Charlie Watts: Literature and Jazz

A Christie’s auction: Charlie Watts: Literature and Jazz, Part I, Part II. Amazing browsing awaits. One detail: Watts owned a cigarette holder, lighter, and pocket ashtray that belonged to Art Tatum. The only word that goes with that? Reverence.

Ellington Live has a post that collects all the Duke Ellington material.

Mr. Parrish and Mrs. Cameron

[Walter Baldwin and Dorothy Adams in The Jackpot (dir. Walter Lang, 1950). Click for a larger view.]

It’s just a brief scene with bit players: a customer looking to buy a watch, a salesclerk trying to find something he’ll like. But there must have been someone in a 1950 audience who appreciated the pairing of Walter Baldwin and Dorothy Adams in this scene. They appeared as next-door neighbors in The Best Years of Our Lives (dir. William Wyler, 1946). Baldwin played Homer Parrish’s father, “Mr. Parrish”; Adams played Wilma Cameron’s mother, “Mrs. Cameron.” That was back when lifelong neighbors might address one another by surname.

[Homer: Harold Russell. Wilma: Cathy O’Donnell.]

Eleven movies, one mini-series

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

The Jackpot (dir. Walter Lang, 1950). Elaine found it, a movie with a screenplay by Henry Ephron and Phoebe Efron (Nora and Delia’s parents) from a story by the New Yorker writer John McNulty. Jimmy Stewart and Barbara Hale star as a canasta-playing suburban couple suddenly drowning in canned soup, meat, trees, and countless other prizes from a radio quiz show (totaling $24,000, or $304,000 today). They not only have to find space for their new stuff; they have to figure out how to pax taxes, which leads to various crazy harebrained schemes. It’s all as corny as downstate Illinois, with a few bright moments, and a chance to see Barbara Hale (Della Street) in a comic role. ★★ (YT)

*

Telemarketers (dir. Sam Lipman-Stern and Adam Bhala Lough, 2023). A documenttary exposé of fundraising for police, firefighters, and PACs, with Sam Lipman-Stern and Pat Pespas, two men who know the world well. The business model is, no surprise, shady, but in so many ways: fifty shades of shady, with false claims and crafty dodges abounding. Pat, a now-recovering addict, is something of a more genuine (and far less affluent) Michael Moore, speaking to people in high places, some of whom receive him with genuine interest, some of whom are merely patronizing (I’m looking at you, Senator Richard Blumenthal). This three-part series makes me feel good about all the times I hung up on yet another solicitation; it makes me feel even better about having ditched our landline and the distractions it brought our household. ★★★★ (M)

*

The Night Runner (dir. Abner Biberman, 1957). Truly, deeply strange: Roy Turner (Ray Danton), a mental patient with a propensity for sudden violence, is released from a institution (they need the space) and finds refuge at a small roadside motel, where he readies himself to reenter the working world as a draftsman. A romance develops with the motel owner’s daughter (Colleen Miller), and all goes well until her father learns about Roy’s past. Some genuinely suspenseful moments as Roy (no mere maniac) tries to avert suspicion. Hey, watch out for that nail polish. ★★★ (YT)

*

A Woman’s Vengeance (dir. Zoltan Korda, 1948). “You seem to think this business is like something in the movies, or in a novel,” says one character to another. Well, yes: when a wealthy, unhappy, sickly woman (Rachel Kempson) dies, suspicion falls on her nurse (Mildred Natwick), her oldest friend (Jessica Tandy), and her philandering husband (Charles Boyer), who has recently taken up with a teenager (Ann Blyth). Was it murder, or was it a suicide designed to look like murder? The herring here is bright red, but the movie is, still, melodrama of a high order, with strong performances from Boyer, Tandy, and Cedric Hardwicke as a doctor who makes house calls. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Keep Sweet (dir. Don Argott, 2021). A documentary about the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whose members follow the teachings of their prophet Warren Jeffs, who advises women and girls to keep sweet, pray, and obey. It’s fascinating to hear women of this community speak: they sound smart and self-aware, at least until one remembers that they follow a leader who arranges marriages between girls and men, sends boys into exile to ensure enough girls for the menfolk, and takes wives from husbands and reassigns them to other men. The documentary goes off the rails in its second half, with the filmmaker expressing greater and greater sympathy for the beleaguered faithful (there’s a murky property dispute) and declaring that they‘re ”pretty amazing people,“ that he likes everyone he’s met, and that no one has told the story from ”both sides.“ Dangerously delusional if you ask me. ★ (M)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Noir by Gaslight feature

