Too many movies?

We know that we may have watched too many old movies when, at a glance, we recognize the servant Mr. Oates in The Spiral Staircase (1946) as the auto mechanic in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950). The actor: Rhys Williams.

Jim has spoken before

On the PBS NewsHours tonight, Jeffrey Brown spoke with Percival Everett about Everett’s new novel James. The Jim of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Everett said, “has never had a chance to speak.”

Certainly not at length, certainly not at novel-length. But there’s an unusual piece of literary criticism in the form of a letter from John Isaac Hawkins, Jim's son, to “Mister Finn,” in which John recounts his father’s commentary on Huck’s tale. It’s Gerry Brenner’s “More than a Reader’s Response: A Letter to ‘De Ole True Huck.’” You can read it by creating a free account at JSTOR.

Joe Flaherty (1941–2024)

The actor Joe Flaherty has died at the age of eighty-two. On SCTV he was Guy Caballero, Count Floyd, Sammy Maudlin, and Slim Whitman, among others. On Freaks and Geeks, Harold Weir.

The New York Times has an obituary.

Domestic comedy

[The Salada teabag tag read: “Crashers at the boat party just barge in.”]

“God, it’s like being stuck in a room with a bad version of me.”

“How do you think the other teabags feel?”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[Did you know that Salada is still a brand? I didn’t. The tea is not very good. But each bag has a tag with a punny or fortune-cookie-like sentence that reminds me of the little fillers in Parade or Reader’s Digest. When we found a box of Salada in a nearby salvage grocery store (weird adventures in shopping), I had to buy it — the box, not the store.]

Baking soda for the dishes

We have hard water. It’s been a fact of our east-central Illinois household forever. Sometimes we need a chisel.

But seriously, if you have hard water and do the dishes by hand:

~ Close the drain and put everything in the sink.

~ Add a small amount of dishwashing liquid and a tablespoon of baking soda.

~ Fill the sink with hot water.

~ Proceed as usual.

Yow! Everything almost washes itself. For the first time in many years we have dishes and glasses that sparkle, with virtually no hard-water stains.

How did I hit on this fix? We’ve taken to adding a dash of baking soda to a stock pot of (hard) water when we make pasta. Elaine found that tip, somewhere. So if it works for pasta, &c.

Monday in Manhattan

[From The Window (dir. Ted Tetzlaff, 1949). Click for larger clothes.]

It must have been a Monday — wash day and a high-wire show. That’s what laundry looked like when I was a kid in Brooklyn, long after this movie was made.

See also these WPA tax photographs: one from The Bronx, one from Brooklyn.

Bloody Trump

In The Washington Post, Philip Kennicott writes about a Getty Museum exhibit and “the ancient, volatile Christian ideas behind Trump’s obsession with blood”:

Whether or not Trump intended to suggest a literal “bloodbath” when he threatened economic chaos if he isn’t reelected, the reference to blood was part of a more thoroughgoing effort to tap into the violent energies of the pre-scientific and pre-modern symbolics of blood that is evident throughout this show. He is disgusted by women’s blood; he has good genes or blood running through his veins; he is defending the “blood” of pure Americans against infection and immigration; and the power he seeks is deeply connected to blood and violence. His inaugural address is remembered for a particularly blood-soaked image, American carnage, which is etymologically derived from butchery, flesh and slaughter. All of this gives some of his Christian supporters permission to reembrace the darkest aspects of the symbolics of blood that saturated their religion for centuries.

These are old ideas. They are deeply and historically Christian ideas. And they are terrifying.

Recently updated

Castorini and Cammareri “Cher, she goes crazy when she eats the lard bread.”

Musicians, before or after it’s too late

A column by Marc Thiessen in The Washington Post advises seeing one’s musical heroes (his word) before it’s too late (gift link). The problem though is that it may already be too late.

Thiessen mentions, for instance, seeing Frankie Valli just last weekend: “though he does not move much onstage anymore, his voice is still crisp and strong.” And there’s a link to a 2022 performance.

All respect to Frankie Valli, who might be my first pop-music memory (via a Zenith transistor radio). But browse through that performance and it’s clear that Valli is not doing that much singing. It’s his recorded voice that we’re hearing.

I think it’s sometimes better to know the musicians one respects from their recordings. I am happy that I got to see Brian Wilson in 2000 and 2004 (the first Pet Sounds and SMiLE tours). But I would not want to have seen the Brian Wilson of recent years, sitting behind a silent piano and staring straight ahead. Some performances are too sad to witness. And I’d never want to see the Beach Boys in their present incarnation.

I have deeply mixed feelings about linking to anything written by Marc Thiessen (defender of waterboarding), but I think the topic here makes linking worthwhile. Readers’ thoughts about musicians seen before or after it’s too late are welcome in the comments.

[First pop-music memory: I would like it to have been the Beatles, but ”Sherry“ came out in August 1962. But I know I didn’t have a transistor radio of my own then.]

Castorini and Cammareri

[19 Cranberry Street, Brooklyn Heights, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

That’s the Castorini family’s house in Moonstruck (dir. Norman Jewison, 1987). It’s a wow of a house, with considerable history in the world of non-fiction.

And here’s the Cammareri Bakery, which became the corner bakery in Moonstruck. It didn’t even have to change its name. “Cammereri’s Bake Shop,” Chrissy (Nada Despotovich) says when she answers the phone.

[502 Henry Street, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

In 1940 Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Cammareri lived at 502. I’d like to think that’s Mr. Cammareri out in front.

[Click for a larger view.]

[Click for a larger telephone directory.]

And look: another bakery, in Boro Park. Any relation? That’s a rabbit hole down which I will not go. But you can see Cammareri’s Bakery (as its sign says) in the Municipal Archives.

A 1943 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article about the 11th Avenue bakery mentions Angelina and Grace Cammerini, “handsome Italian girls,” originally from Palermo. A plaque in the bakery marked their brother Andrew’s second year in military service.

In 1998, the Henry Street bakery, by then known as the Cammereri Brothers Bakery, closed after nearly eighty years. No. 502 today houses MozzLab, a cheesemaker and food purveyor. No. 5910 is now a residential behemoth.

A wonderful bit of TV from when the bakery was flourishing: WABC-TV’s Chauncey Howell went to Carroll Gardens and interviewed residents about Moonstruck. Priceless stuff.

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April 1: A reader sent links to the Daily News articles with the bakery: one and two. “Cher, she goes crazy when she eats the lard bread.” Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)