Better living through TV

A criminal, in Hi-Jacked (dir. Sam Newfield, 1950):

“How’d we ever get along without television?”

[He just got the idea for his next crime from a television feature about a showroom full of furs. Post title from The Honeymooners.]

The mind-body problem

[After turning on the car’s AC.]

“Is it blowing on us and our feet?”

👍 ?

The Unbearable Ambiguity of Emoji: Does 👍 mean “I accept the contract that you just texted me,” or “I’m acknowledging receipt of the contract”?

🤔.

Knees, outer, inner

Steven Millhauser, “The Pleasures and Sufferings of Young Gautama,” in Voices in the Night (2015).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

Shameless fambly promotion:

The New Grown-Ups (our son Ben and friends) have a six-track digital release available from Bandcamp. It’s called Treehopper. As the group describes their music,

The New Grown-Ups blend traditional folk, country, blues, Celtic, old time, originals, and bluegrass into a snafu of contemporary acoustic music.

They sound great. Free to listen, $5 to buy, or more if you like.

Twelve movies

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

Hi-Jacked (dir. Sam Newfield, 1950). A truckdriver on parole finds himself under suspicion when his cargo of mink coats is hijacked. As trucker Joe Harper, Jim Davis (later of Dallas) looks like a cross between Burt Lancaster and Elvis Presley, but he unmemorable on the screen. Sid Melton provides odd comic moments in a movie that ends up with four or five people dead. What keeps this movie from a one-star rating: diner scenes with Iris Adrian as a waitress with an endless supply of snappy patter. ★★ (YT)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Method Acting feature

The Pawnbroker (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1964). “Sol Nazerman, the walking dead,” shouts a fellow Holocaust survivor. Nazerman lost his wife, his children, his friends, and his ability to feel for anyone, as his management of his East Harlem pawnshop makes clear. His life in the present is mostly a matter of his dealings with a lone employee (Jaime Sánchez), who sees him as a mentor, and a crime king (Brock Peters), who uses the pawnshop for money laundering. Into this present comes the insistent intrusion of the past, in brief or not-so-brief flashes on the screen, all of which make me think that post-traumatic stress is never truly post. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Strongroom (dir. Vernon Sewell, 1962). Relatively short and totally gripping: three aspiring young criminals lock over a just-closed bank and lock the manager and secretary into a strongroom. One of the robbers is supposed to leave the keys in a phone booth and notify the police, but something goes wrong, leaving the victims to be found — somehow — or else die a slow death over a holiday weekend. There’s meaningful dialogue between manager and secretary (the locked-in-a-room trope), but the real story here is that of the keys, with strong elements of due diligence and devotion to duty. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Outside the Wall (dir. Crane Wilbur, 1950). Richard Basehart is an interesting player in the world of noir: he didn’t have the looks for it, and here, as in Tension (1949), he plays something of a sad sack who rises to the noirish occasion. As Larry Nelson, he’s a man of thirty, pardoned after fifteen years in prison, inexperienced in all ways of the world outside prison. He seeks tranquility in a low-paying job at a sanitarium but finds himself in complicated trouble with vicious gangsters (Harry Morgan, for one) and beautiful nurses (Dorothy Hart and Marilyn Maxwell). Some great on-location footage makes the movie, here and there, a Philadelphia version of The Naked City. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Sin of Nora Moran (dir. Phil Goldstone, 1933). Pre-Code in its frankness, but postmodern in its structure. Nora (Zita Johann) is sentenced to be executed for a murder she did not commit. The interest here comes from the narrative, which presents the movie’s story via montages and flashbacks that make it difficult to know what has happened when. This obscure (I think) movie deserves to be better known. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Blind Date, aka Chance Meeting (dir. Joseph Losey, 1959). An affair between a young painter (Hardy Krüger) and an older married woman (Micheline Presle) goes wrong, and the painter finds himself the prime suspect in a murder. If it had been made a steamy quarter-century later, it might have been an erotic thriller. But it’s just fine as is, though a bit slow-moving. There’s a Hitchcock connection, a strong one, but I can’t name the movie without giving everything away. ★★★ (YT)

*

The Unseen (dir. Lewis Allen, 1945). What a difference a year makes: this movie is a sequel of sorts to Allen’s The Uninvited, but it’s not nearly as good. Here we have a young governess (Gail Russell of The Uninvited) caring for the young children of a grumpy windower (Joel McCrea) in a big old house right next to a big old closed-up house with mysterious goings-on. I appreciated the overtones of The Turn of the Screw, but there are zero chills, zero thrills, and the story is painfully implausible. ★★ (YT)

