Change Your Image
NewtonFigg
Reviews
The Basketball Fix (1951)
The real life basketball fix.
The plot of this movie is based on a major scandal in New York in 1951. A bookie named Harry Gross corrupted at least one college basketball team, which shall remain nameless so as not to embarrass the school 70 years later. Before the scandal broke, their games were regularly televised, and my father, who had gone to college in Brooklyn (not that one) was a fan. After Gross was arrested, the school games disappeared from TV. Gross had named dozens of police officers who took his payoffs to look the other way. At trial, he refused to testify and was sentenced to prison for years for contempt of court. He said his life would have been in danger. The Daily News said he got $75,000 to be quiet. That would be close to a million in 2024.
No Highway in the Sky (1951)
The cold scientist thaws...partially.
James Stewart plays a hammy caricature of an absent minded professor. He is all intellect and no emotion. He is more interested in the errors that cause a process to fail than in the people who are affected by the failure. His relationship with is 12 year old daughter is likewise intellectual and devoid of emotion. When they part at the airport, she is teary eyed at the imminent separation and is silently pleading for a goodbye kiss. Her father fiddles in his pocket to find a handkerchief. When he finds it, he uses it to wipe his mouth and walks away. On the flight, when he realizes there is a good chance he and the other passengers may be killed if the plane crashes, as he suspects it will, he finds he cares about what will happen to the passengers. But, when he gets back home safely, his daughter is asleep in bed and he does not wake her. When she does awaken, there is no demonstration of affection for her. She shortly disappears from the story and is not present at her father's vindication.
Marlene Dietrich, as a movie star, intrudes. She must have shown up at the studio one day and wandered onto the wrong set.
Beau James (1957)
A first hand review
I went to our neighborhood theater to see Beau James when it came out. It was not exactly a serious biopic, more just a collection of anecdotes of little dramatic substance or continuity. My grandmother was a year younger than Jimmy Walker and lived on Leroy Place in Greenwich Village just down the block from the Walker family residence. She told me that her brothers hung out with the Walker boys. After seeing the movie, in order to get some first hand feedback, I went to visit Grandma and told her about the picture and how it seemed at the end to suggest Walker hadn't been treated fairly. Grandma didn't say anything but made a face that told me she thought he had gotten what was coming to him. Now that I am about the same age as she was then, I have to agree with her opinion. There seems to be little about Walker's life to be glamorized.
Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949)
This one gave me nightmares
I was a small child when I saw this one in 1950. I know it was 1950 because, in the newsreel between the pictures, the death of Al Jolson was announced. I had already seen belated reruns of Buck Privates and the in the Navy follow up (our local movie house didn't get pictures right away), so I was not prepared for the violence and stabbings. I still don't find stabbings funny. The worst scene was when Lou was in the secret cave and got his head stuck in the bottom of a giant stone basin. Lou's head was the stopper in the basin. The unseen killer diverted a stream to flow into the basin so the basin would fill up with water and drown Lou. Ha ha ha. In the 1970s, a local TV station showed an Abbott and Costello movie every Saturday morning, and my kids watched them. I made sure to get them occupied with something else when I saw this one was scheduled.
The Last Crooked Mile (1946)
Don Barry channels Lloyd Nolan
In the early 40s, Lloyd Nolan made a series of serio-comic, low budget crime thrillers as private detective Michael Shayne. Two of them were later remade as grander movies, The Brasher Doubloon and Narrow Margin.
But since, by 1946, Nolan had moved on to bigger and better things, and there was still a perceived need for inexpensive Michael Shayne-type movies, Red Barry was engaged to do an imitation. He keeps the Irish background, wise guy attitude, and even casually drops glamorous girl friends as the original did. Oh, and he even casually solves crimes.
Other reviewers have described the plot, so there is no real need to repeat that. It seems, however, that the makers of the French Connection borrowed a plot device from this film.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Don't Interrupt (1958)
Nobody gets the point
This review contains spoilers, but not of this program.
