Clark Terry’s Lifetime Achievement Award

Trumpeter and flugelhornist Clark Terry is one of seven musicians receiving Lifetime Achievement Awards today from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. The other honorees: Leonard Cohen, Bobby Darin, David “Honeyboy” Edwards, Michael Jackson, Loretta Lynn, and André Previn.

I was lucky to do a radio interview with Clark Terry some years ago, when I was putting in two hours a week playing jazz at my university’s FM station. (The station then aired four hours of classical music and five hours of jazz a day, with bluegrass, blues, hip-hop, indie rock, and reggae in the evenings. Now the station plays “hits.”) Clark was on campus to lead a workshop and perform, and had agreed to come over to the station in the afternoon for an interview. He and I talked for an hour on the air. I consider that hour one the most memorable experiences in my life: the opportunity to talk not only with a great musician but with a great Ellingtonian. It was a really good interview. The interviewer, as you might imagine, had done his homework.

The Grammy Awards air tomorrow night on CBS, 8:00 Eastern Time. I hope that the Lifetime Achievement awardees get more than just a perfunctory roll call. We’ll see.

Related reading
Clark Terry’s website
NARAS press release

Happy birthday, Clark Terry

Trumpeter and flugelhornist Clark Terry is 85 today. Happy birthday, Clark Terry.

I was lucky to talk with Clark at length some years back, when I did an hour-long interview with him on the FM station at my university. It was a high point in my life -- the chance to ask questions of a great musician and Ellingtonian.

You can learn more about Clark Terry and see his touring schedule at his website: clarkterry.com.

From Clark Terry’s address book

Two pages from Clark Terry’s address book. I like that the D s begin with Duke. Thanks, Ezra.

In 1989 I had the good fortune to do a one-hour interview with Clark Terry on my university’s FM station. He was here to play a concert. A great musician, a genuine Ellingtonian, and a generous human being. Still one of the bright moments of my life.

Related reading
A handful of Clark Terry posts

Happy birthday, Clark Terry

Trumpeter and flugelhornist Clark Terry turns ninety today. Happy birthday, sir! Many years ago, I interviewed Clark on my university’s FM station. It was an honor to talk with a great musician and Ellingtonian.

This Riverwalk Jazz hour is a good introduction to Clark Terry’s music. If you listen, you’ll hear Duke Ellington introduce Clark as “beyond category.” Which he is. At Clark’s website, his wife Gwen reports what he’d like for his birthday: “More birthdays.”

Clark Terry (1920–2015)

Clark Terry has died at the age of ninety-four. The Washington Post has an obituary.

From YouTube, Clark Terry with Red Mitchell. And with the Oscar Peterson Trio. And with Elaine’s old friend Leo Wright.

*

The New York Times now has an obituary.

A related post
Keep On Keepin’ On

Keep On Keepin’ On

Keep On Keepin’ On (dir. Alan Hicks, 2014) is a documentary film about the friendship between the trumpeter Clark Terry and the pianist Justin Kauflin. When the story begins, Terry is eighty-nine; Kauflin, twenty-three. It’s a beautiful, unusual film, with much suffering (hospital bracelets and tubes and worse) but much more happiness. And much to think on about life and music and what Terry calls “the plateau of positivity.” My favorite moment: the socks.

As his website has announced, Clark Terry, now ninety-four, is in hospice care. I am sending good and grateful thoughts in his direction.

Clark Terry at the Grammys

Clark and Gwen Terry were visible for a few seconds at the Grammy Awards last night. Those seconds are at YouTube, at least for a little while. Do not be baffled by the clip’s title: Quentin Tarantino announces Clark’s Lifetime Achievement Award right before introducing Drake, Eminem, and Lil Wayne.

My characterization of last night’s telecast, or what I saw of it: Busby Berkeley meets Brave New World. In other words, music as hyper-technologized spectacle. I turned on the radio afterward to have some music while doing the dishes and heard Angela Hewitt’s recording of François Couperin’s Les langueurs tendres. It was the perfect Grammy antidote.

A related post
Clark Terry’s Lifetime Achievement Award

Keep On Keepin’ On

In The New York Times, the story of Keep On Keepin’ On (dir. Alan Hicks, 2014), a documentary about the friendship of the trumpeter and flugelhornist Clark Terry and the pianist Justin Kauflin: “A Rare Musical Mentorship, Captured With Heart and Soul.” Here’s the film’s website.

Many years ago I had the good fortune to interview Clark Terry for an hour on my university’s FM station. A Basie-ite. An Ellingtonian. A great musician, and a great man.

