Eleven movies, one season

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, TCM, YouTube.]

Arson, Inc. (dir. William Berke, 1949). A firefighter goes undercover to investigate an arson-for-hire business. A surprisingly good B-movie, with mild suspense, modest human interest (a teacher who trades off babysitting jobs with her cigarette-smoking grandmother), and a pyromaniac who provides comic relief until he doesn’t. I liked seeing the familiar face of Byron Foulger, a member of Preston Sturges’s stock company. This movie might prompt viewers here and there to recall a local fire or two, never properly investigated, set by a real-estate mogul looking to collect on the insurance and build something new. ★★★ (YT)

*

Insurance Investigator (dir. George Blair, 1951). An insurance investigator goes undercover to investigate the death of an executive. See, there’s a double indemnity claim at stake. Dumb from start to finish. The only redeeming element: a mustached Reed Hadley as a criminal. ★ (YT)

*

While the City Sleeps (dir. Leslie Roush, c. 1940). It’s a film-noir title (dir. Fritz Lang, 1956), but this a short promotional film from the Ford Motor Company is noir of another sort: about people who work at night. “Thousands of men, thousands of trucks,” the narrator says. Yes, they drive by night (as another movie says), working while everyone else sleeps, delivering bread, milk, produce, and what-not to towns and cities. If you enjoy glimpses of people loading and unloading trucks in the wee small hours of the morning (as the song says), you’ll like seeing these glimpses of the dowdy world. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Window (dir. Ted Tetzlaff, 1949). Tommy Woodry (the ill-fated child-star Bobby Driscoll) likes to tell tall tales, so when he claims to have witnessed a murder, no one believes him — except the killers. A great movie, filmed on location, with clueless parents (Arthur Kennedy and Barbara Hale), dangerous neighbors (Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman), and great views inside a New York tenement. Talk about childhood fears: what could be more terrifying than to be locked in an apartment, alone, when someone is out to get you? My favorite moment: the hanger and the key. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Key Witness (dir. D. Ross Lederman, 1947). Milton Higby (John Beal) is a diffident drafter who invents gadgets and fends off his wife’s (Barbara Read) complaints about his earning power. Milton’s life changes when he flees the scene of a murder (which he did not commit), takes to hoboing, and is mistaken for the long-lost son of a wealthy capitalist. Wildly implausible yet somehow compelling. I recognized just one face in this effort: that of Harry Hayden, the character actor who plays the diner proprietor in the (great) opening scene of The Killers. ★★★ (YT)

*

Shack Out on 101 (dir. Edward Dein, 1955). Deliriously odd: the setting is a California diner, whose waitress, Kotty (Terry Moore), interests everyone — proprietor George (Keenan Wynn), feral cook Slob (Lee Marvin), and nuclear scientist/shell collector Sam (Frank Lovejoy). The plot concerns sensitive secrets being passed to the Communists. But what’s really important here is the improvisatory shape of things: whole scenes appear to have been filmed as ad lib sketches. Best moment: weightlifting (Wynn and Marvin) and a beautiful legs contest (Wynn, Marvin, Moore). ★★★ (YT)

*

Valley of the Dolls (dir. Mark Robson, 1967). Just ridiculous, with lousy acting, and dialogue that sounds like the work of AI, minus the I. And it’s as if no one was aware that the 1960s were well underway: Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, and Sharon Tate, whose characters are the focus of this tawdry story of show biz and pills (“dolls” are downers), seem like throwbacks to another era with their bouffant hairdos and elegant outfits. The best/worst moments: Neely O’Hara’s (Duke) All About Eve metamorphosis into a next-generation Helen Lawson (Susan Hayward). It’s vaguely troubling to see Paul Burke (Naked City) and Martin Milner (Route 66, Adam-12) in these surroundings. ★★ (TCM)

*

Mona Lisa (dir. Neil Jordan, 1986). Out of prison (we never know what he was in for), George (Bob Hoskins) takes on work as driver and bodyguard for Simone (Cathy Tyson), a high-priced call girl. George and Simone’s time together is at the heart of the movie, as a working non-relationship develops into an ambiguous alliance complicated by other allegiances, by the assumptions governing the world of sex work, and by George’s profound sense of decency. Michael Caine and Clarke Peters (Lester Freamon of The Wire) provide moments of great menace. My favorite moment: the skipping away. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Lou Grant (created by James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, and Gene Reynolds, 1977–1978). I have an excuse for missing this series the first time around: it was a school night, and I was studying (I think). The first season is great stuff, with strong, still-contemporary storylines (domestic abuse, hospice care, mental illness and health care, neo-Nazis, sexual abuse) and sharply drawn characters full of idiosyncrasies (Mrs. Pynchon and her ever-present dog; Rossi and his orange soda). With Ed Asner, Mason Adams, Daryl Anderson, Jack Bannon, Linda Kelsey, Nancy Marchand, and Robert Walden. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Three from the Criterion Channel’s Ida Lupino feature

