Goodbye, Naked City

[Zohra Lampert says goodbye. From the final moments of the Naked City episode “Barefoot on a Bed of Coals,” May 29, 1963. Click any image for a larger view.]

It would be nice to know whether the makers of Naked City knew that this episode was to be the show’s last. End of the season or end of the series — either way, the long goodbye is fitting.

“Barefoot on a Bed of Coals” is a strange episode with a baffling start. The episode looks at the life of Stanley Walenty (Steven Hill), a police wannabe who patrols his pretend beat wearing a real uniform and carrying a real gun. His downstairs neighbor Clara Espuella (Zohra Lampert) knows none of that. All she knows is that she’s smitten with Stanley. In the episode’s long final shot, Clara says goodbye to him as he’s taken to the hospital with a wound from a real criminal’s gun.

The final scene plays out on East Fourth Street, between the Bowery and Second Avenue. It’s an appropriate location for an episode focused on make-believe: this block of East Fourth was and is a world of theater. Notice the Writers’ Stage and East End Theatre on the right. Today, the block is home to La MaMa (nos. 66 and 74A), Duo Multicultural Arts Center (no. 62), and the New York Theatre Workshop (no. 79).

There are now fifty-three Naked City posts in the Orange Crate Art archives. Naked City is one the great television series, and it’s all on DVD.

[You might recognize Zohra Lampert as Angelina from Splendor in the Grass (dir. Elia Kazan, 1961).]

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June 3, 2015: The closing shot of the film Side Street (dir. Anthony Mann, 1949) might have inspired this episode’s ending. See what you think.

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Bob Conant on bookselling

From an interview with Bob Conant, co-owner of St. Mark’s Bookshop:

“Amazon is a villain. What they’re attempting to do is put bookstores out of business — and publishers. What’s interesting to me is the backlash starting to develop. People realize if they want books to continue, they have to support bookstores, and they have to support publishers.”

Spellings of the future

[As seen in print.]

In a 2009 post about “the new literacy,” I wrote that I was beginning to see misspellings that I could never have imagined: and for an, pros for prose. As I later figured out, such misspellings are/our in fact spellings of the future, traveling backward in time to give us a foretaste of our — or are ? — language’s evolution. Our for are is one I’ve seen twice recently.

Other spellings of the future
Aww : Bard-wired fence : Now : Self-confidance : Where

Then and now

[Then.]

That’s my wife, Elaine Fine, standing outside the Boston Children’s Museum in 1984. It was probably spring. We were being very arty with the black-and-white. Elaine and I were married on September 30, 1984. Holy wedlock, Batman! Or in our case, unholy, secular wedlock, courtesy of a justice of the peace. Thirty years: the best thirty years of our lives.

This past Saturday, after we visited a sewing-machine store and art-supply store in a faded mall, we stood in front of a mirror and took a picture to send to our children. I didn’t realize that the result would be a mirror image of the 1984 photograph.


[Now.]

Elaine has posted a drawing that I made before our wedding.

Happy Anniversary, Elaine!

[May marriage soon be for all partners.]

A thought about absence(s)

Monday is the new Friday.

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Slackerism’s first cousin

[“‘Illegitmate absenteeism is a first cousin to slackerism’: Admiral Emory S. Land, U.S.N. Chairman U.S. Maritime Commission. Farrel-Birmingham Company, Inc., Ansonia, Conn., Derby, Conn., Buffalo, N.Y.” No date.]

I found this World War II-era poster in a collection of war posters in the University of Minnesota’s UMedia Archive. I suspect that Admiral Land’s declaration will amuse many who teach.

Emory S. Land is now also a ship.

Domestic comedy

“You’re like between a fugue state and frenzy.”

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All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[To the reader who tweeted a link to my blog: thanks for your interest, but I’m not quoting Van Dyke Parks in this post. Domestic-comedy posts are a matter of my wife Elaine, our children Rachel and Ben, and me. It’s all in the fambly. This one is me speaking.]

Demon bat-pepper

[Photograph by Michael Leddy. Click for a larger, more terrifying view.]

Green peppers? More like demon bat-peppers. This one is the scariest I’ve faced.

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“Some Steinways”

At Contrapuntalism, Sean spots einege Steinways, “some Steinways.”