“White Rabbit” in Wal-Mart

I was about to exit my friendly neighborhood multinational retailer (Wal-Mart) when the automatic doors failed. A metal gate dropped down on the inside side. I could still see the outside world (the parking lot) via a reflection in a mirror behind me.

Another stuck shopper began singing Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” I joined in, and when she stopped, I kept going. The doors opened and I pushed my shopping cart into the parking lot. Elaine was there, looking for our car. It was parked in a section of the lot we never use.

Someone called out: “Hey, Mr. Leddy!” I looked in every direction but couldn’t figure out where the call came from.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[Possible sources: a chance viewing of The Dick Cavett Show with Jefferson Airplane (among others), a New York Times Metropolitan Diary story about people joining in song (in an elevator? the subway?), Wal-Mart. Only fools and children talk about their dreams”: Dr. Edward Jeffreys (Robert Douglas), in Thunder on the Hill (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1951).]

Weather drama

“... 36° under the cover of darkness tonight ...”

Last week, with sub-zero temperatures and a furnace failure, I got into the habit of watching local news for the weather forecasts. Tonight the temperature is up in the mid-40s, but the forecasts remain dramatic. Under the cover of darkness — and at night at that!

Twelve movies

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

The Hunted (dir. Jack Bernhard, 1948). Four years ago, police detective Johnny Saxon (Preston Foster) arrested his girlfriend Laura Mead (Belita) for her role in a diamond heist; now she’s out of prison and telling Johnny she was innocent. But when Laura’s useless lawyer turns up dead, she’s the prime suspect. Though Foster and Belita (a British ice-skating star) are plausible as a couple joined in antagonism and attraction, they’re hardly strong enough actors to carry the movie. As in Suspense , Belita’s ice-skating is on display, though here it feels like an interruption rather than a part of the story. ★★ (TCM)

Johnny Eager (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1941). The corny title might have served as a warning: it’s an unpalatably preposterous story of Johnny Eager (Robert Taylor), a parolee who lives a double life, working as a humble taxi driver while running a gambling operation and a dog track. And get this: he falls in love with a sociology student (Lana Turner) whose father is the prosecutor who sent him to prison (awkward!). The reason to see this movie: Van Heflin’s performance as Jeff Hartnett, chain-smoking, chain-drinking, and unmistakably in love with Johnny. Best line: “My instinct was right: you couldn’t stop being a thief any more that a weasel could stop sucking chicken blood.” ★★★ (TCM)

[Van Heflin as Jeff Hartnett. Click for a larger view.]

*

Friends & Family Christmas (dir. Anne Wheeler, 2023). It’s a love story that presents the idea of the same–sex couple as utterly unremarkable, but the title is not as evasive as it might appear: the plot centers on Amelia, a corporate lawyer (Ali Liebert), and Dani, a photographer (Humberly González), two women who pretend to be dating to make their parents happy — thus friends, just friends, at least at first, and family, as the three parents (a lawyer dad, a math-prof dad, and a world-famous writer mom) are all on the scene in Brooklyn, rooting for the unbeknowst-to-them-fake relationship to flourish. Lots of artsy characters in the background, holding notebooks, wearing funny hats, talking about “travel grants for innovative thinkers,” and there’s even an Amanda Gorman look-alike poet who’s making a first attempt at fiction. Most awkward element in the story: the fathers’ creepily inordinate curiosity about their daughters’ romantic lives. Goofiest scene: dancing and paper lanterns, so thank you, Hallmark. ★★★ (H)

