A missing word

David Skinner tells the story of “the only major expletive left out of Webster’s Third”: “Philip Gove and ‘Our Word’” (The American Scholar ).

Related reading
All OCA dictionary posts (Pinboard) : The Story of Ain’t (Skinner’s history of W3)

Tires and skins

[31 Frankfort Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I went looking for a tax photograph of 53–63 Park Row, the now-demolished World Building, whose name was the answer to a clue in yesterday’s Newsday Saturday Stumper: “Where Pulitzer’s Big Apple office was.” The World Building, aka the New York World Building, aka the Pulitzer Building, is amply documented online (for instance), but no tax photograph is available. And for whatever reason, tax photographs of several streets off Park Row are relatively few. But there is a photograph for this building with the tires, right across from the Frankfort Street side of the majestic World.

No. 31 had several lives. William Whitlock, a sea captain, lived there at the end of the eighteenth century. An 1845 directory shows Herman Wendt, a cutter (fabric? leather?), living at no. 31. An 1851 directory shows James Gibson, a tailor, and Louis Madis, a barber, living at this address.

At some point no. 31 must have been repurposed for commerical use. By 1901 the address housed the Fulton Rubber Type, Ink and Pad Manufacturing Company.

[The American Stationer (September 28, 1901). Click for a larger view.]

Frankfort Street was home to many tanners and leather-goods merchants. If you click for a larger tax photograph, you’ll see a name: John F. Kaiser Co. Inc. And there he is in the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory, a dealer in skins:

[Click for a larger view.]

Which doesn’t explain the tires.

What now occupies this space, and much more than this space: One Pace Plaza West, on the campus of Pace University. The World Building was torn down in 1955 to make way for a broadened entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Sources
Doggett's New-York City Directory (1845). The directory distinguishes glass cutters and stonecutters from “cutters.”
The New York City Directory (1851).
Joseph Alfred Scoville, The Old Merchants of New York City (1864).

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

Dustin pronouns

In today’s Dustin : Hayden learns a valuable lesson about pronouns.

That’s a snarky summary of what happens in the strip.

Related posts
A Perry Mason whom : All the King’s Whom : Aunt Fritzi’s whom : Linus’s whom : Lou Grant’s who : Lucy’s whom : Mooch’s hypercorrection

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is exceedingly difficult. But I got it, after at least an hour’s worth of staring. I started with 30-A, three letters, “Joey of fiction” and 31-D, four letters, “Publisher of Firestarter excerpts (1980)” and began to fill in the puzzle’s eastern edge. Toughest section: the southwest, where I was long in a 52-A, fifteen letters, “Precarious position.”

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

3-A, eight letters, “In high gear.” Groan.

5-D, ten letters, “Possible peppers partner.” But the answer need not begin with P.

8-D, four letters, “Resa alternative.” I thought this clue might be about wines I’ve never heard of. No.

14-D, five letters, “Slide stuff.” Very out of the way.

17-D, five letters, “Pit of the stomach.” Clever clueing.

19-A, seven letters, “Mideast word for ‘lighthouse.’” I guessed right and learned something.

21-D, seven letters, “With added zest.” An adverb won’t help.

23-A, thirteen letters, “Where Pulitzer’s Big Apple office was.” My first (wild) guess: MADISONSQUARE.

25-D, ten letters, “Pet kept for pest control.” I wanted BODEGACAT.

38-D, three letters, “Desserted?” Kinda awkward.

39-A, thirteen letters, “Tonic cocktails.” Eww.

47-D, four letters, “Big shock.” Talk about misdirection.

58-A, four letters, “Moviedom’s ‘Eighth Wonder.’” This answer helped a lot on the way to filling in the southwest.

My favorite clue in today’s puzzle: 1-A, four letters, “Receptionist’s pronoun.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Veterans Day

The Great War ended on November 11, 1918. Armistice Day was observed the next year. In the United Kingdom Armistice Day is now Remembrance Day. In the United States, Armistice Day is now Veterans Day.

In 1923 Armistice Day fell on a Sunday.

[“A Woman’s Plea.” Brooklyn Standard Union, November 10, 1923.]

Like Lysistrata, the speaker of these words reverses Hector’s declaration in Iliad 6: war shall be — already is — the concern of women. The key passage, if the text above is difficult to read:

Nations to-day still compete in preparing for war. Not only is war a bitter fruit of the tree of violence and hate but also a root which strikes deep down into the soil of a competitive and unfriendly world.

In this world-problem and world-task none are more deeply concerned than women. It is we who supremely suffer and mourn when wars rage and sudden death destroys our youth.

But we are not without hope.

Followed by a plea for letters urging that the United States join the Permanent Court of International Justice, also known as the World Court. The United States never did.

[Hector to his wife Andromache: “War is the work of men, / Of all the Trojan men, and mine especially” (trans. Stanley Lombardo, 1997.]

Desk reboot

I have long been a horizontal organizer. Any surface will do. (What’s a floor for?) Students coming to my office sometimes said “This looks just like my room!” They were delighted. Me too.