Hitchcock often had a moral to his stories. The most famous episode was probably A Lamb To the Slaughter in which Barbara Bel Geddes bashes her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, thereby causing his demise. The police investigating the crime unwittingly eat the murder weapon which has thawed out and been cooked and served to them as they try to solve the case. The show ends with Barbara chuckling at having gotten away with her dastardly deed. However, in the epilogue, Hitchcock takes the trouble to tell us that Barbara remarried and tried to get rid of her second husband the same way. Unfortunately, he was an absent minded sort and had forgotten to plug in the freezer. The leg of lamb "was as soft as mutton".
The porter in the present episode represents Justice. The kid does not profit from his crime.
Hunting in 1950 (1926)
a futuristic cartoon
We got our first TV on Christmas Eve 1949, a Saturday as I recall. On Monday, 12/26, regular weekday programming came on, and I was introduced to Junior Frolics, a show featuring silent cartoons most of which featured Farmer Alfalfa, or Farmer Gray, as Fred Sayles, the announcer referred to him. Since the cartoons were silent and the picture quality on channel 13 wasn't very good, Uncle Fred guided us through the cartoons by explaining what was happening. The station apparently had no more than a dozen cartoons, so we saw all of them several times that Christmas week. One of the repeated cartoons was Hunting in 1950. This intrigued me since 1950 was still in the future and I watched the cartoon closely for useful indications of what the future had in store for me. It was disappointing to realize that the cartoon was just another Farmer Gray episode with nothing futuristic about it.
The cartoons were all silent, but they had a musical score added. I don't know if the musical score became part of the cartoon or if each station that showed the cartoons added its own sound track. There were sections of In a Persian Market Place, Le Tombeau de Couperin, Midsummer Night's Dream, and some Paul Whitemanish pieces I have never identified. To this day, when I hear the second movement of Tombeau de Couperin, I can see the elephants in a Farmer Gray cartoon. Any help identifying the music will gladden this geezer's heart.
The Dark Mirror (1946)
a last second switcheroo?
As a leftie, I immediately picked up on Ruth's left handedness. When a twin sister appeared. I knew the sister would be right handed. Though I focused on finding them, the handedness examples of the two sisters were very few and subtly placed. After all the detective work and psychological analysis, the sick sister was identified. In my career, I worked with child psychologists and recognized the Rorschach pictures, particularly the first one showing the crab that will eat Pittsburgh if it is not destroyed with a space laser.
In any event, the movie ended with everybody about to live happily ever after. The psychologist served his new girlfriend a cup of tea. Fade out, the End.
My wife said "She picked up the teacup with her right hand."
Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)
A strange omission in the DVD version
A major spoiler. Incredibly nobody else seems to have picked up on it. Not the professional reviewers or the IMDB contributors.
Consider the comment of Sgt Heffelfinger when he finds out Woodrow was WWI Sgt Truesmith's son: "You don't look anything like him."
Consider Libby's comment to her fiance, Mayor Noble's son, when the son brings up the subject of their future children: "I've been counting on the fact you don't look anything like your father."
Consider that Woodrow was discharged from the Marines because of his hay fever. Consider that young Mr. Noble was rejected by the draft board for hay fever.
The puzzling missing scene on the DVD omits a very broad clue which I can only vaguely remember from the videotape release. Mrs. Noble remembers the day in 1917 when the elder Truesmith was leaving his hometown for service in the Marines. She said something like: "I remember he went all around town saying goodbye to all his old friends."
Now, look at the picture of Sgt Truesmith hanging over the mantle.
Medic: Never Comes Sunday (1955)
the story is still too real
The plot involves a child who is brain damaged as the result of an accident. It could just as well, and more realistically, be about a couple with a severely autistic child who have difficulty accepting their child's condition.. The mother is in denial and subjects the child to any treatment that she can find. When legitimate medical professionals can offer no help, she resorts to taking the child to an expensive quack who guarantees a cure. Naturally, the quack's treatment is a fiasco and the child is, if anything, worse.