*

Guest in the House (dir. John Brahm, 1944). A superior psychodrama starring Anne Baxter as Evelyn Heath, a young woman coming to visit her fiancé’s family. Once embedded in the household, Evelyn begins to undermine familial harmony, pitting family member against family member, sowing doubt, fear, and jealousy everywhere. Baxter’s performance here is a clear precursor to her work in All About Eve. With Ralph Bellamy, Jerome Cowan, Margaret Hamilton, Aline MacMahon, and Ruth Warrick. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Secret Place (dir. Clive Donner, 1957). A suspenseful, deeply human story of a diamond heist gone wrong. At the center, the friendship of a solitary boy (Michael Brooke) and a beautiful newsstand attendant (Belinda Lee). Strong overtones of The Asphalt Jungle (plans and snags), Rififi (a nearly silent heist), and The Window (a boy in peril). The travels of the stolen diamonds add a comic element, and a chase through bombed-out London buildings makes for a highly satisfying ending. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Cover Up (dir. Alfred E. Green, 1949). Dennis O’Keefe as an insurance investigator coming to an insular town to investigate what the sheriff (William Bendix) insists was a suicide. Yet there was no gun at the scene, no shell casing either. This modest movie does a fine job of casting suspicion in many directions, with the who of the whodunit uncertain until the very end. With Barbara Britton, Doro Merande, and Christmastime. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Backfire (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1950). A superior noir, getting one more star than the last time I watched it. The seemingly unrelated pieces of the puzzle end up fitting together perfectly: Bob, a hospitalized vet (Gordon MacRae); Julia, the nurse who’s fallen in love with him (Virginia Mayo); Steve, an Army pal who goes missing (Edmond O’Brien); Ben, another Army pal who runs a mortuary (Dane Clark); and Lysa, a mysterious visitor to the hospital (Viveca Lindfors). The story unfolds in a series of flashbacks (compare The Killers) as Bob’s search for his missing pal comes to a wild conclusion. Daniele Amfitheatrof’s score is even wilder, often sounding like two scores played at once. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

No Time to Kill (dir. Tom Younger, 1959). The movie begins with Johnny Greco (John Ireland) breaking into an watchman-patrolled office building somewhere in Sweden and planting a device to make it appear that someone’s committed suicide, and then he hangs around in the building — huh? And the movie goes downhill from there. I expected a short late noir, and the movie was indeed short: IMDb says that thirty minutes were cut from the American release, so no wonder it’s incoherent. The single star acknowledges that this movie at some point was something better. ★ (YT)

*

Crazy Wisdom: The Life & Times of Chögyam Trunga Rinpoche (dir. Johanna Demetrakas, 2011). My intermittent curiosity about cult leaders and their followers led me to this documentary. What I found is a propaganda piece exalting Trungpa, a Buddhist teacher (1939–1987) with an extraordinary backstory (escape from Tibet), who drank, smoked, wore three-piece suits, sexually abused women and girls, founded the Naropa Institute, created his own pseudo-military guard, and died of cirrhosis. Here’s just one piece to read about Trungpa and his legacy. This loving tribute to Buddhism as fascism joins When We Were Bullies in getting no stars from me. (YT)

*

Maestro (dir. Bradley Cooper, 2023). I wondered if this portrait of Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) — and his wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) would dwell only on Bernstein’s sex life. No — it’s about his personhood, in and out of his marriage and in the world of music, with Cooper and Mulligan giving great performances as partners in a difficult partnership. Extraordinary black-and-white and color cinematography by Matthew Libatique, and with the exceptions of Shirley Ellis’s “The Clapping Song,” R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” and Tears for Fears’s “Shout,” all the music is written or conducted by Bernstein. ★★★★ (N)

[At home it’s best watched with subtitles, which will identify the music and clarify murky dialogue. I’m told the sound is better in theaters.]
*

The Barefoot Contessa (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1954). In my movie-watching it goes with Sunset Boulevard, The Bad and the Beautiful, and ‌Two Weeks in Another Town as a movie about the movies, with the story told by multiple narrators in lengthy flashbacks à la Citizen Kane (whose screenplay was by Mankiewicz’s father Herman and Orson Welles). The story is modeled on the life of Rita Hayworth: the producer Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens) finds a potential star in the form of Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner), a dancer in a Spanish tavern, and propels her to stardom in three features directed by the aging, fading director Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart), with tragedy to follow. My favorite line: “How much simpler it would be for so many of us if Kirk Edwards had not found it necessary to look for a new face.” My other favorite line: “And once more life louses up the script.” ★★★★ (CC)