*

Circle of Danger (dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1951). This movie would seem to have every advantage: a great director, fine writing and cinematography (Philip MacDonald, Oswald Morris), a capable cast, led by Ray Milland, and a title that promises (à la Ministry of Fear) some satisfying noir. But where is the danger? The story is reminiscent of The Third Man: an American (Milland) comes to post-war England to find out the truth about what happened to his brother, a volunteer with British forces who was shot in the head, apparently by one of his fellow soldiers. On the way to the quick, anti-climactic ending, too much time is devoted to a baffling courtship that pairs Milland and a writer of children’s books (Patricia Roc) who’s always put out about his showing up late and who really needs to get over herself. ★★ (YT)

*

The Seventh Veil (dir. Compton Bennett, 1945). First there was The Seventh Victim (1943), then The Seventh Cross (1944). This film is far less compelling, the story of a concert pianist, Francesca (Ann Todd) controlled by her second cousin, Nicholas (James Mason). When Francesca attempts suicide, a psychiatrist (Herbert Lom) steps in to plumb her past with the aid of narcosis and remove the veils that hide the secrets of the mind. Some great concert scenes (I watched always afraid that something would go wrong), but the pace is slow and the movie doesn’t even try to justify its ending — an ending that made us yell at the TV. ★★ (YT)

*

Spy Hunt (dr. George Sherman, 1950). A crazy premise: a vital piece of microfilm is hidden in the collar of one of two black panthers on a train traveling from from Milan to Paris. When the train is sabotaged and the freight car derails in the Alps, the panthers escape, the hunt is on, and a small group gathers in an Alpine inn run by a kindly doctor (Walter Slezak): the animals’ handler (Howard Duff), a journalist who wants a story (Märta Torén), a big-game hunter, an artist who wants to sketch the panthers, and another journalist. But how many of these folks are enemy agents? Torén’s coolness under pressure, Irving Glassberg’s cinematography, two truly menacing beasts, and a suspenseful scene with gunpowder make for a superior film. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Catered Affair (dir. Richard Brooks, 1956). It’s a Marty world, with a family living in a Bronx apartment: a cabdriver father (Tom Hurley), his wife Aggie (Bette Davis), children Jane and Eddie (Debbie Reynolds, Ray Stricklyn), and Aggie’s brother Uncle Jack (Barry Fitzgerald). The problem at hand: Jane is marrying a fellow (Rod Taylor) from a family a greater means, and the young people want a simple wedding, but Aggie is determined that it be a grand affair. I wanted to like this movie much more than I did: Borgnine, Davis, and Reynolds are fine (even if Reynolds makes an improbable daughter), but Gore Vidal’s screenplay (from Paddy Chayefsky’s play) is condescendin’, Barry Fitzgerald’s Irish shtick is insufferable, and the saccharine ending makes me squirm. ★★ (TCM)

*

One Way Street (dir. Hugo Fregonese, 1950). The film begins with lines from an unidentified “Song of a Fatalist”:

Waste no moment, nor a single breath
In fearful flight from Death;
For no matter the tears that may be wept,
The appointment will be kept.

The plot is simple and compelling: a doctor (James Mason) serving a crime boss (Dan Duryea) and his henchmen makes off with the boss’s girlfriend (Märta Torén) and loot. The couple flee to rural Mexico and make a new life, with the doctor as a venerated healer of humans and horses — but there’ll be trouble ahead, or behind. Overtones of “The Appointment in Samarra,” Out of the Past, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre run through the story. ★★★★ (YT)

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

R. Bozzo

[406 Third Avenue, Gowanus, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Those were some mean streets in Gowanus. But the restaurant on the corner abided. From 1913 to 1951, Ralph Bozzo ran that restaurant/coffeehouse. I puzzled over the name on the awning until I searched Brooklyn Newsstand for this Third Avenue address.

In 1940, Ralph and Jennie Bozzo were living with three daughters at 153 86th Street, in the Fort Hamilton section of Brooklyn — quite a contrast to the mean streets of Gowanus. Ralph is the only Bozzo in the 1940 Brooklyn telephone directory.

In the news: In September 1915, George Bozzo, eighteen, most likely Ralph’s son, was fined $10 for violating a liquor tax law at the Third Avenue address. In August 1918, Dominick Bozzo, also at that address, most likely another son, went off to fight in the Great War. I’ll guess that the family was living upstairs. Is this Dominick Bozzo the one Dominick Bozzo (1894–1985) listed in the Social Security Death Index? Perhaps. In 1940 a Dominick Bozzo lived in Manhattan and ran a fruit and vegetable store on Madison Avenue. But that Dominick, whose age as given in the 1940 census (forty-five) fits, was born in Italy. George isn’t listed in the SSDI, and no sons are mentioned in Ralph’s obituary. Some mysteries are meant to remain mysteries.

