One series, eleven movies

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

Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV (dir. Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz, 2024). A documentary series, five episodes, about the world of Nickelodeon in the 1990s and early 2000s. The central figure in this toxic environment is Dan Schenider, a celebrated showrunner whose bullying, sense of entitlement, and contempt for women in the workplace seem to have been unbounded (an anonymous costumer calls him a case of arrested development). But there’s more: TV skits with astonishingly crude sexual innuendo, and pedophiles on the set. Watching this documentary makes me happy that our kids lived their childhoods without cable: they watched PBS and videotapes, and for a long time we paid them not to watch TV at all. ★★★★ (M)

*

Railroaded! (dir. Anthony Mann, 1947). “Don’t give me that love stuff”: one of the more sordid noirs of my acquaintance: alcoholism, domestic violence, point-blank killings with a “belly gun,” a body weighted and thrown in a river, a criminal partner left for dead in a laundry truck, and cops who seek to pin a murder on a most unlikely suspect. Good performances from John Ireland as a thug and Jane Randolph as his desperate girlfriend. And Hugh Beaumont does a convincing job as a police detective and the hero of the piece. Anthony Mann and our favorite household’s favorite year in movies come through again. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Black Tuesday (dir. Hugo Fregonese, 1954). A bold escape from Death Row (where executions are scheduled for Tuesdays) gives criminal boss Vincent Canelli (Edward G. Robinson), bank robber Peter Manning (Peter Graves), and assorted others a chance to live. They take along hostages, who may have already lost their chance: a guard, a doctor, a reporter, another guard’s daughter, a priest (Milburn Stone of Gunsmoke ). It’s a brutal movie, with Robinson offering an even darker version of his murderous Johnny Rocco (Key Largo). Cinematography by Stanley Cortez, in super-stark black and white. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Conspiracy (dir. Lew Landers, 1939). Intrigue, on ship and on land, in an unnamed European fascist state, with an American radio officer (Allan Lane) on the run from the police and from the resistance (who fear that “the boy,” as they call him, will endanger their efforts). But one member of the resistance (Linda Hayes) is determined to help him. An inventive bit: all the signage in this country is in Esperanto. An odd point: this low-budget effort prefigures Casablanca in a number of ways — but no spoilers. ★★ (TCM)

*

Baby God (dir. Hannah Olson, 2020). A documentary about the career and offspring of Quincy Fortier, a Las Vegas doctor (and Nevada’s 1991 Doctor of the Year) who used his own semen in the work of his fertility clinic, fathering an unknown number of children over four decades. Women he impregnated and their children speak to the camera, trying to think through a baffling narrative of betrayal — and there are even darker stories from the doctor’s own family life. Fortier, who died at the age of ninety-four in 2006, remains an enigma (“I’m just helpin’ out,” he told his son). Two flaws: the pace is slow, and there’s little context about the practice of insemination fraud, aside from a statement in the closing credits that Fortier is hardly a lone case. ★★★ (M)

*

Desperate Journey (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1942). An RAF plane is shot over Germany, and its surviving crew members must make their way to Holland, but not before doing all kinds of damage to the enemy war effort, even as a Nazi officer (Raymond Massey) hunts them down. Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan lead the RAF men, with Alan Hale providing endless comic relief, and therein lies the problem: the movie is an awkward mix of serious suspense and high jinks. Nazis, slapstick, wisecracks, a doubletalk routine: I’m reminded of All Through the Night, but that movie takes place in the safety of New York City, not in enemy territory, where the RAF men at times resemble the Bowery Boys, ready to pull off Routine Nine or some such on the enemy. Best elements: Flynn, Nancy Coleman, the fake parents, the Casablanca-like (and Conspiracy-like) speech about duty, Bert Glennon’s cinematography, Max Steiner’s music, and travel by map. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Spiral Staircase (dir. Robert SIodmak, 1946). If I had to choose one movie to illustrate the idea of Gothic noir, it’d be this one. In a turn-of-the-century New England town, someone is killing women with disabilities, and a mute maid (Dorothy McGuire) to a wealthy family in a big old house (Ethel Barrymore, George Brent, and others) is in danger. The movie does a fine job is casting suspicion on a range of characters. But the most striking thing here is Nicholas Musaraca’s cinematography: darkness galore, scenes shot from great heights, perspectives that suggest a killer tracking a victim, and long stretches that turn into silent film — and the movie begins with an audience watching one. ★★★★ (YT)

