Twelve movies

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

Perfect Strangers (dir. Bretaigne Windust, 1950). It’s like Brief Encounter meets jury duty, with two members of a sequestered jury (Dennis Morgan and Ginger Rogers) falling in love, but those lackluster two aren’t a reason to watch the movie. The supporting cast is, especially Harry Bellaver as a genial bailiff, Margalo Gillmore as an old snob, Thelma Ritter as a wisenheimer, and Anthony Ross as a weird lecher. Brief appearances by George Chandler (Uncle Petrie from Lassie) are a bonus. One more reason to watch: a demonstration of the arcane procedure of selecting citizens to call for jury duty, which adds a semi-documentary flavor to the opening. ★★★ (TCM).

*

Jigsaw (dir. Fletcher Markle, 1949). Franchot Tone plays a DA investigating the Crusaders, a murderous hate group recruiting followers in the big city. A glimpse of the uniformed members, a sample of their rhetoric, would have done much to make the threat vivid. Instead we get the DA and others talking about the group and the danger they represent. The one unusual thing about this movie is the parade of cameos by actors with progressive leanings: Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, John Garfield, Marsha Hunt, Burgess Meredith, Everett Sloane. ★★ (YT)

*

The Crooked Way (dir. Robert Florey, 1949). Eddie Rice (John Payne) is just out of the hospital, a veteran with a permanent case of amnesia, but he comes to understand that he used to be Eddie Riccardi, a Los Angeles hoodlum. And a feral criminal enemy, Vince Alexander (Sonny Tufts), wants revenge. The story is sloppy: one must wonder why Vince doesn’t just have his goons make Eddie disappear. John Alton’s cinematography is the reason to watch: to borrow a phrase I invented to describe the work of another cinematographer, it’s a delirium of shadows. ★★★ (YT)

*

All Fall Down (dir. John Frankenheimer, 1962). Willart family values: a alcoholic father (Karl Malden), a mother (Angela Lansbury) whose desire for her older son is more than implied, that son (Warren Beatty), amoral, manipulative, often absent, and a cheerful, naive younger son (Brandon De Wilde) whose misconceived admiration for his big brother is boundless. Into the Willart world steps a friend’s self-described “old maid” daughter, Echo O’Brien (Eva Marie Saint), and everything goes even more haywire. A great performance from Saint, and a good one from De Wilde, but the movie is a painfully contrived mess: you know that the father is forever calling his older son “you old rhinoceros” just so that he can later say the guy’s a real rhinoceros — that is, a killer. The most unbearable thing about the movie: Beatty’s character is named Berry-Berry (like the disease, get it?), and that name is repeated over and over, with never no explanation, Berry-Berry. ★★ (TCM)

*

Armageddon Time (dir. James Gray, 2022). Circa 1980: two Queens sixth-graders, Paul (Banks Repeta) and Johnny (Jaylin Webb), the one white, Jewish, and moderately well off, the other Black and poor, strike up a friendship born of alienation and snark. The kids are wise in some ways, heartbreakingly naive in others, and their friendship is threatened by realities outside their control. With rotten teachers, inadequate parents (Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong), a wise grandfather (Anthony Hopkins), strange overtones of Huck and Jim, and a surprise appearance by Fred Trump (John Diehl). Low-key and compelling, and the best new movie I’ve seen in a long time. ★★★★ (N)

*

Nora Prentiss (dir. Voncent Sherman, 1947). High melodrama and noir, with Kent Smith as restless, married Richard Talbot, physician, and Ann Sheridan as Nora Prentiss, a nightclub singer. A chance meeting leads to an affair. So far it’s melodrama, but when Dr. Talbot is presented with the opportunity to escape his home life, the noir kicks in. Another great film from a year of wonders. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Highway 301 (dir. Andrew Stone, 1950). It’s a sad day when a movie opens with three real-life governors warning the viewer not to follow the path of the Tri-State Gang, a murderous outfit that operated in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia in the early 1930s, robbing banks, mail trucks, and military arsenals, and murdering with impunity. It’s Steve Cochran’s movie: he’s George Legenza, the leader of the gang, a psychopath who kills anyone who might complicate his work. What gives the movie greater interest: it’s a story of criminals and their wives and girlfriends, with the women — notably Virginia Grey — standing by their men, or not. Best scene: Legenza hunts Lee (Gaby Andre). ★★★★ (TCM)

*

From the Criterion Channel: Douglas Sirk Rarities

Thunder on the Hill (1951). The premise is wild: the rains have flooded Norwich and washed out a bridge, so Valerie Cairns (Ann Blyth), a murderer traveling to her execution, becomes a guest in a convent, along with her chaperones and numerous townsfolk. When a kindly, luminous nun, Sister Mary Bonaventure (Claudette Colbert), becomes convinced of Valerie’s innocence, the story begins to move. Supporting characters include the town doctor (Robert Douglas) and an addled handyman (Michael Pate). Great cinematography by William H. Daniels, with a powerful scene that must have influenced Hitchcock’s Vertigo. ★★★★