Answers

A pastrami Reuben. An L. L. Bean Timberline shirt, at least thirty-five years old, every edge frayed, good as an overshirt around the house in cold weather. Shark! Apples. Elly Ameling, John Ashbery, Fito de la Parra, Richard Goode, Milt Hinton, Stanley Lombardo, Trevor Pinnock, Larry Taylor, Clark Terry. Many things I’ll miss out on. Coffee brewing. Garbanzos cooking. Yes. Flat. Safari. “Lush Life.” 47. Reading, writing, walking, loving, caring.

*

I forgot one: My Dinner with André.

[Watching A Late Show last night prompted me to devise my own answers to the Colbert Questionert. Why not? I was startled when Seth Rogen answered “47,” because that’s our fambly number, for reasons that will remain in the fambly.]

Duke Ellington, The Conny Plank Session

[The back cover.]

Duke Ellington and His Orchestra. The Conny Plank Session (Grönland, 2015). Total time: 29:21.

The Conny Plank Session is the only Ellington release I know of to be named for a recording engineer. Conny Plank (1940–1987) was an acclaimed producer and engineer who would become known for his work with Brian Eno and and Kraftwerk, among other musicians. I don’t suspect an undiscovered Ellington–Plank affinity: my guess is that Plank just happened to be the engineer in the Cologne studio where Ellington was adding yet another session to the countless sessions that formed the stockpile — music recorded at his expense to test ideas and document work in progress. Suffice it to say that the band sounds great: bright, clear, rich, and well-balanced. The work of the piano player in particular has startling presence.¹

This session — two tunes, three takes each — gives us the Ellington band in July 1970. Or 1970 A. H., After Hodges, the alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, who had died on May 11. “Because of this great loss, our band will never sound the same,” Ellington wrote on that day. Yet the band continued, as ever, as a collection of idiosyncratic voices (who sometimes, it’s true, modeled themselves on earlier Ellingtonians). Wild Bill Davis was on board as organist: he had just appeared to great advantage (along with Hodges) on “Blues for New Orleans,” the opening section of Ellington’s New Orleans Suite. Fred Stone, trumpeter and flugelhornist, had played with Clark Terry-like fleetness on the Suite ’s “Aristocracy à la Jean Lafitte.” Norris Turney played a Hodges-like alto and was an important presence in the Suite as a flutist, the first band member to play flute on an Ellington recording (on “Bourbon Street Jingling Jollies”).² Davis, Stone, and Turney all have prominent parts in this session.

“Alerado,” by Wild Bill Davis, is the slighter of the two tunes here. It’s named for the record producer Alexandre Rado, who supervised the French RCA Integrale LP series of Ellington reissues. The tune is little more than its attractive chord changes, which evoke (strongly) the bridge of Rodgers and Hart’s “Blue Moon” and (less specifically) Dave Brubeck’s “The Duke.” Turney (flute, alto), Stone (flugelhorn), and Paul Gonsalves (tenor) solo briefly in what was likely designed as a concert showpiece for Davis.

Ellington never stopped listening: in his last official concert recording (Eastbourne, 1973), he was parodying the Art Ensemble of Chicago and other avant-gardists, giving the audience a taste of “the future” (as he derisively called it) with an atonal explosion that turned into “Basin Street Blues.” “Afrique,” a section of The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971), is a more genuine engagement with the new: it gives us the band playing on a single chord (B minor, of all things) in a latter-day version of the so-called “jungle music” that established Ellington in the ’20s. (“Chinoiserie,” another section of the Eclipse, is another late engagement with the new: particularly in a 1973 performance that gives us the Ellington band hitting “the one,” the defining element of James Brown’s funk.)

The 1971 “Afrique” (released on LP by Fantasy in 1975) is primarily a vehicle for piano, trombones, and reeds, with Russell Procope (clarinet), Harry Carney (baritone), Gonsalves, and Turney (alto) engaging in call and response. The three 1970 takes are markedly slower and more devoted to exploring the atmosphere established by Rufus Jones’s untiring drumming. They are tremendously exciting music. Trombones, organ, and Gonsalves’s tenor are the key elements here, with Ellington’s piano at its most percussive. The third take is one of the wildest Ellington recordings I’ve heard, with an unidentified singer who evokes Adelaide Hall’s growls (“Creole Love Call”) and Alice Babs’s soaring vocalise (“T. G. T. T.,” from the Second Sacred Concert ). The profane and the sacred, in one voice! I can only wonder what further treasures remain in the stockpile.

Grönland’s presentation of The Conny Plank Session is less than satisfactory. The musicians are identified in nothing more than a line of abbreviations reproduced from W. E. Timner’s Ellingtonia: The Recorded Music of Duke Ellington and His Sidemen (2007):


[Got that?]