*

A Patch of Blue (dir. Guy Green, 1965). Blind since childhood, Selina D’Arcey (Elizabeth Hartman) lives in a dump of an apartment with her grandfather Ole Pa (Wallace Ford), whom she calls a bastard, and her mother Rose-Anne (Shelley Winters), whom she calls a whore — and that’s literal. Uneducated, battered by her mother, Selina finds a world apart when she sits in a park and a young urban professional, Gordon Ralfe (Sidney Poitier), removes a caterpillar that has fallen down the back of her blouse. A frank, tender story about desire, deprivation, and different forms of love, though the dialogue in the D’Arcey apartment (screenplay by the director) is sometimes hopelessly stagey, and the Gordon’s cheerful selflessness (the supermarket games) is a bit much. Bonus: a beautiful score (harmonica, harp, marimba, piano, strings, vibraphone) by Jerry Goldsmith. ★★★ (TCM)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s 1950: Peak Noir feature

Born to Be Bad (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950).Christabel (Joan Fontaine), the niece of a prominent publisher, comes to live with her uncle’s assistant Donna Foster (Joan Leslie) while attending business school, and soon begins a careful campaign to destroy Donna’s relationship with ultra-rich fiancé Curtis Carey’s (Zachary Scott) while starting up her own relationship with writer Nick Bradley (Robert Ryan). Christabel wants Nick but wants to marry Curtis, and as Donna says, “Christabel will take care of Christabel — every time.” In 1950 the movie may have looked like cheap melodrama, but it now looks like an exploration of the dark triad. Darker than All About Eve, released later than year, but not as dark as the 1944 Guest in the House. ★★★★

The Damned Don’t Cry (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1950). “I want something more than what I’ve had out of life, and I’m gonna get it”: Joan Crawford rises from life as impoverished Ethel Whitehead to become the glamorous, pseudonymous Lorna Harrison Forbes, relying on and betraying men — a meek accountant (Kent Smith), an aesthete-crime boss (David Brian), a tough underboss (Steve Cochran) — as the circumstances demand. Like Christabel, Ethel is out for herself, always. A posh noir, with a snappy screenplay by Harold Medford and Jerome Weidman, from a story by Gertrude Walker, with contributions of some sort by Crawford. My favorite line: “What kind of self-respect is there in living on aspirin tablets and chicken salad sandwiches?” ★★★★

Night and the City (dir. Jules Dassin, 1950). “I just wanna be somebody,” says Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark), a minor American in a post-war British underworld who devises a scheme to control all-in wrestling in London. What makes this noir particularly compelling is character: Harry, running like a rat in a maze as he tries to manage the art of the deal; saintly Mary (Gene Tierney), whose happier days with Harry are summed up in a photograph of the two in a canoe; Philip Nosseross (Francis L. Sullivan), a nightclub owner whose “bought and paid for” wife Helen (Googie Withers) finds him repulsive and has saved up to make a life apart; Figler (James Hayter), a figure out of Dickens who manages a group of sham beggars; Gregorius Kristo (Stanislaus Zbyszko), an aging Greco-Roman wrestler who finds all-in wrestling repulsive; and on, and on. Max Greene’s (Mutz Greenbaum) cinematography places them all in a world of shadows — before the story ends in early morning light. My favorite moments: Harry trying to get a refund, the ink smearing. ★★★★

[“Remember them, Harry? Nice people. Nice people to know and be with.”]

Where the Sidewalk Ends (dir. Otto Preminger, 1950). A Laura reunion: Preminger, Dana Andrews, and Gene Tierney, with Andrews as Mark Dixon, a rogue cop with a dark secret, and Tierney as Morgan Taylor, a model and the daughter of a cabdriver (Tom Tully) wrongfully accused of murder. Atmosphere is everything here: the dingy Pike Street apartment, with the Manhattan Bridge in the distance, the dingy police station, Martha’s Café, the parking garage, Dixon’s hotel apartment, and the constant strains of Cyril Mockridge’s variations on Alfred Newman’s “Street Scene.” My favorite moments: Mrs. Tribaum (Grace Mills) seen through her basement window, so spooky, so city. ★★★★

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

Laptop speaking

I opened my laptop and a message in the center of the screen began reading itself aloud: “Hello, Michael. Mr. Eisenhower” — or was it Adenauer? — “has been waiting patiently for you. He is interested not in injecting the incredible but in removing it.”