My desk at home has always accumulated objects — after all, it’s just another horizontal plane. These photographs from 2015 and 2020 will give you an idea. But hey, look at me now:

[Click for a larger view.]

I traded in my old desk (a kitchen table) for an inexpensive standing desk, which meant that I needed to think about a new horizontal plane. Almost three weeks later, it’s still devoid of clutter. Where did everything go? Into a six-drawer storage cart or a trashbag. Neatness, or at least invisiblity, counts.

A related post
FEZiBO standing desk : Five desks

Scotch, bourbon, and radio English

A contentious moment from A Letter to Three Wives (1949), written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Rita (Ann Sothern) and George (Kirk Douglas) are making ready for a party. She: a writer of radio serials. He: a schoolteacher. She has a question for him:

“Where’s the Scotch?”

“I didn’t buy any.”

“Why not?”

“Too expensive. Bourbon’s a better drink anyway.”

“But the Manleighs are a cinch to want Scotch. People in show business, you know what I mean, those kind always drink Scotch.”

“Well, I know what you mean, but I wish you wouldn’t say it in radio English. ‘That kind,’ not ‘those kind.’”

“There are men who say ‘those kind’ who earn $100,000 a year.”

“There are men who say, ‘Stick ’em up,’ who earn more. I don’t expect to do either.”

“Nor are you expected to pay for the Scotch.”

Oof.

NYRB sale

Attention, shoppers: New York Review Books has all books on sale: buy two and get 20% off; buy three and get 30% off; buy four or more and get 40% off. Free shipping for orders of $75 or more.

The Four Seasons Reading Club (Elaine and me) placed an order this afternoon for Anton Chekhov, Helen Keller, and Jean Stafford. Two copies of each book, of course. As I’ve written in another post: One could do worse than be a reader of New York Review Books books.

Cora, Nick, Ticonderoga

[Lana Turner and Cecil Kellaway as Cora and Nick Smith. From The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Tay Garnett, 1946). Click for a much larger view.]

Yes, I know — Lana Turner! But there’s also a pencil in the picture, and it’s pretty clearly a Dixon Ticonderoga. The distinctive ferrule is the giveaway.

*

Here’s Lana Turner with what appears to be a Mongol pencil. It’s a Getty photograph, so I don’t dare reproduce it here. Thanks, Brian.

Related reading
More OCA Ticonderoga posts (featuring Timmy Martin, Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov, and other pencil-users)

Twelve movies

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

A Letter for Evie (dir. Jules Dassin, 1946). It’s a poignant premise: secretaries at a uniform manufacturer tuck “Dear soldier” letters into outgoing shirts. When Evie O’Connor (Marsha Hunt) tucks her letter into a shirt with a 16½″ neck, she ends up corresponding not with the shirt’s hunky recipient, “Wolf” Larson (John Carroll), but with meek and mild Johnny McPherson (Hume Cronyn), who picks up Evie’s discarded letter and writes back. A Cyrano-like story of mistaken identities develops, with wonderful comic performances from Cronyn and Hunt. I knew from Pride and Prejudice that Hunt could be funny, but I didn’t know that Cronyn and Norman Lloyd (here, a prissy exec) were was a skilled comic actors. ★★★★ (TCM)

[As Matt Thomas has reminded me, Hume Cronyn has a fine comic role in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt.]

*

Whiplash (dir. Lewis Seiler, 1948). Improbable and really good: Dane Clark plays Michael Gordon, a painter smitten with Laurie Durant (Alexis Smith), a nightclub singer married to Rex Durant (Zachary Scott), a no-good nightclub owner and former boxer. Laurie sticks with Rex because of a botched operation by her brother, which left Rex paralyzed and using a wheelchair. Rex’s scheme to turn Michael into a boxer — Mike Angelo (get it?) — is in truth a scheme to get him killed and out of the way. Strong script, strong performances, lots of ambience, but a ridiculous number of punches. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Bob Rafelson, 1981). “Why remake a perfect movie?” Elaine asked. Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange turn Frank Chambers and Cora Papadakis into a feral pair. The sex scenes, which might have shocked some moviegoers in 1981, look farcical — nasty and brutish, though not short enough. And granted, the movie already runs over two hours, but the oddly truncated ending leaves Frank’s fate and the meaning of the title somewhere offscreen. ★★ (TCM)

[Here’s Lana Turner’s hilarious comment on this remake, which she admits she didn’t watch.]