*

Brillo Box (3¢ off) (dir. Lisanne Skyler, 2016). Martin and Rita Skyler, the director’s parents, bought an Andy Warhol Brillo Box in 1969 for $1000 and — an inspired decision — had Warhol sign it (in crayon) as a mark of authenticity. As the box later made its way from the Skyler house to a series of other owners, its value went up and up — up to $3,050,500 at a 2010 auction. The family dynamics add interest here: Martin saw art as a means to money with which to buy more art; Rita saw art as art and would have held on to everything; it’s unsurprising that the two are no longer married. An odd fact: the Brillo box was designed by James Harvey, a commercial artist and Abstract Expressionist painter. ★★★★ (M)

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

“The Making of Song Cycle”

From the podcast Life of the Record : Van Dyke Parks and Richard Henderson on “The Making of Song Cycle.”

One choice VDP comment from this discussion of the 1967 LP: “I didn’t want to be approved of or screamed at in a concert — that is not my thing.” One more: “I didn’t go and buy real estate and cars. I put my money into orchestras.” And: “My fun meter, I’m telling you the truth, it’s on ten.” And: “Crow tastes fine.”

Related reading
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No Remington, Ticonderoga

On occasion, the wealthy Lucy Pride helps a deserving young man. Emphasis on deserving.

Jean Stafford, Boston Adventure (1944).

Also from this novel
A pallet on the floor : “The odors” : “Oh, piffle, you dumb-bells”

[Post title à la “No soap, radio.” Or “No Coke, Pepsi.”]

A slogan with legs

I don’t always wear pants, but when I do I prefer Carhartts.

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A Carhartt jingle : Carhartt B324 : Carhartt for dogs

Oxford comma wars

From Jack Shepherd’s On Words and Up Words : “Taking Stock of the Oxford Comma Wars.” Included: the real-life source for the Oxford-less formulation “my parents, Ayn Rand and God.”

I of course am a proud supporter of the Oxford or serial comma. Use it, always, and you’ll prevent unintended ambiguity (though as Shepherd acknowledges, the comma can introduce ambiguity: “my mother, Ayn Rand, and God”) The Oxford comma will also give items in a series their proper cadence: bread, milk, and toilet paper.

Garner’s Modern English Usage has a nearly four-page entry on the serial comma and ends thusly:

The convention of uniform inclusion obviates needless worries and in no way depletes a scarce resource: it’s not as if we have only a finite supply of commas available. Even minimalists in punctuation typically don’t see series as a place for minimalism.

If I were teaching, I’d still be sharing the hilarious conversation about the Oxford comma between Stephen Colbert and Vampire Weekend. (Would I now need to explain who Vampire Weekend are?)

Related posts
How to punctuate a sentence : How to punctuate more sentences : An Oxford comma in the news : Oxford Vampire comma revisited

Rosie’s on the move

From northjersey.com:

Rosie’s Diner, the iconic former Little Ferry [New Jersey] landmark that gained national fame as the setting for a series of paper towel commercials in the 1970s and was later moved to Michigan, has been sold to a Missouri couple who plan to restore the diner to its past glory.

When I was a college student working at Valley Fair, a now-defunct Little Ferry discount department store, I drove around the Little Ferry traffic circle and past Rosie’s, or the Farmland Diner, as it was then called, countless times. I never went inside. But I did once watch Nancy Walker (“Rosie”) preparing to film a Bounty paper towels commercial in Valley Fair’s supermarket section. She exuded intensity, chain-smoking and looking not especially happy to be there.

Here’s a 1978 commercial with Nancy Walker and the diner. And here’s a 2008 post with some choice vignettes from my life as a housewares stock-clerk: Going on break.

Thanks, Brian.

John Lamb, ninety

John Lamb, bassist and Ellingtonian, is ninety. Here’s a short profile (Creative Loafing ).

John Lamb may be seen and heard to advantage in this 1966 Milan performance of “Ad Lib on Nippon” from the Far East Suite. Bonus: two drummers, Elvin Jones and Skeets Marsh.

Squirrel Appreciation Day

Before the day runs out: it’s Squirrel Appreciation Day (Discover ). Of course every day is Squirrel Appreciation Day for those who like squirrels.

The squirrels in our weather are staying in their nests and watching KNUT’s winter lineup.

Thanks, Rachel.

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