The line is partly hidden behind the CD spindle, with some of its text barely readable. But for anyone with some prior knowledge and a little time at Google Books, it’s easy enough to put together the band:

Cat Anderson, Mercer Ellington, Fred Stone, Cootie Williams, Nelson Williams, trumpets, with Stone doubling (?) on flugelhorn

Chuck Connors, Malcolm Taylor, Booty Wood, trombones, with Connors on bass trombone

Harold Ashby, Harry Carney, Paul Gonsalves, Russell Procope, Norris Turney, reeds

Duke Ellington, piano; Wild Bill Davis, organ; Joe Benjamin, bass; Rufus Jones, drums

The liner notes identify the brass soloist on “Alerado” as Cat Anderson, but it must be Fred Stone: the instrument is flugelhorn, not trumpet, played with the same facility as on “Aristocracy à la Jean Lafitte.” NPR and other sources identify the singer on “Afrique” as Lena Junoff but offer no explanation.

Related listening, via YouTube
“Afrique” (1971)
“Chinoiserie” (1973)
“Creole Love Call” (1927)
“T. G. T. T.” (1968)

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)

¹ Why piano player and not pianist ? Because Ellington mock-deprecatingly referred to himself as “our piano player.”

² Harold Minerve would soon play flute and piccolo (and alto). The trombonist Art Baron played recorder in the Third Sacred Concert (1973). I used to write papers this way in grad school, adding little bits of extra detail in endnote after endnote.³

³ But HTML limits superscripts to 1 , 2 , and 3 .

Six degrees of Richard Nixon

Can you work out your six (or fewer) degrees of separation from Richard Nixon? Yes, that Richard Nixon. Comments from Normann on my post about syllabus week have moved me to pose this question.

My Nixon number is two. I have met bassist Milt Hinton and trumpeter Clark Terry, both of whom played at Duke Ellington’s seventieth-birthday party in the Nixon White House (1969). I have another link that is both more and less solid: as a student, I spent a summer proofreading at Rogers & Wells (cap rogers amp cap wells, in proofspeak). Rogers was William P. Rogers, Nixon’s first Secretary of State. I never met Rogers, though, and I’m not sure that he was ever in the building.

But again, can you work out your six (or fewer) degrees of separation from Richard Nixon? You’re welcome to show how in the comments.

Related reading at Wikipedia
Six degrees of separation
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
Erdős number

[Richard Nixon, in his first presidential debate with John F. Kennedy, September 26, 1960. Photograph (here cropped) by Paul Schutzer. From the Life Photo Archive.]

Review: The Duke Box 2

Duke Ellington. The Duke Box 2. 7 CDs + 1 DVD. Storyville Records. 2016.

Before I sat down to write about The Duke Box 2, I took count of my Ellington recordings: roughly 130 LPs and 120 CDs. Had I taken count before ordering this Storyville release, I might have had to ask whether I really need more Ellington recordings. But I didn’t take count. I’m always in the mood for more Ellington.

The Duke Box 2 contains 142 recordings made between 1952 and 1972, ranging in length from the fanfare-ish fragment “Cross Climax” (0:27) to the piano piece “Nagoya” (8:10). Three discs collect live recordings: radio broadcasts from Birdland (1952) and concert performances in Munich (1958) and Stockholm (1963). Four discs contain 1966–1972 studio performances from what Ellington called “the stockpile,” recordings made at his expense and which remained unreleased in his lifetime. The live recordings are generally of well-known material, sometimes given new form or coloring. The stockpile recordings are where the greater surprises are to be found.

The Birdland broadcasts give us the Ellington band not long after a grievous loss: Johnny Hodges (alto) left in 1951 to form his own small group, taking Lawrence Brown (trombone) and Sonny Greer (drums) with him. Ellington promptly hired three musicians away from the Harry James band: Willie Smith (alto), Juan Tizol (valve trombone), and Louis Bellson (drums). Only Tizol is present here. But you can’t tell from listening that anything might be wrong: the band is in finest of fettles. Highlights include “Monologue,” with Ellington narrating a cautionary love-fable over a clarinet trio (followed by an enthusiastic “Yes, baby!” from a woman in the audience), and two versions of “Take the ‘A’ Train,” with Betty Roché’s hip vocal, full of scat, lyric quotations, and pop-culture appropriations. (“Who’s got the Toni?” echoes this advertising campaign.) These broadcasts marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of Ellington’s opening at the Cotton Club in 1927 — and how he must have hated that reminder of time’s passing. No wonder that he has the band follow “The Mooche” with Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology.” Among the highlights of the Munich and Stockholm recordings: the boppish dexterity of Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Hamilton, and Clark Terry in “Newport Up,” an introspective Hodges solo in a quiet “Jeep’s Blues,” and energetic performances from Ray Nance on “Just Squeeze Me” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).” Nance came by the nickname “Floorshow” honestly.

