A delirium of shadows

The premise is bizarre: Suspense (dir. Frank Tuttle, 1946) is a film noir set in the world an ice-skating revue. The story bears some resemblance to that of Nightmare Alley : an itinerant man, Joe (Barry Sullivan), steps into a job, quickly rises to success, and makes a play for a woman — here, the lead skater and boss’s wife Roberta (British skating star Belita). I have decided to call the final forty-five minutes of the movie a delirium of shadows. The cinematography is by Karl Struss. I had to look up his name to realize that he was the (Academy Award-winning) cinematographer for F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise.

In these images: Barry Sullivan, Eugene Pallette as right-hand man, Belita, Albert Dekker as the boss (backlit, hatted), and an unidentified actor as a timpanist (!) in the revue’s orchestra. The final image reminds me this image of The Man (George O’Brien) in Sunrise. Click any image for a larger view.

Sardines on PBS tonight

Tonight on Nature, “The Ocean’s Greatest Feast,” about sardine migration on the South African coast.

Thanks, Chris.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

How to Automat

Let Richard Conte and Coleen Gray demonstrate:

[From The Sleeping City (dir. George Sherman, 1950). Click any image for a larger view.]

Much of The Sleeping City was filmed at Bellevue Hospital, so I think it’s safe to assume that the setting here is a genuine Automat. Note the array of extras: salt and pepper, sugar, ketchup, mustard (I think), and honey or syrup.

Here’s a spectacular compilation of the Automat on film. It’s missing the scene from That Girl in which Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas) makes ketchup soup in an Automat. But was that a real Automat?

In its heyday, the Automat was all over New York. Advertisements in the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory announce forty-five cafeterias and thirty-two retail shops: “Take home Pies, Cakes, Breads, Rolls, Cooked Foods same as served at Automats. ‘Less Work for Mother.’”

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Here, thanks to a thoughtful reader, is a menu of sorts in photos. The roll Ann Marie eats indeed resembles the top-right rolls in the first photo.

Related reading
All OCA Automat posts

The Trojan Horse Affair

A podcast series by Brian Reed and Hamza Syed: The Trojan Horse Affair. It’s an investigation of an anonymous letter describing a plot by Islamic extremists to take charge of schools in Birmingham, England. I’m four episodes in, and the story grows ever more bewildering.

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After listening to all eight episodes, I can say bewildering indeed. This commentary from Sonia Sodha, a Guardian columnist, raises important questions: “The Trojan Horse Affair : How Serial podcast got it so wrong.”

Back at 4:15

Rick Veach, our plumbing and heating and cooling guy, came by early in the morning to check out a minor problem. He promised to be back at 4:15 to take care of it.

At 4:15 he was back. And before doing the work he had come to do, he went to our hall closet to replace a lightbulb. He had somehow noticed when he was here in the morning that the bulb was out.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard) : Rick Veach (1959–2017)

Valentine’s Day

[Hematite heart amulet. From Egypt, 26th-30th Dynasty, c. 664–332 BCE. 7/8” × 5/8”. Gift of Helen Miller Gould, 1910. Metropolitan Museum of Art. From the online collection.]

hello wordl

It’s Wordle-inspired and free: hello wordl. Unlimited play and your choice of word length, from four to eleven letters.

One problem with playing for an eleven-letter word is that you have to think of eleven-letter words:


I’ve chosen to end my streak at 1.

Recently updated

Le Steak de Paris For anyone who would like to read a remarkable story set in this (long-gone) restaurant, there’s now such a story in the comments.

Outtakes (2)

[Outtakes from the WPA’s New York City tax photographs, c. 1939–1941, available from 1940s NYC. Click any image for a larger view.]

An archive-minded reader pointed me to Michael Lorenzini’s “Outtakes: Behind the Scenes with the Tax Photo Photographers” (NYC Department of Records and Information Services). In 2019 Lorenzini hit most of the photographs that have caught my eye in 2022. (But not all!)

And George Bodmer pointed me to “The Kept and the Killed,” about Farm Security Administration photographs with holes punched through (Public Domain Review). Thanks, guys.

More outtakes to come.

Related posts
Outtakes (1) : More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is a deeply satisfying puzzle, one that often had me torn between “Huh?” and “Wha?” I was happy to get everything right (though it took half an hour).

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

5-D, three letters, “GE cofounder.” Read the clue carefully.

9-D, five letters, “Viva voces, at Oxford.” The answer seems be turning up often in recent crosswords, but I haven’t seen it with this clue.

15-A, ten letters, “Pages in a pit.” Young workers at the Chicago Board of Trade, right?

17-A, ten letters, “One for two.” This was a “Huh?”

27-D, four letters, “Nonplus.” Used correctly!

29-A, six letters, “One of ‘The Almighty’s marines.’” I’ve never heard this expression.

29-D, six letters, “Handled like some art shows.” This was a “Wha?”

30-A, eight letters, “Didn’t sound off.” Nice misdirection.

31-D, three letters, “Circled Rs.” The clue adds value to the answer.

47-A, eight letters, “Outdoes in history.” Tricky.

60-A, ten letters, “Better.” Adjective? Adverb? Noun? Verb?

My favorite clue in today's puzzle: 28-A, five letters, “College course.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.