Mary” and dominating his wife (Blair), who seems more like a member of a tiny cult than a spouse. But Mary is a tough cookie, and though I don’t know enough to judge whether this movie is Ethel Barrymore’s finest hour, I will nevertheless say that it is. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Kind Lady (dir. George B. Seitz, 1935). It turned out that we had seen a remake of a movie adapted from a play (by Edward Chodorov) that was itself adapted from a short story (by Hugh Walpole). Here Mary Herries (Aline MacMahon) is a much younger woman who seems susceptible to the charms of the dashing painter Henry Abbott (Basil Rathbone), who’s not nearly as menacing as Maurice Evans’s Henry Elcott. And MacMahon plays a character not nearly as resourceful as Ethel Barrymore’s Mary. Now I wonder which movie was more faithful to its sources. ★★ (IA)

*

Big City (dir. Frank Borzage, 1937). This movie seems at odds with itself: it’s a proletarian drama of independent cab drivers fighting the thugs trying to put them out of business (there’s a bombing, a murder, and a threat of deportation), but there’s also plenty of sexy comedy, a scene in which a cabbie drinks an entire bottle of milk, and a battle royal of cabbies and banquet guests that pulls the movie into absurdity. Spencer Tracy and Luise Rainer star as Joe and Anna Benton, a New York City cab driver and his incredibly chic wife. The most unusual element in this movie: the banquet guests include Jack Dempsey, Jim Jeffries, Jim Thorpe, and other athletic greats (Wikipedia has them all). ★★★ (TCM)

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

Joe Negri (1926–2026)

Joe Negri, master guitarist and pretend handyman, has died at the age of ninety-nine. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an obituary.

Here’s Joe Negri playing “Here’s That Rainy Day.”

A tea room, and more

[40-11 Queens Boulevard, Sunnyside, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Still in Queens, one of the two boroughs I know least well. (Staten Island is the other). And once again on Queens Boulevard, to visit not a diner but a tea room. I thought that I might find some trace of the Frances Constance Tea Room online — a listing in a restaurant directory, a matchbook for sale at eBay — but I found nothing more than a listing in the 1940 telephone directory. I did find a plausible explanation of the term “tea room.” From John Ferrell’s Mary Mac’s Tea Room: 65 Years of Recipes from Atlanta’s Favorite Dining Room (2010):

It wasn’t uncommon for widows to open tea rooms and serve the food Southern women knew how to cook best. They called their establishments “tea rooms,” rather than using the more pedestrian-sounding “restaurant,” as a way of making the business seem instantly respectable.

If you click for big, you’ll see that the Frances Constance Tea Room was a purveyor of southern cooking in Queens.

Jane Jacobs, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), would have looked favorably on this block of Queens Boulevard. From the corner on down, it offers a Mayflower Coffee Shop, an insurance agency for apartments and stores, a candy store, a florist, a cleaners, a barber shop (notice the cash register), the tea room, a bowling and billiards establishment, a shoe-repair shop, and a real-estate agency, followed by apartment buildings. Mixed use! The Jacobs ideal would likely include second-story apartments, a hardware store, and a locksmith, but this block pretty well fits her model for city life. (Jacobs and her family lived above a Greenwich Village candy store.)

I wonder: is that man in the doorway hangry? Has he smelled the aroma of fried chicken wafting through the open door of the Frances Constance Tea Room? Or is he scowling at the coat-and-tie boys taking pictures instead of doing a man’s work? But if it is man’s work, why the apron?

That man might be hangrier today: in April 2026, Google Maps showed this block as a block of food.


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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by David P. Williams, is just right. But I have no time to write it up this morning. (Too much fun.)

One of many clue-and-answer pairs I admired: 33-D, eight letters, “Stall of a sort.” No spoiler here; the answer is in the comments.

Wherever you go, there they are

[Snapped while walking with an old phone repurposed as a podcaster. Click for a larger view.]