Peter Ibbetson (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1935). A mystical love story of children (Dickie Moore, Virginia Weidler) reunited in adulthood (Gary Cooper and Ann Harding) — reunited, at least, in shared dreams. The story of young Gogo and Mimsey looks forward to the pathos of Forbidden Games; the story of the adult Peter and Mary suggests — no joke — Dante and Beatrice and the beatific vision. The luminous cinematography is by Charles Lang. Ida Lupino makes only a brief appearance. ★★★★ (CC)

Out of the Fog (dir. Anatole Litvak, 1941). A Criterion blurb describes it as an allegory of fascism set in “a small fishing village,” and I suspect that the writer was going on a 1939 New York Times review of Irwin Shaw’s play The Gentle People (the source for this movie). The film though is a working-class drama of the Brooklyn waterfront (no village!), where a cocky small-time gangster (John Garfield) is able to shake down a tailor and a cook (Thomas Mitchell, John Qualen) for weekly payments by threatening to destroy their humble motorboat. The sordidness heightens when the gangster begins wooing Stella, the tailor’s daughter (Ida Lupino), and schemes to take her for a vacation to Cuba on an additional $190 extorted from her father. Dreadfully stagey dialogue, a great performance from Lupino, and dark, misty cinematography from James Wong Howe. ★★★ (CC)

The Sea Wolf (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1941). Edward G. Robinson stars as Wolf Larsen, the sadistic captain of a scavenger. When he’s not stealing other ships’ seal hides, he reads Darwin and Nietzsche and brutalizes and humiliates his crew members (Barry Fitzgerald, John Garfield, and Gene Lockhart are among them). Also on board: two travelers rescued from a downed ship, an escaped convict (Ida Lupino) and a genteel writer (Alexander Knox). All the ship’s a stage on which Larsen gets to play out the creed underlined in his copy of Paradise Lost: “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.” ★★★★ (CC)

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)

“Chopped prose”

Oy — the New York Times poetry columnist thinks that Ezra Pound and Marjorie Perloff think that nonmetrical poetry is “chopped prose.”

A Chock-centric post

A flower grew in a Chock full o’Nuts can, in a painting from Page Morton Black’s house. Ms. Black, a singer, was married to William Black, the founder of Chock full o’Nuts. She sang the famous jingle, whose melody was repurposed for a pretty dreadful song, released on a 7″ single in 1984.

Thanks, Brian.

Related reading
All OCA Chock full o’Nuts posts (Pinboard)

[Orange Crate Art is a Chock-friendly zone.]

Maureen O’Hara for Lipton Tea

[Maureen O’Hara for Lipton Tea. Des Moines Register, May 16, 1948. Click for a larger view.]

Barry Fitzgerald appeared in another 1946 ad. Do you see a trend here?

Related reading
All OCA tea posts (Pinboard)

Rights and wrongs, old and new

From The New Yorker, Neal Katyal on Samuel Alito’s thinking:

The question he says the Court should ask is whether the right is firmly rooted in the traditions of the people. And that has always been a controversial way of understanding things, because rights exist in our society at a broader level of abstraction. You don’t say, “Was there a right to abortion in 1787? Was there a right to contraception in 1787?” You ask it at a more general level about the degree of personal autonomy and freedom. But Alito turns the clock back on all of that and says that is not the test. And that is what this opinion says, page after page. It reads like an opinion from Robert Bork, the failed Reagan nominee for the Court, in 1987, who didn’t get confirmed because of exactly this issue. Robert Bork thought there was no general right to privacy, and rights had to be firmly rooted in the traditions of the people, and the right to use contraception, even if you are a married couple, was not something that existed in 1787. And that, to put it mildly, is not just an outdated but also wrong account of what our Founders gave us.

From Salon, Amanda Marcotte on Samuel Alito’s thinking:

Speaking of women’s suffrage, it’s a good thing it was obtained by constitutional amendment. If it weren’t, we can’t be sure that Alito wouldn’t be taking potshots at that right, as well. Alongside his contempt for women as rights-bearing people, this draft opinion is rife with loathing of any social progress made after the 19th century. Alito repeatedly notes that no right to abortion was legally established before “the latter part of the 20th century,” as if the relative newness of the legal right inherently makes it illegitimate.

“Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Zero. None,” he writes, the whiny tone unmistakable.

Of course, there are a plethora of rights that were not established until the latter part of the 20th century.

Women did not have the right to use birth control, have their own credit cards or bank accounts, be paid fairly for their work, or decline sex with a husband until the latter part of the 20th century, either. Jim Crow laws and segregated schools were still legal until the latter part of the 20th century. And, crucially, the rights to have sex in the privacy of your own home — even with someone of the same sex — and to have a same-sex marriage were established even later, in the 21st century.

Alito is aware of all this, and indeed, cites many of the cases that established these rights in his decision. He glibly dismisses the possibility that overturning Roe will lead to the overturn of the right to birth control or any LGBTQ rights, however, claiming that those are different because none involve “potential life.” But just as he claims that there should be no legal distinction between pre- and post-viability abortions, it’s easy to see how one could argue that contraception and homosexuality threaten “potential life” by redirecting sexual energies away from conception. This isn’t outlandish speculation, it is already the argument that the anti-choice movement makes against both legal contraception and legal homosexuality.

I'll add one detail, from page 32 of the draft opinion. Alito says that “attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy” are improper, leading perhaps to claims of a right to use drugs or to engage in assisted suicide or prostitution. Says Alito, “None of these rights has any claim to being deeply rooted in history.”

To insist that a claim to an unenumerated right should be rejected because it is not deeply rooted in history is, really, to reject the possibilities of change and progress that make history worth living through.

Harry Carney’s baritone

From WBUR, a nice feature on Harry Carney and the whereabouts of his baritone saxophone. Carney (1910–1974), a multi-instrumentalist (alto, baritone, clarinet, bass clarinet) was the anchor of the Duke Ellington band, joining in 1927 and staying on for life. Here is Whitney Balliett describing Carney’s baritone sound, a sound “that no other baritone saxophonist has matched”:

It could have housed an army. It was Wagnerian and Churchillian. And it was one of the most beautiful musical sounds ever devised.

It was.

Here’s what I think of as Carney’s greatest moment: a 1969 performance of “La Plus Belle Africaine.” In a post about the recording, I wrote that Carney’s massive sound “suggests canyons, or cathedrals.” I must have had Balliett’s sentences in the back of my head.

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)

[Balliett passage from New York Notes: A Journal of Jazz in the Seventies (1976).]

Roe

The New York Times newsletter The Morning has a brief but helpful discussion of the Supreme Court draft decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade, with links to many sources.

I looked at the text of the draft, here and there. The four points I found most chilling:

~ The characterization of Roe as the imposition of “the same highly restrictive regime” on the nation. To characterize a decision that affirms an individual freedom as the imposition of a “highly restrictive regime” suggests to me the “Freedom Is Slavery” logic of 1984. Access to abortion does nothing to restrict anyone’s right not to have an abortion.

~ The insistence that the question of abortion be left to the individual states. What further questions of individual freedom might now be left to the individual states to decide? The right to marry? Access to contraception?

~ The absence of the words incest and rape. The members of the majority are unwilling to acknowledge circumstances for which even some zealous opponents of abortion are willing to allow exceptions.

~ The long appendix of nineteenth-century statutes criminalizing abortion at all stages of pregnancy. From Texas, 1854:

every such offender, and every person counseling or aiding or abetting such offender, shall be punished by confinement to hard labor in the Penitentiary not exceeding ten years.

We are going backwards.

Space hotel

[File under A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do, period.]

Looking at CNN’s glimpses of life in a space hotel, I flashed on another interior, a modern “rec” room, as seen in an advertisement for Motorola televisions, Life, July 27, 1962. Gosh — the future future looks so much like the future past.

[In the hotel. Please notice the cellist, lost in space.]

[In the hotel. No curtains? No thanks!]

[Life, July 27, 1962. Click any image for a larger view.]

Thanks, Ben, for pointing our fambly to the space hotel.

[And by the way, contra CNN, you won’t be waking up with a view of the solar system, most of which will (still) be too far away, even if you’ve left earth. But you might be able to say, with Blaise Pascal, “Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie.”]

Mystery actor

I think he’s instantly recognizable, even through a wet windshield. But if not, the second picture might help.

[Click either image for a larger view.]

Leave your best guess in the comments. I’ll add hints if they’re needed.

*

The answer is now in the comments.

More mystery actors
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

Donald Evans’s stamps

“Watercolor stamps of imaginary countries”: Donald Evans: Philatelic Counter, an exhibit at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

[And for those of me far from the city, thank goodness for interlibrary loan.]