This episode is now 67 years old. Nothing has changed. The parents' despair, the inability of health professionals to effect a cure, the promises of charlatans who prey on the family and financially bleed them, all the same. The show ends, kind of in limbo. There is no promise of a happy ending.
Bummer.
The Apartment (1960)
Coincidence? Both times Fred MacMurray played a villain he worked for an insurance company
I'm not surprised. A few years after the setting of The Apartment, I worked as a Management Trainee in the home office of a major insurance company. The movie does not exaggerate the conditions I experienced during my relatively brief term of employment there. The work day began with a bell ringing. As in the movie, all the faces I saw were white males. The President of the company said that, as long as he was President, he would never hire a black male. Women were secretaries or clerks and could rise only as high as being supervisor of a secretarial or clerical unit. The starting job for a girl with no special skills was mail girl. There were automatic elevators, so no elevator operators. The company preferred to hire graduates of Catholic girls' high schools as they were disciplined and not apt to cause trouble. The boss of my unit, a man in his 50s, had a calendar on his desk. On every page of the calendar he had written the number of days he had to go before he could retire. First thing every morning he sat at his desk, ripped off the previous day's page and announced the current number. The man who sat next to me sometimes seemed lost in space. He said his father had worked as a coal miner to earn enough so his son could go to college, The son wondered aloud if he would have been better off if he had become a coal miner. The man who sat behind me had never forgotten that the company sent him out if town one Christmas week and refused to reimburse him for the long distance call he made to his family on Christmas Day. Every position had a numerical rank. Someone promoted to manager got a glassed in office on the perimeter of the floor and furniture appropriate to his rank. If a new manager moved in to an office previously occupied by a manager of a higher rank, the new man had to wait until the maintenance staff removed the desk and chair in the office and replace them with slightly smaller desk and chair suitable for the new man's grade.
I wasn't at the company nearly long enough to rise into the management ranks, and I have no idea how the managers spent their evenings. If I had to guess, I'd say they weren't daring enough to sexually harass the underlings.
This post does not really address the movie, but I hope it conveys the setting in which the movie characters found themselves and can explain their motives for acting as they do.
Children's Theater (1949)
The first gentle kids' TV show
In 1950, children's shows tended to be loud and raucous. Clarabelle the Clown squirted people with his seltzer bottle; Pinky Lee blithered non-stop; Beat the Clock forced the contestants to perform embarrassing stunts. Pies in the face were the height of sophistication. Then, on Saturday mornings, before the cartoon ghetto arrived, a gentle theme song introduced a calm announcer, Ray Forrest, who played, among other things, the now much ridiculed BBC nature films. I don't remember if he actually played "Stuffing the Wild Titmouse" , but that was the sort of thing we saw. He showed cartoons that actually were so modern they had soundtracks. Bubble & Squeak, a Cockney cabbie and his cab. Crusader Rabbit, an early version of Rocky and Bullwinkle. I wish I could remember more, but 70 years is an awful long time.
Puppet Playhouse (1947)
The cynicism of early kids' TV shows.