“FOR ERRATIC DRIVING”

As seen on the back of a school mini-bus: FOR ERRATIC DRIVING CALL, followed by a number. Thanks, but I already see enough of that.

Oh, that guy

If you need more reasons not to watch CBS, The New York Times has several (gift link):

In a bid to remake the country’s top-rated news program, Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, on Thursday unveiled an overhaul of 60 Minutes , replacing the show’s executive producer with a tech journalist and firing two of its on-air correspondents.

Ms. Weiss named Nick Bilton, a former New York Times technology columnist and a filmmaker who has directed and produced documentaries for HBO and Netflix, as her pick to lead the 58-year-old Sunday show. Mr. Bilton, who has never worked in traditional broadcast news, will replace Tanya Simon, who had been at the show for more than three decades.

CBS News also fired Cecilia Vega, the program’s first Latina correspondent, and Sharyn Alfonsi, whose segment on torture in Salvadoran prisons was pulled off the air abruptly last year by Ms. Weiss, who requested more reporting. It aired in full at a later date. Draggan Mihailovich, the executive editor of 60 Minutes , was also fired, as was Matthew Polevoy, a senior producer.

The name Nick Bilton sounded familiar, and I figured out why: I noticed the name in 2013, when Bilton wrote a piece for the Times about digital etiquette. In it, he said that he didn’t like getting thank-you e-mails and that people should should use Google Maps rather than ask for directions. He said that he and his mother communicated “mostly through Twitter” and that his father learned a “lesson” after leaving a dozen voice mails for his son that went unheard. I had some thoughts about that column.

In 2014, Bilton wrote a piece announcing that the pen was dead, having been replaced by the finger. I had some thoughts about that column too. I’ll quote myself: “I guess Nick Bilton doesn’t believe in thank-you notes either. Or love letters.”

Recently updated

“Don’t start none, won’t be none”: Now with an earlier formulation by the Harlem Hamfats.

Saw-pits, top dogs, and underdogs

In the penultimate chapter of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1853), “two young ladies are occasionally found gambolling in sequestered saw-pits and such nooks of the park.” Saw-pits? Huh? The Oxford English Dictionary explains:

An excavation in the ground, over the mouth of which a framework is erected on which timber is placed to be sawn with a long two-handled saw by two men, the one standing in the pit and the other on a raised platform.

The first citation is from 1408, where the word is spelled sawpytt. Wikipedia has a photograph of a saw-pit, or sawpit, or saw pit in action.

Talk about fortuitous reading: Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (1989) contains a passing reference (in a footnote about the use-mention distinction) to Dudley Do-Right’s faithful dog Faithful Dog. That reference made me wonder about the origin of underdog. And it so happens that folkloric etymology has it that top dog and underdog refer to the two sawyers of a saw-pit, with the sawyer down below, the underdog, being showered with the top dog’s sawdust. But there’s no evidence to support that claim.

Instead, think dog fighting (ugh). The OED defines top dog as “the dog with the best chance of winning a fight; the dominant dog in a fight.” First citation: 1847. And underdog: “the beaten dog in a fight; figurative the party overcome or worsted in a contest; one who is in a state of inferiority or subjection.”

Elaine and I both think that I’m part-beagle. No wonder I’m always going down rabbit holes.

Also from Bleak House
At Peffer and Snagsby’s : Bucket’s Moleskine? : Dickens in the house : Five sentences : Gridley’s monologue : “It must be a strange state” : Jellyby closets : Learning to write : Living on credit : “London particular” : Not quite teleportation : Reading don’t pay : “Town-talk”

A law-writer’s hand

[From Bleak House (dir. Justin Chadwick and Susanna White, 2005. Click for a much larger view.]

It’s yet another legal document in the endless case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

The 2005 BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House is exceedingly terrific. And speaking of Bleak House : is there another novel that so hinges on matters of handwriting and literacy?

Related reading
All OCA Bleak House posts

[I think 2005 is superior to the BBC’s 1985 adapatation. Both are streaming at Amazon Prime.]