Synopses

A girl from the wrong side of the tracks returns from the dead to open up new frontiers for Colonial America.

A brother-and-sister musical team terrorizes a young girl and her grandfather.

An innocent cowboy transforms the lives of the elderly women trapped in a haunted mansion.

A widow dreaming of a singing career turns to an acupuncturist to find her grandmother.

The elements of the single-sentence synopses of movie listings cry out to be recombined on a remote island. As above. Anyone can play.

[See also Clark Coolidge and Ron Padgett’s Supernatural Overtones (Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 1990).]

Pocket notebook sighting: The Big Clock

[Lloyd Corrigan, Frank Orth, a pocket notebook, and Luis Van Rooten. The Big Clock (dir. John Farrow, 1948). Click for a larger view.]

I blame Bresson. It was Journal d’un curé de campagne that got me started noticing notebooks in movies. And now it’s automatic.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : Cat People : City Girl : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Time Table : T-Men : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Walk East on Beacon! : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window : You Only Live Once

Thankful for that

Our president, speaking about Kim Jong Un’s knowledge of Otto Warmbier’s treatment:

“I don’t think the top leadership knew about it.”

“I don’t believe that he would have allowed that to happen.”

”Those prisons are rough, they’re rough places, and bad things happened.”

“I don’t believe he knew about it.”

“He tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word.”

All I can say is, thank goodness our president never met Hitler.

About yesterday afternoon

About the clash of representatives at yesterday’s Michael Cohen hearing:

Mark Meadows presented the experiences of Lynne Patton, a friend of the Trump family and government employee, as proof that Donald Trump is not racist. But consider this analogy:

If X is said to rob banks, and a bank manager, Y, comes forward to say, no, X never robbed our bank, that denial says nothing about whether X robs banks. Not to have robbed one bank does not mean that X does not rob banks. Especially when X has the dye from exploding money bags all over his person.

To take one person’s experiences with Donald Trump as evidence that Trump is not racist is intellectually dishonest or, at best, painfully naïve. And to take one person’s experiences with Trump as evidence of Trump’s attitude toward a group that person is meant to represent — well, that’s racist.

Compare Louis Zukofsky, speaking of his fellow poet Ezra Pound: “I never felt the least trace of anti-Semitism in his presence.” Yes, but.

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Do you recognize the elevator operator? Leave your best or second-best guess in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if necessary.

*

10:10 a.m.: Now ID’d in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

[Garner’s Modern English Usage notes that “support for actress seems to be eroding.” I’ll use actor.]

That sounds right

From the Michael Cohen hearing, a few minutes ago. Representative Stephen Lynch (D, Massachusetts-8): “Your side ran away from the truth. We’re trying to bring it to the American people.”

An EXchange name sighting

[Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1962). Click for a larger view.]

Miss Jane Hudson, HO 5-6259, is planning to revive her career. She’s placed her ad for an accompanist in the Personal column — nicer than using the want ads, she thinks.

A 1955 list of recommended exchange names gives these possibilities for HO: HObart, HOmestead, HOpkins, and HOward. But at some point HO also stood for HOllywood. The Hudson sisters’ HO must signify Hollywood, don’t you think?

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? also includes an uncredited appearance by a Mongol pencil.

More EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : Chinatown : The Dark Corner : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Perry Mason : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Side Street : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success : Tension : This Gun for Hire

[EM: EMerson? EMpire? EV: Evergreen?]

“The slightly confidential friend”

Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock. 1946. (New York: New York Review Books, 2006).

Also from this novel
“The niece of a department store” : “Me? Dangerous?” : “Nearly everyone was”

Domestic comedy

[Media studies.]

“He looks sort of like a demented Robert Young.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[He: James Griffith, in the Perry Mason episode “The Case of the Posthumous Painter” (November 11, 1961).]

“We did not plummet into space”

A clue in a Newsday crossword got me thinking about plummet. Which in turn made me think of Ernest Noyes Brookings (1898–1987). Brookings, a Navy veteran and a designer of machine parts, began writing poems while residing in a nursing home. A book of his poems was published in an edition of 400 copies: We Did Not Plummet Into Space: Variety Poems of Special Interest (Charlestown, MA: Innerer Klang, 1983). It’s a book I cherish.

Brookings’s poems are sweet and startling, with lines and stanzas often moving in whatever directions the poet’s rhyming dictionary suggests. Content as an extension of form: radical formalism, says I. Here are the final stanzas of “My Jobs”:



[A number of musicians have set Brookings’s poems to music. A collected poems, Golden Rule, was published in 2016 (London: Boatwhistle Books).]