In other words, Mr. E. or A. was interested in bringing about a return to (so-called) normalcy.

A likely source for this dream: Saturday night’s movie, Pretty Poison (dir. Noel Black, 1968), now streaming as part of the Criterion Channel feature Hollywood Crack-Up: The Decade American Cinema Lost Its Mind. The character Morton Azenauer (John Randolph) is a parole officer supervising a newly released arsonist.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

Apostrophes, missing

From the BBC: “North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs.” Some residents are displeased:

Resident Anne Keywood did not think the changes were worthwhile.

She said: “I think we should be using apostrophes.

“If you start losing things like that[,] then everything goes downhill[,] doesn’t it?”

So too with commas.

Related reading
All OCA apostrophe and punctuation posts (Pinboard) : Apostrophe Protection Society

[Hard to decide if the BBC was having a laugh here or just being sloppy. The missing quotation mark is fine, but it seems mighty strange to break up that quotation over two paragraphs.]

Sluggo’s perspective

In Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy, Sluggo draws with perspective.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Car trouble

[1701 Madison Avenue, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Car trouble in East Harlem, found by chance. Is the man looking under the car wearing a hat? Hard to say, but I’m sure he owns at least one. Is that a Wonder Bread delivery truck? Hard to say.

What I do know: that’s a flower shop across the street. And those buildings are now gone.

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

Salvage FTTW

Over the last few months, Elaine and I have made a handful of visits to a nearby salvage-grocery store. (A primary task of daily living in east-central Illinois is making our own fun.) We always find something unexpected; sometimes an item we’ve bought elsewhere at a much higher price, sometimes an item that we’ll later see elsewhere at a much higher price, sometimes an item we’ve never seen elsewhere. (Bell’s Seasoning, anyone?)

Today was a serious score: six boxes of Barry’s Tea, two of Barry’s Gold Blend, four of Barry’s Original Blend, eighty bags per box, $2.00 a box. Amazon has these teas at $7 or more a box. International grocery stores charge much more.

FTTW: For the tea win.

Related reading
All OCA adventures in tea (Pinboard)

[If you visit a salvage-grocery store, check all expiration dates. Our tea doesn’t expire until sometime next year. Bell’s Seasoning, expired 2023, was selling for 30¢.]

A streaming “Adoration”

The Juilliard School’s MAP String Ensemble will perform Elaine Fine’s arrangement of Florence Price’s “Adoration” tonight in concert. You can watch and listen from this page at 8:00 p.m. Eastern. N.B.: the concert will not be archived for later viewing.

Elaine’s name does not appear on the program but will be announced from the stage. Elaine is a Juilliard grad, so this performance will be especially meaningful to her. Her arrangements of “Adoration” (a work in the public domain) have done much to draw attention to Florence Price’s music.

You can find Elaine’s arrangments of “Adoration,” all freely shared, in the International Music Score Library Project.

*

7:35 p.m. (Central): Nothing is streaming. Juilliard messed up.

*

May 5: The conductor sent Elaine the wrong link. That’s why we missed the livestream.

*

May 6: Happily, there’s an audience video of a beautiful, deeply moving performance.

[Florence Price, “Adoration,” arranged by Elaine Fine. MAP String Ensemble. Catherine Birke, conductor. Alice Tully Hall, New York. May 4, 2024.]

Related reading
A handful of “Adoration” posts

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by the puzzle’s editor, Stan Newman. I started with 13-D, four letters, “Typewriters with typeballs,” a giveaway, which gave away 9-A, five letters, “De Niro’s Raging Bull brother” and 16-A, five letters, “Crest collaborator.” Whee. But I found the bottom half of the puzzle considerably more difficult.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

2-D, nine letters, “Major merger partner of 2015.” I dislike this kind of trivia.

4-D, six letters, “Belly up.” Thanks, poetry.

8-D, eight letters, “Unable to sail, say.” Adding an element of mystery to the puzzle.

