Orange Crate Art

Friday, August 23, 2019

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

The boy on the right — who knows? But the woman on the left — do you recognize her? I knew her voice right away, but couldn’t match it to a person. Which makes me think that someone else will figure this one out in no time at all. Leave your best guess in the comments, and the glory may be yours.

*

11:48 a.m.: The answer is now 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.]

Ben Leddy hosts The Rewind

Here’s the latest episode of WGBH’s The Rewind, “I Met Susan B. Anthony,” hosted by our son Ben.

Strange near-synchronicity: the Dark Passage streetcar was manufactured in 1891. Florence H. Luscomb heard Susan B. Anthony speak in 1892.

Thursday, August 22, 2019

Spider, short-order cook

I went looking for short-order cooks and found Spider, a short film by Gary Anderson:

Spider was Ken Osgood, seen here at Paul’s Diner in Laconia, New Hampshire. Osgood was the subject of a 2007 newspaper article about Laconia’s diner culture. He died in 2012.

If anyone can date this film with more than a guess, I’d like to know.

Dark Passage streetcar

J.D. Lowe wondered what kind of streetcar Harry’s Wagon might have been. That made me want to look at Dark Passage (dir. Delmar Daves, 1947) again to see the streetcar that Vincent Parry/Allan Linnell (Humphrey Bogart) rides. Here it is, turning around at the intersection of Powell and Market. There’s more on this streetcar ride at Reel SF.

[Click any image for a larger view.]

How I’d like to step off that streetcar and into Owl Drug to pick up some shave cream and dentifrice.

*

August 23: J.D. Lowe identifies no. 520 as a streetcar manufactured in 1891.

More from Dark Passage
GReystone 3-1311 : Harry’s Wagon

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Larry Taylor (1942–2019)

The bass guitarist Larry Taylor has died at the age of seventy-seven. Billboard has an obituary. Larry played with musicians as various as Jerry Lee Lewis, the Monkees, and Tom Waits, but he is best known for his long tenure with Canned Heat.

I’ve been a Canned Heat fan since 1968 or so. In 2010 my son Ben and I went to hear the band in Effingham, Illinois. Story and photographs in this post. Ben was a good sport. I was in bliss, getting to meet and talk with Larry and Canned Heat’s long-serving, almost-only drummer, Fito de la Parra.

Here’s Canned Heat at Woodstock: Bob Hite, Alan Wilson (Gibson Les Paul), Harvey Mandel (Fender Stratocaster), Larry Taylor, and Fito de la Parra, doing “A Change Is Gonna Come,” with Larry often front and center. This incomplete version is the only version available online. There’s a story about how the guy who bums the cigarette got on stage, but I don’t know if it’s true and won’t recount it.

“Now in order to have a good boogie, you gotta have a bottom. And on that bottom, babies, we got Mister Larry Taylor, alias ‘The Mole’”: thus spake Bob “The Bear” Hite, on the 1968 Canned Heat recording “Fried Hockey Boogie.” Larry’s death is a major loss to music.

Related reading
All OCA Canned Heat posts (Pinboard)

[Corrections to the Billboard obituary: Larry and Fito were on board very early on, but neither was a founding member of Canned Heat.]

The present King of Greenland

This reality-television show, now in its third season, is going off the rails.

[Post title with apologies to Bertrand Russell.]

Word of the day: Nowheresville

I don’t know how long the link will last, but the Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day today is Nowheresville: “a largely unknown or uninteresting place, esp. a small, rural town; (also figurative) obscurity, insignificance, limbo; = Nowhereville n.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from 1917. A 1966 citation that caught my attention, from Time: “Sitting contentedly on the banks of the Illinois river in the very heartland of America, Peoria has for years been the butt of jokes, the gagman’s tag for Nowheresville.” Excuse me: Peoria is the second largest city in central Illinois (after Springfield). Nowheresville my eye.

You can subscribe to the OED Word of the Day from this page.

Harry’s Wagon

I like this diner, as seen in Dark Passage (dir. Delmar Daves, 1947). Harry’s Wagon was a genuine diner, at 1921 Post Street, San Francisco. Reel SF has the details.

[Click any image for a larger view.]

Vincent Parry/Allan Linnell (Humphrey Bogart) orders ham-and-eggs and coffee from the genial counterman (Tom Fadden). If it weren’t so early, or so late, the Hot Baked Ham might be tempting: Potatoes - Salad - Drink & Desert.

[“How’ll you have the eggs?” “Easy.” “Easy does it.”]

But that guy at the other end of the car? (That’s him in the first of these images.) He’s not just some guy. He’s a police detective (Douglas Kennedy), and that’s going to mean trouble.

Note the time: 4:45 a.m., and Harry’s Wagon is open for business.

[There’s never a conversation about how to spell Parry’s new name. In David Goodis’s 1946 novel it’s as I’ve spelled it here.]