“And now” (to use an Ellington phrase): recordings from the stockpile. Some of its treasures are vehicles for soloists: “The Shepherd,” a fierce performance by Cootie Williams; “Chromatic Love Affair,” whose seductive half-step-by-half-step melody serves as a showpiece for Harry Carney’s tone and dynamic range; “Second Line,” with Russell Procope’s woody clarinet leading the parade; “Checkered Hat,” Norris Turney’s alto homage to Hodges. Some treasures are samples of orchestral texture: “Amta,” in 5/4, suggests both the exotica of The Far East Suite and the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s “little instruments.” “Something,” a section of The Goutelas Suite, sounds luminous and urbane. The seven sections of the Togo Brava Suite (only four of which appeared on The London Concert LP) give us Ellington mostly in the chant and groove mode of The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse. The greatest orchestral surprises might be found in the incidental music for The Jaywalker, a parable for the theater by the British actress Barbara Waring. (The brief description in Brian Priestly’s liner notes makes me think of Myles Connolly’s novel Mr. Blue.) Here we have many instrumental suggestions of traffic in all directions, and supplemental percussion from Emmanuel Abdul-Rahim’s congas. And the Jaywalker piece “Mac” turns out to be an orchestral version of “T. G. T. T.,” a piece for piano and voice from the Second Sacred Concert. Who knew there was an orchestral version?

For me, the most valuable material in the Box is on CD 4: sixteen recordings of Ellington at the piano, thirteen of them unaccompanied, recorded between 1961 and 1971. “Meditation” from the Second Sacred Concert is a solemn, deliberate statement, markedly different from the quick run-through that the piece sometimes received in live performance. An untitled and almost entirely one-chord blues anticipates by more than a decade the “Fragmented Suite for Piano and Bass” that Ellington recorded with Ray Brown on This One’s for Blanton. Piano versions of the material that became The River: A Ballet Suite (choreography by Alvin Ailey) give us Ellington the impressionist — and Ellington the procrastinator, composing at the last possible minute. And then there’s “Nagoya,” with Ellington exploring themes that would emerge in The Far East Suite’s “Ad Lib on Nippon.”

An aside: the only disappointing performances here are those in which Ellington tries to be groovy, happening, hip, with it. Genuine lyrics, from “There’s a Place”: “Peace, love, peace, love, peace, love, freedom now.” Yow. Ellington of all people should have known that those who are cool need not try to be cool. It just gets in the way.

The DVD in this Box has a fairly improbable origin: in 1962 the Ellington band was filmed, playing to its own pre-recorded performances, for a Goodyear Tire & Rubber promotion. The music is, of course, strangely detached from the visual image, but it’s a treat nonetheless to see the band working hard to lip-sync and everything else-sync.

I have only one criticism of this release: a number of glaring typographical errors mar the presentation: “Chekered Hat” and “The Shephard,” for instance. And the song “I’m Afraid (Of Loving You Too Much)” is identified in the track listing as “Duke Ellington.” Note to Storyville: Will Proofread for More Ellington.

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)
The Duke Box (My review of Storyville’s 2006 release)

[Six of the seven CDs in The Duke Box 2 are also individual Storyville releases: Duke Ellington at Birdland, The Duke in Munich, The Piano Player, The Jaywalker, New York, New York, and Togo Brava Suite. CD no. 3, Duke Ellington at Grøna Lund Tivoli, Stockholm is previously unreleased. “Those who are cool need not try to be cool”: I made that up, but it sounds to me like something Ellington could have said.]

The Queen’s Suite

Duke Ellington, in Music Is My Mistress (1973):

In 1958, I was invited to perform at the first festival of the arts in Leeds, England, where I had the great honor of being presented to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. Representatives of all the arts were drawn from all over the world, and at the festival’s conclusion a magnificent banquet was preceded by a red-carpet reception. Her Majesty asked me when I first visited England. “Nineteen thirty-three, Your Majesty, years before you were born.”

Inspired by this meeting, I composed and recorded The Queen’s Suite.

Ellington and Billy Strayhorn set to work on the suite shortly after this meeting. The story goes that one copy of the 1959 recording was pressed and sent to Her Majesty. We now know that other copies circulated among select listeners. The common listener was finally able to hear the suite on the Pablo LP The Ellington Suites (1976).

The Queen’s Suite is in six parts, four of them by Ellington and Strayhorn. The second and fourth parts are by Strayhorn alone:

Sunset and the Mocking Bird : Lightning Bugs and Frogs : Le Sucrier Velours : Northern Lights : The Single Petal of a Rose : Apes and Peacocks

The musicians: Duke Ellington, piano; Harry Carney, Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Hamilton, Johnny Hodges, Russell Procope, reeds; Cat Anderson, Harold “Shorty” Baker, Ray Nance, Clark Terry, trumpets; Quentin Jackson, John Sanders, Britt Woodman, trombones; Jimmy Woode, bass; Jimmy Johnson, drums.