*

The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Tay Garnett, 1946). We watched to be reminded how great this one is. John Garfield’s boyish energy (him with his itchy feet); Lana Turner’s iciness and reluctant vulnerability, Cecil Kellaway’s authority and cluelessness; Hume Cronyn’s sleaziness; Alan Reed’s (the voice of Fred Flinstone!) thugishness: everyone here is perfect. The best shots: the lipstick rolling along a floor — twice. What I’d like to see now is a movie about Cora’s life before the Twin Oaks. ★★★★ (YT)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Pre-Code Horror feature

Thirteen Women (dir. George Archainbaud, 1932). Irene Dunne and Myrna Loy star in a bizarre story of one woman’s murderous revenge on thirteen sorority sisters. Occult themes dominate at first (with a swami who does horoscopes); racism emerges as a significant element later in the story. Trains and a trapeze act are among the settings for vengeance. It’s startling to see Myrna Loy as a persuasive vamp. ★★★★

‌Murders in the Rue Morgue (dir. Robert Florey, 1932). Greil Marcus speaks of the old, weird America; I think of movies such as this one as glimpses of an old, weird (imaginary) Europe — a world of castles, mad scientists, and damsels in distress. The mad scientist is Dr. Mirakle (Bela Lugosi), who kidnaps women to use in his efforts to meld human blood and ape blood; the damsel is Camille (Sidney Fox), who attracts the interest of both Mirakle and his ape Erik. Lurid in the extreme, with some ghastly violence. Viewers who grew up with What’s My Line? might be startled to see Arlene Francis in her first movie role as “Woman of the Streets,” writhing on a cross in Mirakle’s laboratory. ★★★★

Murders in the Zoo (dir. A. Edward Sutherland, 1933). Lionel Atwill, looking like a crazed, waxen-faced Charles Boyer, plays a zoologist who’ll stop at nothing — nothing! — to keep rivals away from his wife (Kathleen Burke). This movie is a bizarre mix of corny comedy (from Charlie Ruggles as the zoo’s press agent) and unnerving violence: think alligators, snakes, and sutures. And when the cages open, things really get out of control. With Randolph Scott as the zoo’s resident scientist. ★★★★

[The other movies in this feature: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Svengali, Doctor X, Freaks, Island of Lost Souls, The Most Dangerous Game, The Old Dark House, Mystery of the Wax Museum, The Black Cat, The Raven. I’ve seen and can recommend them all with varying degrees of enthusiasm.]

*

A Letter to Three Wives (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949). Trouble in suburbia: three women receive a letter from the beautiful (and never seen) Addie Ross, announcing that she’s run away with one of their husbands. Extended flashbacks follow, giving the dynamics of three relationships: newlyweds just out of the Navy (Jeanne Crain and Jeffrey Lynn); a writer of radio serials (Ann Sothern) and a schoolteacher (Kirk Douglas); a woman living right by the railroad tracks (Linda Darnell) and a department-store owner (Paul Douglas). Tensions abound: money and manners (the frumpy, ill-at-ease Crain, her assured, affluent husband), money and culture (the lucrative work of writing popular dreck, the unlucrative work of teaching English), money and sexual ethics (a man who refuses to marry and a woman who refuses to be kept — or played). Commenting on events is catty Addie, voiced by Celeste Holm. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Deception (dir. Irving Rapper, 1946). The director and the principals of Now, Voyager — Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains — in an ultra-posh post-war noir. Henreid is Karel Novak, a cellist, long thought dead in Europe, newly arrived in the States; Davis is Christine Radcliffe, a pianist and Karel’s one-time lover; Rains is Alexander Hollenius, a petulant composer and Christine’s keeper. When Hollenius writes a cello concerto for Karel to perform, things get complicated. Great sets (rooms as big as houses) and great scenes of performance, with Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s music, Henreid’s torso, and other people’s arms. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Isle of the Dead (dir. Mark Robson, 1945). The inspiration: a late-nineteenth-century painting by Arnold Böcklin. The premise: during the Balkan Wars a Greek general (Boris Karloff) and an American newspaperman are stranded on an island with an odd assortment of residents and visitors, among them the caregiver (Ellen Drew) to an ill woman. The housekeeper believes that the caregiver is a vorvolaka, a malevolent undead being — and when the island is beset by plague, it begins to look as if she might be right. Next to The Seventh Victim, it’s probably the strangest Val Lewton production I’ve seen. ★★★★

*

The Fake (dir. Godfrey Grayson, 1953). A solid sender, with Dennis O’Keefe as Paul Mitchell, an American charged with protecting Leonardo’s Madonna and Child during its exhibition at the Tate Gallery (which plays itself in several scenes). Mitchell’s work-life balance becomes challenging as he tries to uncover an art-forgery ring while wooing museum employee Mary Mason (Coleen Gray). Strong Hitchcockian overtones, a score derived from Pictures at an Exhibition, and unexpected human-interest scenes — among them a conversation with a sidewalk chalk artist and a visit to a shelter for unhoused men. Eeriest moment: the three panels. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art (dir. Barry Avrich, 2020). A beautifully made documentary about sheer ugliness: the story of a prolific forger, a con artist, an emissary, and the gallery director who marketed the forger’s fakes of Motherwell, Pollock, Rothko, and other Abstract Expressionists (“Ab Ex,” as they say in the movie). Did the gallery director, Ann Freedman of M. Knoedler & Co., know that she was selling fakes? The documentary leaves little doubt that she should have known and did know. A story of art as valuable property, in which the only meaning of “appreciation” is rising prices for what one sells or buys — I mean acquires. ★★★★ (N)

[Anne Freedman is still selling art].

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