There was no subtlety about the show: sell, sell, sell. Howdy told us how Wonder Bread helped build strong bodies 8 ways. Rex Marshall appeared in a yachtsman's costume and sold Mason Mints. Buffalo Bob made a fist and rapped the air. A thud, thud sounded which was the invisible shield, Gardol, which Colgate provided to protect your teeth. Poll Parrot Shoes, Ovaltine. At least Ovaltine offered a free Howdy Doody Ovaltine Shake up Mug. In addition to the puppet characters, there were actors who played Chief Thunderthud and Ugly Sam. When something surprised Chief Thunderthud, he exclaimed "Cowabunga!" Ugly Sam was dressed like a caveman. He considered "ugly" a compliment. When he entered, he said "Hello ugly Buffalo; hello ugly peanuts." He was played by Dayton Allen who went on to be a Man in the Street on the Steve Allen Show. In the middle of every show, Ugly Buffalo introduced a silent movie projected onto the big Scopedoodle. The movies featured unheard of actors like Fanny Hines, and the villain, Rudolph Razzendale, who was so crooked he would steal the 20th Century Limited if the engine was cool. On one show, Fanny Hines made a brief appearance to introduce his film clip and did voice over as the film ran. My mother was curious to see who he was and came into the TV room during the movie, but Fanny unaccountably bade farewell before the movie ended and was not seen again.
I see several other reviews rating Howdy highly. I was a a connoisseur of kids' TV shows at the time and, in my opinion, the Howdy show was lame. The plots were dumb. The show had none of the wit of Pinhead and Foodini, or Newton Figg, or Snarky Parker, or Time for Beanie, and none of the gentle charm of Kukla, Fran and Ollie. It hardly surpassed the lower budget witless Rootie Kazootie Show. And, believe it or not, there were other shows that had no puppets. They also ranged in quality from good, like Ray Forrest's Children's Theater, to awful, like Pinky Lee.
So, yes, Howdy Doody paved the way for future kids' TV shows, but that's not saying much. Think H.R. Pufnstuff.
Midsomer Murders: Sins of Commission (2004)
stale plotting
As is usual with this series, the acting and ambience of this episode are good, if you don't count the ridiculous hippies in their VW bus and the watered down scenes in the swimming pool. The plot, however, is a throwback to 19th Century melodrama with all the clues being discovered by accidental eavesdroppers. Shouldn't Barnaby have had an arras to hide behind?
Need more lines to write. I was once the proud owner of a VW bus and never, in the 10 years I owned it, painted flowers or peace signs on it. I suppose I resent its constantly being shown as exclusively a vehicle for transporting goofy flower children. And, about the flower children, there seem to be excessive gratuitous closeups of the bathing suited young girls walking away from the camera. These scenes would be more apt on a Benny Hill show.
Ernie in Kovacsland (1951)
Our alarm clock
I remember Kovacs' first morning show was on CBS opposite NBC's Today Show with Dave Garroway. Kovacs frequently featured the Kapusta Kid (theme song: Make me some hot cakes and sausage), sports scores preceded by a 1915 record of There's a Little Spark of Love Still Burning, and records of popular songs with cartoons shown on screen as the song played. e.g. Roz Russell and Edie Adams sang Why Did I Ever Leave Ohio and the cartoons showed 2 cats howling on a fence. Edie, a cute blonde with a Buster Brown do, once sang a hit song of the day "Ach tung! Du mit der Sterne in die Augen." It was too good to last, and eventually he was replaced by Jack Paar. After a short time, we went back to Garroway.
Special Agent (1949)
The real story
Something must have happened in 1949 that reminded two movie studios of a 1923 train robbery. I copied the article below from my White Heat review.
D'Autremonts' bungled train robbery in 1923 left 4 dead
By Paul Fattig Copyright © interRogue & The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA oct11,1998
ASHLAND -- An old wreath over the north portal of Tunnel No. 13 at the Siskiyou Summit is the only visible reminder of the deadly crime. Three railroad employees and a mail clerk were killed when the Southern Pacific's "Gold Special" was held up by the D'Autremont brothers 75 years ago today.
One of those who died shortly after noon on Oct. 11, 1923, was Ashland resident Elvyn Dougherty, the mail clerk. "It was a terrible thing," said Eagle Point resident Nancy Rinabarger, 70, whose mother, Blanche Dougherty, was left a widow with a young son. "He wasn't supposed to work that day. He was subbing for someone else. "I wasn't born then, but I know she had a lot of hardships," she said of her mother, who later remarried. "Since the case wasn't solved right away, they (detectives) even followed her for some time. That was hard on her."