The Queen’s Suite is Ellington–Strayhorn music of an especially high order. If you’ve never heard it, give it a try.

[Queen Elizabeth apparently had some feeling for jazz.]

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)

Joanna Newsom's items in a series

From an interview with Joanna Newsom:

Do you love your country?

I love William Faulkner, Dolly Parton, fried chicken, Van Dyke Parks, the Grand Canyon, Topanga Canyon, bacon cheeseburgers with horseradish, Georgia O'Keeffe, Grand Ole Opry, Gary Snyder, Gilda Radner, Radio City Music Hall, Big Sur, Ponderosa pines, Southern BBQ, Highway One, Kris Kristofferson, National Arts Club in New York, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Joni Mitchell, Ernest Hemingway, Harriet Tubman, Hearst Castle, Ansel Adams, Kenneth Jay Lane, Yuba River, South Yuba River Citizens League, “Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore”, “Hired Hand”, “The Jerk”, “The Sting”, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, clambakes, lobster rolls, s'mores, camping in the Sierra Nevadas, land sailing in the Nevada desert, riding horseback in Canyon de Chelly, Walker Percy, Billie Holiday, Drag City, Chez Panisse/Alice Waters/slow food movement, David Crosby, Ralph Lauren, San Francisco Tape Music Center, Albert Brooks, Utah Phillips, Carol Moseley Braun, Bolinas CA, Ashland OR, Lawrence KS, Austin TX, Bainbridge Island WA, Marilyn Monroe, Mills College, Elizabeth Cotton, Carl Sandburg, the Orange Show in Houston, Toni Morrison, Texas Gladden, California College of Ayurvedic Medicine, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Saturday Night Live, Aaron Copland, Barack Obama, Oscar de la Renta, Alan Lomax, Joyce Carol Oates, Fred Neil, Henry Cowell, Barneys New York, Golden Gate Park, Musee Mechanique, Woody Guthrie, Maxfield Parrish, Malibu, Maui, Napa Valley, Terry Riley, drive-in movies, homemade blackberry ice cream from blackberries picked on my property, Lil Wayne, Walt Whitman, Halston, Lavender Ridge Grenache from Lodi CA, Tony Duquette, Julia Morgan, Lotta Crabtree, Empire Mine, North Columbia Schoolhouse, Disneyland, Nevada County Grandmothers for Peace, Roberta Flack, Randy Newman, Mark Helprin, Larry David, Prince, cooking on Thanksgiving, Shel Silverstein, Lee Hazlewood, Lee Radziwill, Jackie Onassis, E.B. White, William Carlos Williams, Jay Z, Ralph Stanley, Allen Ginsberg, Cesar Chavez, Harvey Milk, RFK, Rosa Parks, Arthur Miller, “The Simpsons”, Julia Child, Henry Miller, Arthur Ashe, Anne Bancroft, The Farm Midwifery Center in TN, Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, Clark Gable, Harry Nilsson, Woodstock, and some other stuff. Buuuut, the ol' U S of A can pull some pretty dick moves. I'm hoping it'll all come out in the wash.

Thirteen movies

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

From the Criterion Channel feature Rebels at the Typewriter: Women Screenwriters of the 1930s

Working Girls (dir. Dorothy Azner, 1931). Sisters Mae and Hune (Dorothy Hall and Judith Wood) arrive in New York City, take up residence in a home for homeless young women, and seek work and romance. Paul Lukas plays a scientist in need of a secretary and a wife; Charles “Buddy” Rogers plays a lawyer in love with a socialite — at least for a while he is. Rigid class distinctions, enforced and overcome. Screenplay by Zoë Akins (friend of Willa Cather). ★★★

*

What Price Hollywood? (dir. George Cukor, 1932). The rise of Mary Evans (Constance Bennett) from waitress to movie star, “America’s Pal,” and the fall of Maximilian Carey (Lowell Sherman, who reminds me of Nathan Lane) from witty director to destitute drunk. This movie must have thrilled contemporary audiences with its scenes of work on movie sets. Some remarkable cinematography by Charles Rosher of Sunrise, particularly the desperate montage that comes late in the story. Screenplay by Jane Murfin, Ben Markson, and Allen Rivkin. ★★★★

*

Bed of Roses (dir. Gregory LaCava, 1933). Constance Bennett stars as Lorry Evans, a prostitute on parole who poses as a journalist in order to seduce a wealthy bachelor (Stephen Paige) and get herself set up in her own apartment, sleeping in, yes, a bed adorned with roses. But Lorry’s heart belongs to a lower-level capitalist, a cotton-barge owner (Joel McCrea), to whom she is afraid to reveal her past. A remarkably frank pre-Code story about sexual autonomy and class, with Pert Kelton (the first Alice Kramden) as Lorry’s sidekick and Franklin Pangborn as a floorwalker. Screenplay by Wanda Tuchock, Gregory LaCava, and Eugene Thackrey. ★★★★

