An on-screen jump-seat

[Barry Sullivan joins Ann Dvorak, Louis Calhern, and Lana Turner in a cab. From A Life of Her Own (dir. George Cukor, 1950). Click either image for a larger view.]

I know about jump-seats from reading J.D. Salinger. I was inordinately happy to see a jump-seat in a movie.

Kudlick plumbing

[Dustin, February 25, 2021.]

The digital scale sometimes gives a different result on a second try. That’s why Helen invokes the movies: “So it’s like in ‘Dirty Harry,’ right? You’ve got to ask yourself one question.” Thus the panel above.

I think there are further questions to ask about today’s Dustin.

Separated at birth

  [Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ernest Angley. Click either image for a larger view.]

I’ll grant that there’s an age difference. But the resemblance is unmistakable.

El Chapo has been in the news of course. Seeing a photograph of him (not this one) is what made me think of Ernest Angley. If that name is unfamiliar, you probably didn’t watch enough UHF television as a teenager. Angley was and is a piece of work, as the Wikipedia article about him makes clear. What the article doesn’t describe is his long history of healing services and faux miracles: ending addictions, removing cancers, making people hear and walk. But never, say, growing someone a limb. “Thou foul nicotine devils, come out!”

Also separated at birth
Claude Akins and Simon Oakland : Nicholson Baker and Lawrence Ferlinghetti : Bérénice Bejo and Paula Beer : Ted Berrigan and C. Everett Koop : David Bowie and Karl Held : Victor Buono and Dan Seymour : Ernie Bushmiller and Red Rodney : John Davis Chandler and Steve Buscemi : Ray Collins and Mississippi John Hurt : Broderick Crawford and Vladimir Nabokov : Ted Cruz and Joe McCarthy : Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Gough : Henry Daniell and Anthony Wiener : Jacques Derrida, Peter Falk, and William Hopper : Adam Driver and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska : Charles Grassley and Abraham Jebediah Simpson II : Elaine Hansen (of Davey and Goliath) and Blanche Lincoln : Barbara Hale and Vivien Leigh : Harriet Sansom Harris and Phoebe Nicholls : Steven Isserlis and Pat Metheny : Colonel Wilhelm Klink and Rudy Giuliani : Ton Koopman and Oliver Sacks : Steve Lacy and Myron McCormick : Don Lake and Andrew Tombes : William H. Macy and Michael A. Monahan : Fredric March and Tobey Maguire : Jean Renoir and Steve Wozniak : Molly Ringwald and Victoria Zinny

George Sanders and a Ticonderoga

[George Sanders and pencil, in Witness to Murder (dir. Roy Rowland, 1954). Click for a larger view.]

That’s a Dixon Ticonderoga, no doubt. The ferrule gives it away.

The Ticonderoga appears in a number of OCA posts, sometimes starring, sometimes in a supporting role. Among the other cast members: John Garfield, June Lockhart, Toni Morrison, Lloyd Nolan, and Jon Provost.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919–2021)

No. 20, from A Coney Island of the Mind (New York: New Directions, 1958).

The poet and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti has died at the age of 101. The New York Times has an obituary with a 2007 video feature, “The Last Word.” The San Francisco Chronicle has an obituary with a large slideshow.

Dick Gallup (1942–2021)

From “The Wacking of the Fruit Trees,” in Above the Treeline (Bolinas, CA: Big Sky, 1976).

The poet Dick Gallup died last month at the age of seventy-nine. With Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard, and Ron Padgett, he belonged to what John Ashbery jokingly called “the soi-disant Tulsa School” of poetry. Here, from Tulsa Public Radio, is an obituary.

[Ashbery was making a joke on the so-called New York School of poetry.]

The return of Century 21

Century 21 Stores went out of business last year. And now they plan to return.

Today’s sequence of posts might seem random, but that Proust post is bordered by two madeleines: Nancy’s charlotte russe and, in my imagination at least, a briefcase from my school days, bought at Century 21. The briefcase looked like this one, but it would have been much cheaper. I still remember the smell. And I still remember eating charlotte russe walking home from the candy store on 13th Avenue.

The Seventy-Five Pages

In The Guardian, news of long-lost pages from Proust: “The Seventy-Five Pages, out next month, contains germinal versions of episodes developed in In Search of Lost Time and opens ‘the primitive Proustian crypt.’” Alas: “An English translation has yet to be announced.”

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Nancy’s charlotte russe

[Nancy, July 11, 1955. Click for a larger view.]

Nancy has asked Sluggo if he’d like to join her for lunch. What’s she having? Leftovers. “Naw---I hate leftovers.” Nancy wonders if she should have told him.

That treat that looks sort of like a cupcake? Not a cupcake. That’s a charlotte russe. It’s a New York thing. Nancy spoke of the charlotte russe in 1944. Today’s strip is the first in which I’ve noticed one.

Yesterday’s Nancy is today’s Nancy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[About “---”: the Nancy dash is made of “some hyphens.”]

Movie method

Matt Thomas wondered how I get movies for our household. Here’s a more detailed answer than the one I gave in a comment.

I’m the one who usually does the looking. The sources, via Roku: the Criterion Channel, TCM on-demand, and YouTube. With Criterion and TCM, it’s just a matter of seeing what’s available and for how long. YouTube requires greater craftiness. Sometimes a movie will prompt me to search for a director’s name or actor’s name to find other films. I’ll sometimes check a title in the IMDb to look for cast members who might be of interest.

I like to limit YouTube searches to the current month to avoid bringing up the usual suspects. So I’ll search for, say, film noir — why is it always film noir? — and look at what’s been uploaded in February. I’ve learned to ignore links that promise Full Movie with no time listed; they’re just come-ons to get the gullible to visit some other site. I’ve also learned to not ignore links with no movie title; they almost always turn out to be genuine uploads trying to fly under the copyright radar.

I’m enormously grateful for the possibilities that the Criterion Channel and TCM offer, but I love the hunt with YouTube. It reminds me of nosing around used-book stores in search of something worthwhile. For instance: The Suspect (dir. Robert Siodmak, 1944), Lost Boundaries (dir. Alfred L. Werker, 1949), Jazz Dance (dir. Roger Tilton, 1954), The Case Against Brooklyn (dir. Paul Wendkos, 1958).

*

I forgot about my university’s library, which has a vast DVD collection. But there’s no browsing now, and I try to stay off campus anyway.