All I Desire (1953). Barbara Stanwyck plays Naomi Murdoch, a bottom-of-the-card turn-of-the-century vaudevillian who returns to her small-town husband and children after ten years on the road to see her daughter act in the senior play. The family thinks she’s a great success, but as she will tell them, “I’ve got no glory, no glamour, and bruises on my illusions.” It turns out that you can go home again, but not without facing the past you thought you’d left behind. With Richard Carlson, Marcia Henderson, Lori Nelson, and a sinister Lyle Bettger. ★★★★

The Tarnished Angels (1957). From the William Faulkner novel Pylon. It’s the Depression (though it looks like the 1950s), with air ace turned stunt pilot Robert Shumann (Robert Stack), his ill-treated parachutist wife LaVerne (Dorothy Malone), his maybe-son Jack (Christopher Olsen) his mechanic Jiggs (Jack Carson), and an alcoholic newspaperman, Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson), who’s come in search of human interest and to find out what became of Shumann. Some scenes of dangerous aviation, but the movie is a character study, with a strong contrast between Shumann’s coarse amorality (he married LaVerne on a roll of the dice) and Devlin’s gentleness. The first things Devlin does: he stops some young bullies and buys bullied Jack an ice cream cone. ★★★★

*

The Illusionist (dir. Neil Burger, 2006). It’s from Steven Millhauser’s story “Eisenheim the Illusionist,” so I wanted to love this movie without reservation. But it turns Millhauser’s story of an ascetic uber-magician into a story of imperial intrigue (Rufus Sewell as Crown Prince Leopold), cat-and-mouse with the law (Paul Giamatti as Inspector Uhl), and love (Jessica Biel as Sophie). And all the effects that are better left on the page, for a reader’s imagination to make real, are here the work of CGI. I’m adding a star for the wildly inventive ending. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Wittgenstein (dir. Derek Jarman, 1993). I realized as I watched that I had tried once before — years ago — and had given up. Karl Johnson bears an eerie resemblance to Ludwig Wittgenstein, but that’s about all I found to like about this movie, which to my mind presents a Wittgenstein without interiority, without thinking, a farcical figure making pronouncements and being met with bewilderment or sudden enlightenment (students) or amused condescension (Michael Gough as Bertrand Russell). Factoids from Norman Malcolm’s memoir — e.g., Wittgenstein the Betty Hutton and Carmen Miranda fan — are here in abundance, in one blackout scene after another. There is also a green Martian. ★ (CC)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

In search of lost Beau Hunks

I’ve been searching for one of my Beau Hunks CDs, The Beau Hunks Play the Original “Little Rascals” Music. My other two Beau Hunks CDs — Celebration On The Planet Mars: A Tribute to Raymond Scott and On to the Show! — are exactly where they should be. So where was the CD that I wanted?

Was it among the stacks of CDs atop the turntable? No.

Was it among the stacks of CDs atop the CD player? No.

Was it among the random CDs occupying part of a bookcase shelf? No.

Was it among the random CDs occupying part of a shelf in a different bookcase? Again, no.

But I found it in the CD shelves, out of place, to the right, not left, of Beethoven.

My discovery confirms the wisdom of Professor Solomon’s claim in How to Find Lost Objects: objects “tend to travel no more than eighteen inches from their original location.”

[If you’ve never heard the Beau Hunks play LeRoy Shield’s Little Rascals music, here’s a sample. That’s a music of my childhood, on WPIX-TV, early in the morning before going to school.]

Loring Grill

[156 West Fordham Road, The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Recall Brooklyn’s Unique Diner: in The Bronx, as in Brooklyn, urban planning apparently required that a dining car to be dropped into the empty slot.

The archives give no street address for the Loring Grill (a short walk from Loring Place), but searching for block=3225 AND lot=169 BX reveals the address. In recent years, no. 156 has been building-less. I suspect it has been building-less since the dining car disappeared. Google Maps shows the location from 2007 to 2022 as a vacant lot, a holding area for an auto-repair shop, a holding area with a storefront security door, and a vacant lot with a storefont security door. The brick building that housed the Gulf station and later auto-repair shop still stands, now boarded off from the sidewalk.

Telephone number for the Loring Grill in 1940: FOrdham 4-8824.

*

An assiduous diner-friendly reader found on two relevant pages. Here’s a view of the diner and environs from the east. And here’s a 1947 yearbook advertisement for Charles Tschudin’s Tolentine Diner — same address, different phone number. The yearbook is from St. Nicholas of Tolentine High School. St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church is a block away, at the corner of West Fordham Road and University Avenue.