*

Finishing School (dir. George Nicholls Jr. and Wanda Tuchock, 1934). Frances Dee is Virginia Radcliff, of the New York Radcliffs don’t you know, dumped by her mother (Billie Burke) at Crockett Hall Finishing School in New Jersey, where free-spirited roommate Pony (Ginger Rogers) revels in booze, cigarettes, and city weekends with louche Ivy League men. On one of those weekends, meek Virginia meets and falls for Ralph McFarland (Bruce Cabot), an interning doctor and all-around good guy who’s supporting himself as a hotel waiter. The relationship (which includes a night together in a boathouse) meets with the disapproval of mother Radcliff and the witch who runs Crockett (Beulah Bondi), but Virginia rebels, and Ralph tells off the classist authorities with the movie’s best line: “Maybe you don’t realize that the world’s too busy earning its three squares a day to worry about what fork to eat ’em with.” Screenplay by Laird Doyle and Wanda Tuchock. ★★★★

*

Rockabye (dir. George Cukor, 1932). Stage star Judy Carroll (Constance Bennett) is beset by trouble: with a former lover, an adopted toddler, an alcoholic mother, an agent who’s in love with her (Paul Lukas), and a married man she loves (Joel McCrea). A few moments of pre-Code eros, many moments of comedy (mostly via Jobyna Howland as Judy’s mother Snooks) and many moments of great pathos and stoic strength. This movie tears one’s heart out and then plays keepaway with it — just when it seems within reach, it’s gone again. Screenplay by Jane Murfin, from a play by Lucia Bronder. ★★★★

*

Midnight Mary (dir. William A. Wellman, 1933). Loretta Young as Mary Martin, a woman who from her orphan childhood has had nothing but bad breaks, with her life told in one long flashback as she awaits the jury’s verdict in her trial for murder. Ricardo Cortez and Franchot Tone appear as polar-opposite love interests in a pre-Code story full of mayhem and sex. Best scene: the dead body against the rattling door. Screenplay by Anita Loos, Gene Markey, and Kathryn Scola. ★★★★

*

You and Me (dir. Fritz Lang, 1938). A charmingly loopy effort, with Harry Carey is a department-store owner and altruist who employs ex-convicts, among them, one Joe (George Raft), who falls for shopgirl Helen (Sylvia Sidney). All’s well until the old gang wants to bring Joe in on a plan to rob the store. With familiar faces old and new: Roscoe Karns, Barton MacLane, George E. Stone, and a young Bob Cummings, who might have been good for a mystery-actor post, save that he already looks like Bob Cummings. Screenplay by Virginia Van Upp, Norman Krasna, and Jack Moffitt. ★★★★

*

Blondie of the Follies (dir. Edmund Goulding, 1932). Marion Davies stars as Blondie McClune, who rises from a three-generation-crowded Brooklyn apartment to a Broadway career and swank Manhattan digs. There’s one problem: Blondie and her best pal Lottie Callahan (Billie Dove) are both after the same fellow, Larry Belmont (Robert Montgomery), and as with Betty and Veronica, the rivalry goes on and on and on, and on. Weirdest moment, Davies and Jimmy Durante spoofing Grand Hotel (which Goulding directed). Screenplay by Frances Marion, Anita Loos, and Ralph Spence. ★★

*

Hold Your Man (dir. Sam Wood, 1933). Ruby (Jean Harlow) and Eddie (Clark Gable) meet when he ducks into her apartment and bathtub to avoid the cops. Ruby and Eddie are instantly attracted to one another, though many complications will follow, and Ruby will be sent off to a reformatory before the story comes to its end. Wildly funny, with poignant moments, slaps and punches, and plenty of snappy dialogue: “I got two rules I always stick to when I’m out visitin’: keep away from couches, and stay on your feet.” Screenplay by Anita Loos and Howard Emmett Rogers. ★★★★

*

Sadie McKee (dir. Clarence Brown, 1934). “Every gal has her price, and mine’s high”: so says Sadie McKee (Joan Crawford), daughter of a maid to wealthy business owners, one of whom, lawyer Michael (Franchot Tone) has been Sadie’s pal from childhood. When Michael fires Sadie’s boyfriend Tommy (Gene Raymond), the young couple flee to New York City, where many challenges await. Wealth comes back into the picture when Sadie meets the kind, shambling alcoholic Brennan (Edward Arnold, in a brilliant performance), but the lasting images in this movie are of deprivation and want: a miserable furnished room for rent, an abandoned piece of Automat pie rendered inedible with a cigarette butt. Screenplay by John Meehan, Viña Delmar, and Carey Wilson. ★★★★