Her half-brother, Raymond Dougherty of Redding, the boy left fatherless by the dynamite blast, will be 80 next month. But he declined to comment about the trauma caused by the 1923 incident, saying it was "personal."
After all these years, what has become popularly known as the West's "Last Great Train Robbery" is still remembered with pain by those whose families lost loved ones. "Four lives were lost and three lives were changed so they that were never the same," said Salem resident Mike Yoakum, a former Rogue Valley resident. "It was a compound tragedy."
The D'Autremonts included twins Ray and Roy, both 23 at the time of the crime, and their teenage brother, Hugh. Before the crime, Ray served time in a Washington state prison for labor union activity. During that time, he came up with a plan to make his family rich.
"Hatred ate away at my compassion as I saw how the people in power cheated and stole from the masses," he told author Larry Sturholm for the book, "All for Nothing." "Thousands of women and children were starving and dying, thousands more, honest working men, were receiving less than half of what they should," he added.
But Ray's action indicated he wasn't interested in honest work. After his release from prison, he and his twin brother traveled to Chicago where they hoped to join big-time gangsters during the Roaring '20s. Unsuccessful, they returned to Southern Oregon where they began studying shipments on Southern Pacific trains. After all, the train through the Rogue Valley still carried the nickname of the "Gold Special" because it once hauled large quantities of gold from the mines.
They had heard rumors that it would be hauling up to a half million dollars in gold as well as a shipment of cash on Oct. 11.
The twins, who recruited their younger brother, picked the 3,107-foot-long Tunnel No. 13 because it would be easy to hop aboard the train as it labored slowly to reach the crest of the summit. Railway regulations required the engineer to test the brakes at the top of the pass by bringing the southbound train to a near stop just north of the tunnel.
The brothers studied the site, and established a hideout a couple of miles from the tunnel. They also stole explosives from a construction site in northern Oregon.
On the day of the crime, Roy and Hugh jumped on the train. Ray waited at the other end of the tunnel with the dynamite. After scrambling up on the baggage car, the two brothers climbed over the tender and jumped down into the engine cab. Hugh ordered engineer Sidney Bates to stop the train near the south end of the tunnel.
The twins packed the dynamite against one end of the mail car containing the mail clerk. The blast ripped open the entire end of the car, killing the clerk and setting fire to the railroad car. The brothers couldn't see into the car because of the smoke and dust. And they couldn't get the train moved out of the tunnel because of the mangled car.
The second man to die was brakeman Coyle Johnson, who had walked through the thick smoke in the tunnel, startling the brothers. Ray, carrying a shotgun, and Hugh, armed with a .45 semiautomatic, shot Johnson. Perhaps angry over not finding any money or gold, perhaps afraid of leaving witnesses, the brothers then shot to death railroad fireman Marvin Seng and engineer Bates.
They fled into the woods, prompting a massive manhunt that included the federal government, Oregon National Guard troops, local posses and angry railroad workers. But the brothers laid low, then slipped through the dragnet.
It wouldn't be until 1927 that Hugh was caught while serving in the Far East in the military. An Army buddy recognized his face on a wanted poster and turned him in for the reward. The twins were arrested a short time later in Ohio.