Experiment Perilous (dir. Jacques Tourneur 1944). Released almost seven months after George Cukor’s much better known Gaslight, this movie too is about a psyop, with a wealthy older man (Paul Lukas) making his young wife (Hedy Lamarr) believe that she’s mad. As the doctor determined to free young Allida from her domestic prison, George Brent is not especially convincing: even when he runs through a house, he looks like a man pretending to run. Lamarr is fragile, soft-spoken, barely there, which leaves Lukas in control of the movie. The final moments, with exploding fishtanks and a fight on a spiral staircase, are worth waiting for. ★★★★

Ivy (dir. Sam Wood, 1947). Ivy Lexton (Joan Fontaine) is a Edwardian schemer: married to an unsuspecting ne’er-do-well (Richard Ney), she’s dallied with a lover (Patric Knowles) and is now interested in a much wealthier third man (Herbert Marshall). So how might she kill those first two birds with one stone? It’ll take the detective smarts of Cedric Hardwicke to tease out the truth. Little bits of Double Indemnity and Laura inform this satisfying story. ★★★★

Blanche Fury (dir. Marc Allégret, 1948). It plays like a mix of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Double Indemnity. Blanche Fullerton (Valerie Hobson) takes a position as governess and soon marries her cousin/employer Laurence Fury (Michael Gough), becoming the mistress of his great estate. But she has eyes for stableman Philip Thorn (Stewart Granger), the illegitimate son of the dead Fury patriarch. “You are out of your mind!” ★★★★

Corridor of Mirrors (dir. Terence Young, 1948). A bizarre tale that looks forward to Vertigo: a wealthy artist (Eric Portman) is convinced that he once lived in Renaissance Italy, where he loved a woman who betrayed him. He keeps a massive portrait of her behind a curtain. Visiting a nightclub, he spies a woman (Edana Romney) who’s the exact image of his portrait. Complications follow, with great scenes of a costume party, a room of mirrors, and Madame Tussaud’s. ★★★★

So Evil My Love (dir. Lewis Allen 1948). On board a ship sailing back to England from the West Indies, scoundrel Mark Bellis (Ray Milland), meets and charms a widowed missionary, Olivia Harwood (Ann Todd). Olivia is soon involved in Mark’s criminal schemes, which culminate in a desperate ploy to blackmail the husband of her old friend Susan Courtney (Geraldine Fitzgerald) with Susan’s youthful (naughty) correspondence. And then things really get wild. The final scene in a hansom cab, though easy to anticipate, is shocking. ★★★★

So Long at the Fair (dir. Terence Fisher and Antony Darnborough, 1950). Hard to see it as noir, but it’s certainly the most Hitchcockian movie in this Criterion feature, a variation on The Lady Vanishes. When brother and sister Johnny (David Tomlinson) and Victoria (Jean Simmons) arrive in Paris for the 1889 Exposition, Johnny disappears from their hotel; his name cannot be found in the register; what Victoria thinks is his room turns out to be a bathroom; and no one recalls ever having seen him. It’s left to plucky amateurs Victoria and George (Dirk Bogarde) to join forces and solve the mystery. Cathleen Nesbit gives a great performance as the scary omnipresent hotel proprietor. ★★★★

Madeleine (dir. David Lean, 1950). Based on the true story of Madeleine Smith (Ann Todd), a respectable Glaswegian in her parents’ household, in love with Émile L’Angelier (Ivan Desny), a French clerk whose lower status requires that Madeleine keep their relationship a secret from her parents, who are pressing their daughter to marry a suitable man. When Émile is found dead, suspicion falls on Madeleine, who made a recent purchase of arsenic. The plot is more than a little murky, and the movie never calls attention to what the patriarchy demands of daughters (after all, it’s 1950). The best moment comes from neither of the stars: it’s from André Morell as the defending counsel, speaking on behalf of his client. ★★★

[The other movies in this Criterion feature: Ladies in Retirement, Gaslight, The Suspect, Hangover Square, Dragonwyck, Moss Rose. All worth seeing, and our household has seen them all.]

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

Laundry day

Back to laundry — namely, the laundry that was hanging when a tax photograph was taken one day in Gowanus.

[561 Union Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

An alert reader noticed the human presence in the photograph: there’s someone at the top left window, and there appears to be someone below waving to the camera. I’ve tinkered with the contrast and added an outline for visibility.


[Click any image for a larger view.]

Here’s another view of the scene:

[557 Union Street. Click for a larger view.]

The likely residents of 561 Union Street when these photographs were taken: the Guadagno family, Gerard, Mary, and their daughters Rose, Nancy, and Gertrude. Under Industry in the 1940 census (distinguished from Occupation), Gerard and Mary are listed as “Groceries.”

