Frank Sinatra in Brooklyn

[Frank Sinatra, home again, marveling. Good practice for On the Town. Click for a larger bridge.]

It Happened in Brooklyn (dir. Richard Whorf, 1947) offers nearly two hours’ worth of music and pleasant lunacy. Danny Miller (Sinatra) is a shy Brooklynite and aspiring singer returning home from the war. Jamie Shellgrove (Peter Lawford), a shy English aristocrat and composer, follows Danny to Brooklyn. Anne Fielding (Kathryn Grayson) sings and teaches music at New Utrecht High School. Nick Lombardi (Jimmy Durante), Danny’s friend, works as the school’s janitor and lives in the school’s basement. Yes, his basement has a piano.

One highlight among many: Sinatra singing Mozart.

Early in the film, when we’re still in England, a nurse from Brooklyn (Gloria Grahame) asks Danny why he’s moping around now that he’s recovered from mumps. That’s not like a guy from Brooklyn. Even after seeing his photograph of the bridge and quizzing him on borough landmarks, she still suspects that he’s not the real thing:

“Why aren’t you down at that party like a Brooklyn guy should be — makin’ friends for yourself and for Brooklyn? A Brooklyn guy is a friendly guy.”

“Well, I will be, once I get home. It’s easier in Brooklyn.”

“I don’t care how many photographs of the bridge you got. I don’t care how many names of the streets you know. When I see you out makin’ a friend, then I believe you’re from Brooklyn.”

One of the most revealing things about this film is that it has nothing to say about war. The subject never comes up, though Danny is in uniform in many early stateside scenes. The film’s tagline, as seen on this poster: “HAPPY songs! HAPPY stars! HAPPY romance!” What war? This film is dedicated to the pleasures of forgetting, at least for an hour and forty-four minutes.

[The director? Brother to the linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf.]

More Salinger

The forthcoming biography and documentary film Salinger claim that new work will appear “as early as 2015”:

One collection, to be called The Family Glass, would add five new stories to an assembly of previously published stories about the fictional Glass family, which figured in Mr. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey and elsewhere, according to the claims, which surfaced in interviews and previews of the documentary and book last week.

Another would include a retooled version of a publicly known but unpublished tale, “The Last and Best of the Peter Pans,” which is to be collected with new stories and existing work about the fictional Caulfields, including Catcher in the Rye. The new works are said to include a story-filled “manual” of the Vedanta religious philosophy, with which Mr. Salinger was deeply involved; a novel set during World War II and based on his first marriage; and a novella modeled on his own war experiences.

Film on J. D. Salinger Claims More Books Coming (The New York Times)

The most convincing evidence that there is a there there: neither Salinger’s widow nor his son will comment on these claims.

Related reading
All Salinger posts (Pinboard)

Recently updated

Completely Naked City There’s a release date.

Officemates

[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

I’ve been sharing an office with them for, like, ever, along with the face in the floor.

[If you’re reading in Go Read, well, you’re missing this post too. There’s a problem.]

Michael Oakeshott on higher education

From the philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990):

A university will have ceased to exist when its learning has degenerated into what is now called research, when its teaching has become mere instruction and occupies the whole of an undergraduate’s time, and when those who came to be taught come, not in search of their intellectual fortune but with a vitality so unroused or so exhausted that they wish only to be provided with a serviceable moral and intellectual outfit; when they come with no understanding of the manners of conversation but desire only a qualification for earning a living or a certificate to let them in on the exploitation of the world.

“The Idea of a University” (1950), in The Voice of Liberal Learning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

Rick Perlstein on higher education

Rick Perlstein on the life and death of educational opportunity:

The history of American higher education over the twentieth century is an extraordinary one, the story of the creation of a powerhouse set of institutions that are the envy of the civilized world. . . .

Now all we seem to care about is reproducing the managerial class.

On the Death of Democratic Higher Education (The Nation)

Everything in this essay hits home.

Thanks to Matt Thomas at Submitted for Your Perusal, who pointed me to this piece.

King and Paar

“Now my mother was a terrible cook . . . probably the worst cook in the world. If I see anywhere a sign, ‘Pies — The Kind Mother Used To Make,’ I get chills all over me.”

At One Foot in Oz, Margie King Barab tells the story of Alexander King’s first appearance on The Tonight Show with Jack Paar. There’s also a Billy Crystal connection. This is history, folks.

A related post from One Foot in Oz
Who Is Alexander King?

[I feel both happy and unhappy about not hitting upon what might seem like the inevitable title for this post: Jack and King.]

Whither tuition?

“You think all those comedy hypnotists are stopping by out of the kindness of their hearts?” A report on what tuition really pays for.

[They left out the foam parties.]

Use less words

From the New York Times public editor’s journal, on how to refer to Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning:



Yipes. Perhaps only the copyeditors themselves, not those who supervise them, are expected to know that one uses fewer words, not less.

[The Times Manual of Style and Usage recommends copy editor; Garner’s Modern American Usage recommends copyeditor.]

Lexikaliker at 1,000

At Lexikaliker, Gunther has just posted his thousandth post, with a photograph of an 1888 inscription from a house in Bad Doberan, Germany:

Der Eine betracht’s
Der Andre verlacht’s
Der Dritte veracht’s
Was macht’s

Google Translate turns that into gibberish. A plausible idiomatic translation might read:

One contemplates it
Another laughs at it
The third despises it
Who cares

Reading these words, I thought I was facing some impossible riddle. But no. It is the building itself:


[The American Architect and Building News 28 (1890).]

Thank you, Gunther, for this post and so many other thought-provoking posts and beautiful photographs. Hurra!

[“Hurra”: German for “Hurrah.”]