Alice Adams (1935)
a tragedy
This movie is a Place in the Sun turned around with a female instead of a male hoping for happiness by means of marrying up. It has always been nicer to be rich than poor, but even more so 90 years ago when being poor meant leading a life of unrelenting drudgery. Young women of today may criticize Alice since they do not understand the context of the time she lived in. Poor people did not have washing machines or vacuum cleaners and could not afford maids; birth control was largely ineffective and often legally and morally condemned; divorce was frowned upon; and employment opportunities for the average woman were limited to dull, low paying jobs. A married woman did not work. That would really have marked the family as low class. Most women would have accepted marrying a $30 a week clerk, living in a shabby rented apartment and cooking and cleaning and raising five children and living hand to mouth. If your husband got drunk and slapped you around, that was just too bad. If you wanted to escape your small town and make it big in the city, you'd more likely have to settle for being a waitress or seamstress, unless you had looks good enough to sell as a taxi dancer or night club chorus girl. However, if you were a respectable poor girl of spirit but unremarkable talents, your best hope was to mingle with the rich folk and be accepted by them. Enter Alice Adams. The rich folk were snobbish about people of Alice's class; so Alice was snobbish to her own family. The rich did not associate with servants and sneered at those who did. Ditto Alice. Alice's mother wanted to spare her daughter the squalid life she had had to endure. Alice had to be pretentious. Unfortunately, pretentious people are not attractive to those in the class they are trying to rise above, or to those in the class they are trying to reach. The window of opportunity is very short. A woman not married by age 26 was an old maid who had to settle for less than she could have gotten six years earlier. The somewhat frantic tone of Alice reflects her awareness that if she's to succeed, it had better be soon. Before judging her character, imagine yourself in her position.
White Heat (1949)
The real story
D'Autremonts' bungled train robbery in 1923 left 4 dead
By Paul Fattig Copyright © interRogue & The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA oct11,1998
ASHLAND -- An old wreath over the north portal of Tunnel No. 13 at the Siskiyou Summit is the only visible reminder of the deadly crime. Three railroad employees and a mail clerk were killed when the Southern Pacific's "Gold Special" was held up by the D'Autremont brothers 75 years ago today.
One of those who died shortly after noon on Oct. 11, 1923, was Ashland resident Elvyn Dougherty, the mail clerk. "It was a terrible thing," said Eagle Point resident Nancy Rinabarger, 70, whose mother, Blanche Dougherty, was left a widow with a young son. "He wasn't supposed to work that day. He was subbing for someone else. "I wasn't born then, but I know she had a lot of hardships," she said of her mother, who later remarried. "Since the case wasn't solved right away, they (detectives) even followed her for some time. That was hard on her."
Her half-brother, Raymond Dougherty of Redding, the boy left fatherless by the dynamite blast, will be 80 next month. But he declined to comment about the trauma caused by the 1923 incident, saying it was "personal."
After all these years, what has become popularly known as the West's "Last Great Train Robbery" is still remembered with pain by those whose families lost loved ones. "Four lives were lost and three lives were changed so they that were never the same," said Salem resident Mike Yoakum, a former Rogue Valley resident. "It was a compound tragedy."
The D'Autremonts included twins Ray and Roy, both 23 at the time of the crime, and their teenage brother, Hugh. Before the crime, Ray served time in a Washington state prison for labor union activity. During that time, he came up with a plan to make his family rich.
"Hatred ate away at my compassion as I saw how the people in power cheated and stole from the masses," he told author Larry Sturholm for the book, "All for Nothing." "Thousands of women and children were starving and dying, thousands more, honest working men, were receiving less than half of what they should," he added.
But Ray's action indicated he wasn't interested in honest work. After his release from prison, he and his twin brother traveled to Chicago where they hoped to join big-time gangsters during the Roaring '20s. Unsuccessful, they returned to Southern Oregon where they began studying shipments on Southern Pacific trains. After all, the train through the Rogue Valley still carried the nickname of the "Gold Special" because it once hauled large quantities of gold from the mines.
They had heard rumors that it would be hauling up to a half million dollars in gold as well as a shipment of cash on Oct. 11.
The twins, who recruited their younger brother, picked the 3,107-foot-long Tunnel No. 13 because it would be easy to hop aboard the train as it labored slowly to reach the crest of the summit. Railway regulations required the engineer to test the brakes at the top of the pass by bringing the southbound train to a near stop just north of the tunnel.
The brothers studied the site, and established a hideout a couple of miles from the tunnel. They also stole explosives from a construction site in northern Oregon.