*

Hallelujah (dir. King Vidor, 1929). An all-Black cast in a story of transgression and redemption: Zeke (Daniel L. Haynes, in a role meant for Paul Robeson), the oldest son in a family of sharecroppers, falls in with bad company in the form of Chick (Nina Mae McKinney), shoots his own brother in a barroom fracas, and finds redemption as the preacher Brother Ezekiel — though only for a while. As a story, it’s hackneyed, full of stereotypes and improbability (two stars), but as a record of folk forms on film and with sound, it’s invaluable (four stars): we see dancing, dicing, praying, preaching, mourning, and baptisms. The best scene: the train to hell. Screenplay by Wanda Tuchock, Richard Schayer, and Ransom Rideout. ★★/★★★★

*

Tugboat Annie (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1932). Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery are Annie and Terry, operators of the tugboat Narcissus; she, a dedicated captain; he, a hapless alcoholic. Their son Alec (Robert Young) grows up to be a dashing young captain, engaged to the pretty cipher Pat (Maureen O’Sullivan). The comedy here is very thin — seeing someone drink hair tonic and stumble just isn’t funny — but the movie is partly redeemed by an exciting ending, when a storm rages and Terry risks his life to make repairs to the Narcissus. Screenplay by Norman Reilly Raine, Zelda Sears, and Eve Greene. ★★

*

Dinner at Eight (dir. George Cukor, 1933). It’s a big picture, à la Grand Hotel: “MORE STARS THAN HAVE EVER BEEN IN ANY PICTURE BEFORE,” screamed an advertisement, with John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Billie Burke, Marie Dressier, Jean Harlow, and many others on hand. But I found it dreadfully dull: a strained, stagey examination of the problems of the rich and the formerly rich, with some bright moments from John Barrymore, Dressler, and Harlow. Sometimes I felt that I was watching a 111-minute-long New Yorker cartoon: “I particularly wanted the aspic — it’s so dressy!” Screenplay by Frances Marion, Herman J. Mankiewicz, and George S. Kaufman. ★★

*

The other movies in this feature: ‌Back Street (dir. John M. Stahl, 1932), Make Way for Tomorrow (dir. Leo McCarey, 1937), and Red-Headed Woman (dir. Jack Conway, 1932). I’ve seen and can recommend them all. Make Way for Tomorrow is the movie that Orson Welles said “would make a stone cry.”

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Twelve movies

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

Two with Carole Lombard

Virtue (dir. Eddie Buzzell, 1932). Carole Lombard stars as Mae — just Mae — a streetwalker who marries cabdriver Jimmy Doyle (Pat O’Brien) and tries but fails to keep her previous life a secret. Lombard is great, mixing indignation over her husband’s suspicions with shame about her past. O’Brien is little more than mechanical. The surprise of the movie is Mayo Methot, whom I’ve known only as a name (one half of the battling Bogarts with husband Humphrey), turning in a solid performance as Mae’s friend Lil. ★★★

No Man of Her Own (dir. Wesley Ruggles, 1932). Clark Gable is Babe Stewart, a card sharp who’s left New York while trouble blows over. In sleepy Glendale, wherever that is, he meets Connie Randall, a lonely librarian (Carole Lombard), and marries her on the flip of a coin. Babe’s charm is invisible to me (he’s a cad, a cheat, an egomaniac); Connie’s wit and spunk are considerable. But what’ll happen when Connie cottons to the way her new husband makes his living? ★★★★

[As should now be obvious, there’s no relation to the Mitchell Leisen movie of the same name.]

*

A Private War (dir. Matthew Heineman, 2018). Rosamund Pike as Marie Colvin, war correspondent, putting her life on the line in Sri Lanka, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. A harrowing depiction of the pain of war and a reporter’s compulsion to bear witness. But the dialogue is sometimes wooden (especially in the dreadful scenes with Stanley Tucci), and I was too often reminded of the movie trope of the injured player pleading to get back in the game. Most disturbing scene for me: Colvin looking at a newsroom map with Post-its marking hotspots, wondering what risk to take next. ★★★

*

Limelight (dir. Charles Chaplin, 1952). It’s 1914: Chaplin is a fading music-hall performer; Claire Bloom is a troubled dancer whom he cares for after she attempts suicide. A sad, beautiful, luminous depiction of theatrical fame, falling and rising, and a sharp commentary on the whims of audiences. Many scenes echo silents, but there’s also a lot of talking, with Chaplin’s Carvelo propounding a philosophy of life that seems to have been Chaplin’s own (a joyful stoicism, I’d call it). With Nigel Bruce, Buster Keaton, Norman Lloyd, and a host of Chaplins. ★★★★