Also: “A young woman and three men who stole a taxicab yesterday morning and then held up a lunch wagon at 156 West Fordham Road, the Bronx, were captured after they had led two policemen a wild chase for miles through the northern part of the Bronx and Harlem”: The New York Times, January 27, 1931. The owner was a Fred Zucht. The lunch wagon was held up at 1:00 a.m.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives

[Why do I insist on capitalizing the t? Because it’s The Bronx.]

“In real time”

An MSNBC reporter at CPAC: “These are the conversations that are playing out in real time.”

Merriam-Webster: “the actual time during which something takes place.” So yes, like all other conversations, these play out in the actual time during which they take place. Thanks for the clarification, MSNBC.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by S.N., Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor. Too much dated trivia for my taste: e.g., 5-D, six letters, “2009 Forbes Celebrity 100 novelist” and 25-A, seven letters, “It’s sung about in ‘Happy Morning’ ads (c. 2006).” The highlight: two wonderfully unexpected twelve-letter answers.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

6-A, five letters, “Early influence on Asimov.” Think of a writer and you’d be wrong.

14-A, five letters, “Select.” Select your part of speech.

18-A, nine letters, “Selection from Seagram’s.” I think that’s a bit of misdirection.

21-D, four letters, “Surname akin to Russo.“ Huh.

24-D, seven letters, “Basis of comparison re primary school success.” Never heard of it.

37-D, eight letters, “First ones in the fight” Trace Adkins tune. I tried REDNECKS. Oops. Woe is I.

41-D, seven letters, “Bon Appétit’s ‘invention that redefined baking.’” We were just talking about it, though not about the magazine.

42-D, four letters, “Much, much more than a wink.” I thought it had to be LEER.

44-D, six letters and 51-D, five letters, “Title character of 19th-century French lit.” A bit tricky.

55-A, nine letters, “Height of a media mogul’s ambition.” Clever.

One quibble: 34-A, five letters, “Telenovela 39 Down.” I think there’s another word that would be far more typical.

My (obvious) favorites in this puzzle: 30—A, twelve letters, “Many Peruvians’ ancestry” and 40-A, twelve letters, “Extraordinarily bright.” Bright indeed. Brilliant even.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Mystery actors

[Click for a larger view.]

From a movie teeming with familiar faces in small roles.

If you know their names, or might know them, leave them in a comment.

*

That was fast. The names are now in the comments.

More mystery actors
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Wayne Shorter (1933-2023)

The saxophonist (tenor, soprano) and composer has died at the age of eighty-nine. The New York Times has an obituary.

Here are some “Footprints”: one, and another, and another, and another (incomplete), and one more. The last is an especially great short lesson in musical communication.

Recently updated

“THAT AIN’T HAY” Why the name Rose Dorn.

Glenmorangie redesign

The change was made last summer, but it showed up at our nearby beverage depot only recently.

Here’s what Glenmorangie bottles used to look like. And here’s what they look like now. The standard ten-year-old bottle is now more Glen-orangey, but it also looks pretty dumb: GLEN, MO, RAN, GIE.

And why display Lasanta ($60) and Quinta Ruben ($75) in large glasses crammed with fruit and ice? That stuff is meant to be sipped, I tell ya, sipped, from a tiny little glass, maybe with a tiny little bit of water. The fruit-and-ice presentation makes me think of a purveyor of fine meats showing steaks slathered in ketchup.

Related posts
Glen or Glenda : Spelling Glenmorangie with Slide to Type

A joke in the traditional manner

What do cows like to watch on TV?

The punchline is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
The Autobahn : Did you hear about the cow coloratura? : Did you hear about the new insect hybrid? : Did you hear about the shape-shifting car? : Did you hear about the thieving produce clerk? : Elementary school : A Golden Retriever : How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect? : How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling? : How do amoebas communicate? : How do ghosts hide their wrinkles? : How do worms get to the supermarket? : Of all the songs in the Great American Songbook, which is the favorite of pirates? : What did the doctor tell his forgetful patient to do? : What did the plumber do when embarrassed? : What do dogs always insist on when they buy a car? : What happens when a senior citizen visits a podiatrist? : What is the favorite toy of philosophers’ children? : What’s the name of the Illinois town where dentists want to live? : What’s the worst thing about owning nine houses? : What was the shepherd doing in the garden? : Where do amoebas golf? : Where does Paul Drake keep his hot tips? : Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money? : Who’s the lead administrator in a school of fish? : Why are supervillains good at staying warm in the winter? : Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels? : Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies? : Why did the ophthalmologist and his wife split up? : Why does Marie Kondo never win at poker? : Why is the Fonz so cool? : Why sharpen your pencil to write a Dad joke? : Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He gets credit for the Autobahn, the elementary school, the Golden Retriever, Bela Lugosi, Samuel Clemens, the doctor, the plumber, the senior citizen, Oliver Hardy, and the ophthalmologist. Elaine gets credit for the Illinois town. Ben gets credit for the supervillains in winter. My dad was making such jokes long before anyone called them dad jokes.]