Ten movies, two seasons

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

Lou Grant (created by James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, and Gene Reynolds, 1980–1981). Among the topics in season four: sexual harassment, chemical dumping, a police killing, rape, the rights of birth parents and adopted children, survivalists, migrant workers, and mudslides. One weakness of the series: the parceling out of different points of view sometimes requires that someone play the City Room idiot, as when Billie Newman dismisses the reality of sexual harassment in the workplace. “Rape” is an especially powerful episode, with Lynne Moody giving a standout performance (one of her two appearances in the series). The other standout: Nancy Marchand’s portrayal of newspaper owner Margaret Pynchon as a stroke victim (in “Stroke”). ★★★★ (YT)

Lou Grant (1981–1982). I know that Ed Asner insisted that the series was cancelled because of his political activity, but I think the writers were beginning to struggle for new ideas. In this final season we have friends and relations who appear out of nowhere (à la Murder, She Wrote) and story lines that go into the past: WWII concentration camps for Japanese-Americans, the HUAC hearings and the blacklist. One great episode: “Hometown,” in which Lou visits Michigan and meets an old love. Better still: “Jazz,” with Louie Bellson, Ray Brown, and Joe Williams, who prove themselves capable actors. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Two by Cyril Endfield
The Argyle Secrets (1948). A low-budget Maltese Falcon-like story, with the Argyle Album, a dossier on Nazi collaborators in the United States, as the object of interest. Newspaperman Harry Mitchell (William Gargan) searches for the album (not knowing at first what it is) and encounters other searchers: a Mary Astor type (Marjorie Lord), a Sydney Greenstreet type (John Banner), and another Sydney Greenstreet type (Jack Reitzen). Emulating Sam Spade, Mitchell even mails an envelope to himself. Funnest scene: dropping in on the boy practicing the violin. ★★ (TCM)

The Underworld Story (1950). The premise is not complicated: amoral newspaperman Mike Reese (Dan Duryea) gets paid off by a crime boss and uses the money to buy a small-town paper. And lo, there’s corruption in Lakeville, as in the big city, with a Black maid being set up to take the rap for a murder committed by the son of an wealthy white father. I liked the cinematography and the depiction of little Lakeville, a New England town with narrow brick sidewalks and an Old English Bookshop. The weak point is Dan Duryea as Reese, who changes for no apparent reason from bad guy to good. ★★ (TCM)

*

More evenings with Dan Duryea
Black Angel (dir. Roy William Neill, 1946). It turns out that we’d seen it in 2015, but it wasn’t until we were forty minutes in that it looked familiar. When a poor unsuspecting sap is sentenced to death for murder, his singer wife (June Vincent) and the dead woman’s ex-husband, an alcoholic songwriter (Dan Duryea), attempt to find the real killer. Honestly, this movie is much better than it might sound, with spiffy production, memorable bit parts (Wallace Ford, Hobart Cavanaugh), and Peter Lorre as a sinister nightclub owner. And then there’s the repeating phonograph. ★★★★ (YT)

‌Johnny Stool Pigeon (dir. William Castle, 1949). A federal agent (Howard Duff) enlists a convict (Dan Duryea) in an effort to infiltrate an international narcotics ring. The story begins in semi-documentary style but switches to straight drama when Shelley Winters appears as a romantic interest. Stealing the movie: John McIntire, as a deceptively cheery cowboy-hatted drug dealer. Best moment: Duryea, in the gutter, whining: “Copper! Copper!” ★★★ (YT)

*

Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch, 1986). I must have smartened up in the last thirty-five years — or else I’ve just watched more movies. I remembered Blue Velvet as bizarre and incoherent; now it looks like a wonderful entertainment, a stylized noir-like exploration of small-town seaminess and sadism via a magic bag of movie tropes. With Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper, Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, and Dean Stockwell. I am imagining the bag of tropes as made of blue velvet. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Klute (dir. Alan J. Pakula, 1971). John Klute (Donald Sutherland), a detective investigating the disappearance of a businessman, finds his way to Bree Daniel (Jane Fonda), call girl and aspiring actress. It turns out she’s being stalked by — who? Fonda gives a great performance, self-assured when she’s turning a trick, less confident when she’s auditioning for an acting role. Essay assignment, 2 1/2 pages: What does it mean that the movie is titled Klute and not, say, Bree or Daniel? ★★★★ (YT)

*

Karen Dalton: In My Own Time (dir. Richard Peete and Robert Yapkowitz, 2020). Though she enjoyed little commercial success in her lifetime, Karen Dalton (1937–1993) is now recognized as a distinctive, influential singer. I have to admit that I don’t hear what other people hear in her voice, and I find the favorable comparisons to Billie Holiday baffling. But I enjoyed this well-made documentary, filled with archival photographs and contemporary interviews with Dalton’s daughter and denizens of the folk-music world. The strangest thing about listening to Dalton: one of her ex-husbands was a one-time co-worker of mine, and I had no idea. ★★★★ (CC)

*

The Last Waltz (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1978). On Thanksgiving Day 1976, at the Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, the Band gave a farewell performance with a host of guests, including Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Ronnie Hawkins, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and Neil Young. The music is fine, though several guest spots feel like perfunctory interruptions. Also detracting from my enjoyment: the enormous Confederate flag on display in one interview segment, the toxic masculinity on display in many interview segments, and the obvious presence of various substances in various musicians’ bloodstreams. My favorite moments: “Mannish Boy” (Muddy Waters and the Band), “The Weight” (the Staple Singers and the Band, in an added studio performance). ★★★ (CC)

