Telephone exchange names on screen: Naked City (4)

According to Ma Bell’s 1955 list of recommended exchange names, TW signifies TWilight, TWinbrook, TWinoaks, and TWining. From the Naked City episode “Ooftus Goofus,” first broadcast on December 13, 1961. This episode stars Mickey Rooney as a prankster and crank letter-writer who grows more and more disturbed.

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder, My Sweet : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : This Gun for Hire

Telephone exchange names on screen: Naked City (3)

Anthony Scarzi (Jay Novello) hangs up after making an important phone call from a GRamercy pay phone. From the Naked City episode “Requiem for a Sunday Afternoon,” first broadcast on November 6, 1961. After watching a dozen or so episodes on DVD, I’ve seen nothing to dissuade me from saying that Naked City is one of the best television dramas ever made.

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder, My Sweet : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : This Gun for Hire

Poetry and Naked City

It’s Sunday. Detective Adam Flint (Paul Burke) is calling on his girlfriend, aspiring actress Libby Kingston (Nancy Malone). AF carries with him a salami. He presses the buzzer at 3 Sheridan Square, and he and LK talk on the intercom.

LK: Good morning.

AF: Good morning, fair lady. Come on, the lark is on the wing. God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world. And young Lochinvar has come to the West Side to bring you glad tidings and a fresh salami.

LK: Hail to thee, blithe salami-bringer! Bird thou never wert.

AF: Oh no? Well listen to this: cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.

[Laughter.]

From the Naked City episode “Requiem for a Sunday Afternoon,” first aired November 6, 1961. Teleplay by Howard Rodman.

The sources:

The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn:
God’s in his heaven —
All’s right with the world!

Robert Browning, “Pippa Passes” (1841)

*

O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west

Walter Scott, Marmion (1808)

*

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
    Bird thou never wert

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “To a Skylark” (1820)

Two grown-ups, quick, allusive, and crazy in love. They don’t write dialogue like this anymore.

A related post
Perry Mason and John Keats

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, May 15, 2012.]

They’re learning — once again — how to write in a window.

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts (via Pinboard)

Kurt Vonnegut on English studies

Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage (New York: Delacorte, 1981).

Ouch.

An Old-Fashioned retronym?

Elaine and I wondered the other night: is the name Old-Fashioned a retronym, created after other cocktails came along?

No. The Oxford English Dictionary explains: “The old-fashioned cocktail is said to have been invented in the late 19th cent. at the Pendennis Club in Louisville, Kentucky. It was probably so named because of its similarity to early whisky cocktails.”

I make an Old-Fashioned (just one, thanks) with Early Times, Angostura bitters, sugar, water, and ice. No lemon or orange peel, no cherry. If I want fruit cocktail, I open a can.

[I’m trying to remember who made the quip about fruit just taking up space that could be better used for whiskey. I think it was Rachel Maddow, though she adds a sliver of lemon peel.]

College Debt

A New York Times feature on the rising cost of college: Degrees of Debt.

[My two cents: the present state of things cannot be sustained. I can easily — and uneasily — anticipate a future in which the four-year residential college becomes once again an opportunity for a relatively small number of students, while many others receive a diminished education, earning vocationally-themed degrees or certificates in more affordable ways.]

Happy Mother's Day

[Photograph by James Leddy. Click for a larger, more sentimental view.]

My mom Louise, me, and some dumb bunny, photographed by my dad at my grandparents’ house in Brooklyn, New York, probably in 1958. This photograph captures a fairly formal version of the city activity known as sitting on the stoop.

One thing I never had to worry about in childhood: perishing from exposure to the elements. Freedom from such worry was, I believe, common among children of the time and place. Our parents were watching out for us. “Warmly dressed” doesn’t begin to capture it.

Happy Mother’s Day to all.

Bicycle safety, 1954

[“Children participating in a bicycle safety program run by the police.” Photograph by Yale Joel. New York, New York, June 1954. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

Shoe repairmen in the news

Shoe repairmen are the new typewriter repairmen: in other words, shoe repairmen too have become the subjects of human-interest stories tinged with vague nostalgia. Here is an example. And another. And one — no, two — make that three more.

I can remember as a boy sitting in a stall-like structure with a swinging door, waiting while new heels were put on my shoes. Was that common?