It appears that Ralph wasn’t easily gulled, or mulcted. From a 1920 news item, mostly about Leroy W. Ross, the Brooklyn DA, urging residents to visit saloons, order drinks, and report those who served them. This bit at the end is about phony Revenue agents scamming those selling liquor:

[“Urges Citizens to Buy Drinks: Ross Then Would Have Public Report Success to Dry Forces.” Brooklyn Citizen, November 19, 1920. Click for a larger view.]

And here’s an obituary:

[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 28, 1951. Click for a larger view.]

Today, 406 is home to Halyards, which describes itself as “your neighborhood cocktail bar and oasis among the gritty Gowanus industrial streets.” I think they mean mean streets, or formerly mean.

I had planned to post nothing more than a Hopperesque street scene this morning, but pulling on one thread — in this case, the street address — opened up a rabbit hole, as well as a mixed metaphor.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Brooklyn in the news

From Gothamist:

Nearly every Sunday morning for four years, residents of a quiet block in Greenpoint, Brooklyn woke up to reams of paper dumped on their street. A serial litterer was precisely slicing pages from old Reader’s Digests, Bibles, junk mail and 1970s porn magazines before dumping them on tree-lined Noble Street between Manhattan Avenue and Franklin Street. Surveillance videos captured the driver tossing the pages from his car before sunrise.

Who? Why? You’ll have to click through for an answer to, at least, the first question.

[I’m reminded of the Toynbee tiles. I got to see one in 2017.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stella Zawistowski. I started with 1-D, four letters, “Small row” and 14-A, five letters, “Artistic lamentation.” The puzzle soon grew more difficult, and one clue gave me fits.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note, including the fit one:

5-D, fourteen letters, “Steamers, for instance.” Wow, or whoa. I was thinking clams.

16-D, fourteen letters, “Expression of lost love lamentation.” Wow again. I loved seeing the answer in a crossword.

19-A, seven letters, “Overemotional oratory.” The form of the answer makes the clue tricky.

22-A, five letters, “Name on the ACC member list.” Perversely trivial. And is the answer even a name? I don’t think so.

33-A, nine letters, “Haydn opera.” The clue that gave me fits. Even if the answer is correct — and Elaine says it’s not — the clue is just ridic. More in the comments.

35-A, fifteen letters, “Symbol of proletarian solidarity.” If you say so. But I don’t think many working people would recognize it as such.

41-D, three letters, “With 42 Down, Palme d’Or winner for 1993.” Random trivia, which I hugely dislike in crosswords. Ah, yes, the ’93 winner, not ’92 or ’94. Who knows this, and who’ll remember it a week from now? And I always dislike common words clued as trivia.

43-A, five letters, “Evidence of encryption.” I am happy to say I knew it.

49-A, seven letters, “Onetime big name in beverages.” Onetime? I have a bottle of their gin (cheap!) in the kitchen. But the clue might have more to do with corporate history than with a name present on store shelves.

My favorite in this puzzle: 45-D, five letters, “What a loud barker might be called.” Just plain clever.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments, along with more about 33-A.

Tony Bennett (1926–2023)

Tony Bennett has died at the age of ninety-six. The New York Times has an obituary (gift link).

From Whitney Balliett’s American Singers: Twenty-Seven Portraits in Song (1988):

Alec Wilder, who has known Bennett for many years, once wrote, “The list of ’believers’ isn’t very long. But those who are on it are very special people. Among them, certainly, is Tony Bennett. But first I should say what I mean by a believer. He is one whose sights stay high, who makes as few concessions as he can, whose ideals will not permit him to follow false trails or fashions for notoriety’s or security’s sake, who takes chances, who seeks to convey, by whatever means, his affections and convictions, and who has faith in the power of beauty to survive, no matter how much squalor and ugliness seek to suppress it. I am close enough to him to know that his insistence on maintaining his musical convictions has been far from easy. His effervescent delight in bringing to his audiences the best songs, the best musicians, the best of his singing and showmanship is apparent to anyone who has the good sense to listen to him in person or on records.”

Here are just two samples of Tony Bennett with Bill Evans, both from On the Town, words by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, music by Leonard Bernstein: “Lucky to Be Me” and “Some Other Time.”

[Sorry, New York Times, Tony Bennett was not, as your headline has it, a “jazzy crooner.”]