*

Paris Blues (dir. Martin Ritt, 1961). Friends Connie and Lillian (Diahann Carroll, Joanne Woodward) come to Paris for a vacation and meet ex-pat jazz musicians Eddie and Ram (Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman). It’s Route 66 in Paris, with Poitier’s Eddie as the genial Tod Stiles, and Newman’s Ram as the edgier Buz Murdock. Great cinematography by Christian Matras, with moody scenes of Parisian streets (landmarks, appropriately, are peripheral); a good score by Duke Ellington; a wonderful appearance by Louis Armstrong as visiting musician Wild Man Moore; and much hokey dialogue. Look for Aaron Bridgers (Billy Strayhorn’s partner for many years) as a pianist. ★★★

*

Walk a Crooked Mile (dir. Gordon Douglas, 1948). An FBI/Scotland Yard procedural, served in the semi-documentary style (Reed Hadley as narrator), with generous helpings of noir. Indeed: as the story nears its (alas) contrived end, everything seems to take place in the dark. Dennis O’Keefe and Louis Hayward — the one rumpled, the other suave —team up to figure out who’s taking atomic secrets out of a research center and sending them to the Soviets. With invisible inks, undercover laundering, romance between scientists, and secret messages in paintings, there’s something for everyone. ★★★

*

Mikey and Nicky (dir. Elaine May, 1976). Nicky, small-time hoodlum (John Cassavetes), has been marked for a hit and is on the run; Mikey, fellow hoodlum and friend from childhood (Peter Falk), has answered Nicky’s call for help. What follows is one night in Philadelphia, as the two men, one frantic, the other a voice of calm reason, wander the streets and ride buses, sparring with words and fists (improvising, I think, at least sometimes), and visiting bars, exes, a candy store, and a graveyard. And all the while a hit man (the late Ned Beatty) is looking for Nicky. An extraordinary movie about debts to memory and the limits of loyalty. ★★★★

*

Gidget (dir. Paul Wendkos, 1959). Sandra Dee is Francie Lawrence, an almost-seventeen tomboy, down on dating (ick), newly fascinated by surfing, dubbed Gidget (“girl” + “midget”) by the bro surfers who adopt her as a laughable, perky mascot. With the Big Kahuna (Cliff Robertson) and Moondoggie (James Darren) as protectors and instructors, she learns to surf, and, more importantly, learns to live the vital lesson imparted by her grandmother’s sampler: “To be a real woman is to bring out the best in a man.” It’s Social Norms 101, as Gidget changes from flat-chested iconoclast to busty, pinned sweetheart. This movie would pair weirdly and well with The Edge of Seventeen (dir. Kelly Fremon Craig, 2016). ★★★

*

The Las Vegas Story (dir. Robert Stevenson, 1952). Watching Victor Mature and Vincent Price vie for Jane Russell in this movie, I feel like Gidget: ick! Russell plays Linda Rollins, who used to perform (with a seedy-looking Hoagy Carmichael) at a Vegas casino (the aptly named Last Chance). Linda’s old flame Dave (Mature) is on the Vegas police force; her husband Lloyd (Price) is in financial trouble. The plot hinges on an expensive necklace, and there’s a hotel named the Fabulous, though fabulous is not a noun. ★★

*

Blackmail (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1929). I’ve been told that even Brits find the quick dialogue in Hitchcock’s early movies difficult to follow, but this one must be an exception: it moves slowly (no surprise that it’s an adaptation of a play). Long story short: Alice (Anny Ondra) kills a man while defending herself against rape; her Scotland Yard boyfriend Frank (John Longden) is placed in charge of the investigation; and there’s a fellow (Donald Calthrop) who has circumstantial evidence of Alice’s guilt. Look for hints of The 39 Steps, Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, and North by Northwest. My favorite scenes: the tobacco shop, with its retail density. ★★★

*

Fourteen keys

Seven Keys to Baldpate (dir. Reginald Barker 1929). First it was a novel, by Earl Derr Biggers; then, a play by George M. Cohan; then the stuff of seven movies, two television dramas, and two radio plays. “Adventuress, crooked politicians, safe robbed, and love at first sight: I wanted to get away from melodrama,” says a hack writer. It’s a spoof melodrama, with the writer (Richard Dix) trying to win a bet by writing a 10,000-word story in twenty-four hours in an empty inn. But an adventuress, crooked politicians, &c., make his life difficult. ★★

Seven Keys to Baldpate (dir. Lew Landers, 1947). This version is a considerable improvement, cutting nearly all the exposition and adding a more dweebish mystery writer (Phillip Terry, Ray Milland’s brother in The Lost Weekend ) and a few quick scares. Eduardo Ciannelli (Krug in Foreign Correspondent ) provides genuine menace as a criminal mastermind; Jimmy Conlin (of a zillion movies) adds weirdness as a misogynistic hermit. That this play is still performed might have more to do with its range of parts (X would be perfect as Y ) than with any inherent dramatic goodness. ★★★

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[Sources: Criterion Channel, Netflix, TCM, YouTube.]