*

From the Criterion Channel feature Billy Wilder’s 1940s
Five Graves to Cairo (1943). What a beginning: the Second World War is on, and a tank full of dead Brits rolls through the Egyptian desert, one corpse’s foot still pressed to the gas. A lone survivor, John Bramble (Franchot Tone), climbs out and finds his way to a recently bombed hotel that houses only its owner (Akim Tamiroff) and a maid (Anne Baxter). When German officers arrive, Bramble assumes the identity of a dead servant and ingratiates himself with the enemy. Chills, thrills, Casablanca overtones, the mysterious “five graves,” and Eric von Stroheim (as Erwin Rommel) make for a satisfying night at the movies. ★★★★ (CC)

A Foreign Affair (1948). A romantic triangle in post-war Berlin. Jean Arthur is Phoebe Frost, a prim member of a congressional delegation investigating troop morale in the city; John Lund is Captain John Pringle; Marlene Dietrich is Erika von Schlütow, a cabaret singer of interest to the investigators. Lubitsch-touch comedy amid the ruins of a city: it’s a bizarre, compelling premise. My favorite moment: pursuit and escape amid file cabinets. ★★★★ (CC)

[The other movies in the Wilder feature: Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945).]

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)

[About The Last Waltz: a chunk of cocaine in Neil Young’s nose was obscured in post-production. I don’t think of “Mannish Boy” as an instance of toxic masculinity: to my ear the song sounds like comic sexual boasting and a serious affirmation of adult personhood: “No B — o, child — y.”]

HB, or no. 2

Jerry Hollister (Logan Ramsey) makes a complaint about Art Donovan (Jack Bannon). Lou (Ed Asner) is skeptical. From the Lou Grant episode “Friends” (December 28, 1981):

Hollister: “He was wigged out. He kept threatening me with a pencil. I just wanted him to get out of there.”

Grant: “A pencil. An HB, or a no. 2?”

Other Lou Grant posts
Lost LA : Lou’s who : Visitors to the newsroom

[Lead varies: one maker’s no. 2 might make a line similar to another maker’s no. 1. But HB and no. 2 are synonymous. HB: “hard black (denoting a medium hardness)” (OED).]

Unseemly fortune

From our Thai restaurant’s fortune cookies:

There is a massive opportunity
 sitting right under your nose.

In this time of ultra-high pollen and mold counts, that seems like a terribly unseemly fortune.

The real context for this cookie: cryptocurrency. Every fortune is an ad, veiled on the fortune side, explicit on the other.

Jack White, Beatles savant

This is extraordinary: “Jack White showcases his hidden talent of being able to recognize any Beatles song instantly.”

[I got six of twelve.]

Apollo

[Apollo Theater, 253 W. 125th Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a larger view.]

According to this compendium of Apollo shows, the February 23, 1940 bill had Lucky Millinder as headliner. Supporting acts included The Four Step Brothers and Three Magnandes. Click for a larger view and you’ll see these names.

Here’s a sample of the Millinder sound. Here are The Four Step Brothers in action. I’ve got nothing on the Magnandes, or whatever that name might be. (Machandis?)

My dad saw Billie Holiday at the Apollo.

Related posts
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is a rerun (with updates) from 2012 while Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, is on vacation. The puzzle is by Anna Stiga (“Stan Again”) the pseudonym that signals an easier Stumper, but I found this one tough. Just two clues feel dated: 42-A, three letters, “GM news of 2010” and 60-A, five letters, “Dockers’ cousins.” The clue that broke open the puzzle for me: 45-A, seven letters, “Prime time for oysters.”

Some other clue-and-answer pairs of note:

6-A, nine letters, “Conclusive procedures.” SYLLOGISMS won’t fit.

6-D, seven letters, “Carrying mail.” Nicely misleading.

8-D, seven letters, “Of volcanic origin.” My daughter learned the three kinds of rocks in grade school. This one I remember. Some rocks!

13-D, six letters, “Greek bread spread.” But I think the Middle East might have something to say about it.

18-A, nine letters, “Longfellow lover.” Now there’s an out-of-the-way name.

34-A, six letters, “Pulitzer winner for The Good War.” It’s good to find his name in a puzzle.

46-D, six letters, “Refusal of assistance.” I like the terseness.

58-A, five letters, “‘Bow down, archangels, in your dim _____’: Yeats.” Good to see his name too.

My favorite from this puzzle: 19-A, nine letters, “It may be underfoot.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Spelling fail

[Beetle Bailey, June 11, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

In the words of another comic strip, “Good grief!”

[Beetle Bailey, June 11, 2022. My correction. Click for a larger view.]

I can think of two possible explanations other than a plain old mistake on the assembly line. Perhaps the strip’s makers feared that the correct spelling would look wrong to their readers. Or perhaps the mistake belongs to Sarge. “O solo mee-o”?

A few other troubling Beetle Bailey posts
Bathrooms : Fingers : Ketchup : Pillow : Razors : “Some rocks” : Squirrels : Toilet bowls

Book chain

I like this story from Southampton, England: “Human chain move thousands of books into new October Books store” (Daily Echo).

[But shouldn’t that be moves?]

A moral umbrella

The scene: the Antient Concert Rooms, before the music begins. Hoppy Holohan, the concert’s manager, leads a memeber of the press to a room. Another member of the press is already there.

James Joyce, “A Mother,” in Dubliners (1914).

I read this story aloud yesterday as Elaine sewed. (What century are we living in?) This passage was one of many that made us laugh, also aloud, repeatedly.

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)

A husband

Meet Mrs. Kearney’s husband, a bootmaker on Ormond Quay:

James Joyce, “A Mother,” in Dubliners (1914).

Spoiler alert: Mrs. Kearney, manager of her daughter Kathleen’s budding musical career, driver of a hard bargain, does almost all the talking for her family. Kathleen speaks just twice. Mr. Kearney never says a word.

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)