[Click for a much larger view.]

And lookit: there was a grocery store just a few doors down the block:

[571 Union Street. Click for a larger view.]

That is a grocery store, not just a candy store (candy, newspapers, tobacco). The Salada Tea signage and the prices posted in the windows signify grocery store. And the word Grocery appears on the (Coca-Cola) privilege sign. I can imagine Gowanusites buying bread, milk, canned soup, tea, and coffee. Main staples.

Could the white garments hanging on the line be grocer’s aprons? They look much too substantial to be sleeveless T-shirts. Here’s a tax photograph with a grocer’s apron. I think that’s what we’re seeing at 561 Union.

[Click for a larger view.]

I was going to leave it at that, but I thought (once again) of Robert Caro’s mantra, “Turn every page.” Here that’d mean “Look up that grocery store address in the census.” And there it is. And in one of the 571 apartments, more Guadagnos: Arnold, Catherine, and their children Arnold, Marie, and Lorraine, all much younger than the family at 561. A Guadagno son and his family, I would guess.

[Click for a much larger view.]

Grocer’s aprons or no, I think that the grocery store was a Guadagno enterprise.

Thanks, Brian, for all your attention to this Gowanus scene.

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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, is by “Anna Stiga,” Stan Again, the puzzle’s editor Stan Newman using the pseudonym that signals an easier Stumper of his making. I found it not especially easy, and I really struggled in the southwest corner. Many proper names in this puzzle. Many pieces of trivia. But I got it, or them.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, ten letters, “Jets’ address, in part.” Wha? An unusual start.

7-D, five letters, “Inspirational half-sister of Helen.” This name is fine by me.

14-D, nine letters, “Gives.” Corny? Perhaps. But I like it.

20-A, five letters, “Malcolm, Jr.’s nickname.” A blast from some past.

25-A, five letters, “It cut a key in half on QVC (2005).” Another blast from some past.

32-D, nine letters, “Monetary term in rhe BBC’s E-cyclopedia.” New to me.

33-D, nine letters, “Owned up to hitting a parked car.” Yes, that’s exactly what I would do.

35-A, three letters, “Work on the side.” I love this clue. Even the plainest answer can be delightfully Stumper-y.

50-D, five letters, “Much less than a roar.” Yow, this is downright mean.

My favorite in this puzzle: 48-A, three letters, “Half a prominent name in modeling.” Could it be — no, it couldn’t. Oh, wait, it is.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Dickinson State is the new WVU

Steve Easton, president of North Dakota’s Dickinson State College (and critic of tenure) is looking to cut and cut and cut. From Inside Higher Ed:

Easton told the Faculty Senate in an email Aug. 9 that he was considering cutting undergraduate degrees in English, math, political science, communication, music, theater, chemistry, environmental science and computer technology management, including the teaching tracks for those subjects, such as math education. Left would be degrees in history, biology, elementary education, computer science and other areas. . . .

Earlier this year, Easton expressed opposition to common tenure protections. He said that he drafted a version of a “Tenure With Responsibilities” bill for North Dakota’s House majority leader.

The bill the majority leader introduced would’ve let Easton and the Bismarck State College president fire tenured faculty members based on those presidents’ own reviews, with no possibility of appeal.

Related posts
Emporia, firing : West Virginia University cuts

Google to delete inactive accounts

I now see that I received the e-mail about a change in Google policy in July and August — and looked right past it each time. So I’m glad that I follow the Blogger-centric blog Too Clever by Half, which makes the e-mail’s importance clear.

Long story short: if you want your Blogger blog to outlast you, you need to make your, uhh, arrangements.

Here are the Google policy and the announcement. More helpful: Too Clever by Half’s advice about how to keep a Blogger blog online.

Textise

Textise can be a handy tool for navigating the Internets. There’s an ample explanation here.

Thanks, Ben.

Builder’s tea

I learned this term from Michael Mosley’s BBC Radio 4 podcast Just One Thing. From the Oxford English Dictionary:

British colloquial. In builder’s tea and similar compounds: designating robust, full-bodied black tea, brewed until very strong, and usually drunk with milk and often sugar.

Wikipedia: “It takes its name from the inexpensive tea commonly drunk by labourers taking a break.”

Ah, so that’s what I’ve been drinking. (Almost always black, no sugar.)

Related reading
All OCA tea posts (Pinboard)

Squirrel with avocado skin

It’s a grey rainy day. So here is a squirrel enjoying an avocado skin, as seen outside Boston last month.

[Photograph by me. Click for a larger, cuter view.]

A related post
KNUT winter schedule (Squirrel TV)