9-D, eleven letters, “What Kramer saves catalogs from.” I like this kind of trivia.

11-D, five letters, “Overnight delivery specialist.” Note: specialist.

23-A, fourteen letters, “The nation’s largest power station.” Surprising to see it in a puzzle.

35-D, five letters, “Inspiration to many mathematicians.” In the online image of the print puzzle, the third column of text ends with the word many. Reading no further, I struggled for a ridiculously long time to figure out an answer.

29-A, four letters, “Ocean liner.” I was not fooled.

31-A, letters, “Number lines.” I was baffled.

33-D, nine letters, “Togetherness?” Nice.

38-D, eight letters, “Sheryl Crow and Paul McCartney.” I thought the answer might be a sign of the zodiac.

41-D, seven letters, “Windows users.” I get the joke, but are they truly users?

44-D, six letters, “Name associated with 11-Down’s time.” Some pretty rarefied trivia.

46-D, six letters, “Clash-prevention expression.” A little too Hi and Lois-y for me.

47-A, fourteen letters, “Fed people.” The answer has an odd ring to it.

48-D, five letters, “Down clue answer, often.” Nicely Stumper-y.

59-A, five letters, “Operatic Charlestonian.”A great clue.

My favorite in this puzzle: 54-A, four letters, “Gym ball.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Word of the day: oaktag

Clued as “Postcard paper,” oaktag appeared in the Newsday Saturday Stumper this past Saturday. I hadn’t thought of the word for years.

Merriam-Webster directs the looker-upper to tagboard : “strong cardboard used especially for making shipping tags.” The Oxford English Dictionary has a proper entry for oaktag: “a thin, tough, lightweight cardboard, usually made from kraft and jute pulp and having a smooth finish and manilla colour.” The OED marks the word as of American origin, with a first citation from 1914. Its etymology is left a mystery: “formed within English, by compounding.” But I could’ve told you that.

The American Heritage Dictionary suggests two possible origins:

Perhaps from its color, which originally resembled that of the oak boards used in book bindings until the 16th century, or perhaps from oakum board, a kind of sturdy paperboard made from oakum.

Sturdy, hmm — like an oak? But oakum appears to have no relation to oak.

A message in a 2002 thread at linguist.list.org cites a speculation from the lexicographer Lawrence Urdang in American Speech (Spring 1984):

Oaktag is a dark beige, which may account for the oak- part of its name. In the 1930s and later, shipping tags were often made of this material, typically with a hole at one end, reinforced with a stiff red circular grommet and a short piece of cord for tying to a package. It seems likely to me that the universal application of the stock to such use accounts for the -tag part of oaktag. This is, of course, a folk eytmology — but then, oaktag appears to be a folk name, doesn’t it?“

Urdang was replying to a query about the word in American Speech (Fall 1982) from the linguist David Gold, who had suggested that oaktag may be something of a New York City-ism. Messages in the 2002 linguist.list thread suggest that oaktag might be something of a New York or East Coast word for a product also known as posterboard, or posterboard. I would think of posterboard though as thicker and white — certainly not “manilla colour.”

Oaktag makes me think of school supplies of yore: mucilage, oilskin, jars of paste with brushes built into the lids. And, much later: Eaton’s Corrasable Bond.

How lovely, by the way, to see manilla, so spelled.

[I’ve quoted the correct version of Urdang’s comment, slightly misquoted on the listserv.]

“One hundred and one psychopaths”

From Pressure Point (dir. Hubert Cornfield, 1962), now streaming in the Criterion Channel feature Hollywood Crack-Up: The Decade American Cinema Lost Its Mind. It’s 1942. Sidney Poitier is a prison psychiatrist, unnamed, treating a prisoner, also unnamed (Bobby Darin), a member of the German American Bund, imprisoned for sedition:

“At that point I knew that my primary concern was not with the welfare of my patient but with the question of whether he was making any sense, and how many people there were in this world to whom he would make sense. For although psychopaths are a small minority, it seems significant that whenever militant and organized hate exists, a psychopath is the leader. And if, for instance, one hundred disgruntled and frustrated individuals fall in line behind one psychopath, then, in essence, we are concerned with the actions of one hundred and one psychopaths.”

Highly recommended viewing in 2024.