On the day of the crime, Roy and Hugh jumped on the train. Ray waited at the other end of the tunnel with the dynamite. After scrambling up on the baggage car, the two brothers climbed over the tender and jumped down into the engine cab. Hugh ordered engineer Sidney Bates to stop the train near the south end of the tunnel.
The twins packed the dynamite against one end of the mail car containing the mail clerk. The blast ripped open the entire end of the car, killing the clerk and setting fire to the railroad car. The brothers couldn't see into the car because of the smoke and dust. And they couldn't get the train moved out of the tunnel because of the mangled car.
The second man to die was brakeman Coyle Johnson, who had walked through the thick smoke in the tunnel, startling the brothers. Ray, carrying a shotgun, and Hugh, armed with a .45 semiautomatic, shot Johnson. Perhaps angry over not finding any money or gold, perhaps afraid of leaving witnesses, the brothers then shot to death railroad fireman Marvin Seng and engineer Bates.
They fled into the woods, prompting a massive manhunt that included the federal government, Oregon National Guard troops, local posses and angry railroad workers. But the brothers laid low, then slipped through the dragnet.
It wouldn't be until 1927 that Hugh was caught while serving in the Far East in the military. An Army buddy recognized his face on a wanted poster and turned him in for the reward. The twins were arrested a short time later in Ohio.
Robinson Crusoe (1954)
seeing it again over a half century later
I had read the story of Robinson Crusoe before I saw the movie at our 5th run neighborhood theater and found the movie to be a pretty straightforward recreation of the book. It was impressive. I was interested in the story. If there were allegories, I didn't recognize them. Bunuel? Never heard of him. Robinson Crusoe was another on the list of color films, like Disney's Treasure Island and Great Locomotive Chase, The Searchers, Shane, The Command, Sign of the Pagan, Fort Ti, that were much more alluring than the usual B&W fare and better remembered.
Now, in the 21st century I watched it again and it lived up exactly to my expectations. Still no allegories, but isn't that a refreshing change? I probably overrate it at 9 because of the nostalgia factor. It would be an ideal movie to take a pre-teen grandson to.
A King in New York (1957)
"If you want to send a message, use Western Union."
Mr. Chaplin should have heeded Goldwyn's advice. A telegram is terse and to the point. If the message of this movie is to call attention to the evils of McCarthyism, the message has been diluted by jabs at TV advertising, Cinemascope, teenagers, and by the inclusion of dragged out archaic slapstick, and an implausible romance. Falling fully clothed into a bathtub was old twenty years earlier. The business with the fire hose went on much too long and looked as if it had been lifted from a 1918 Chaplin short.The denouement is witless. If only HUAC could have been wiped away by spraying it with a fire hose. The kid, Rupert, had a stage father instead of a stage mother.
Caught in the Act (1941)
a dumb-a movie
Up until the 1950s, Italians in the movies were usually sinister gangsters or buffoons named Tony who sold bananas from pushcarts. This movie raises the buffoon character one level. His name is Mike and he is a competent construction foreman. However, after 15 years working for the same company in the construction trades, he seems never to have heard of crooked contractors, and he's still a talka like-a dis. As the movie opens, Mike has been afraid to ask his boss for the afternoon off to attend his daughter's wedding. The boss calls him in to the office before Mike can ask for time off and promotes him to the exalted position of sales rep for the company. I guess there's more to Mike than we see because you get the impression he'd have trouble keeping the banana pushcart business straight. Now for the "plot": as Mike is driving home, a glamorous blonde jumps into his car at a stoplight and forces him to drive at high speed to the suburbs. Naturally, the blonde is, by some coincidence, the moll of the gangster who is trying to create trouble for Mike's boss who won't buy the gang's porous concrete. Naturally, the police see Mike driving the gangster's girl friend and assume Mike is one of the gang. Naturally, the police arrest Mike and, when he tells them who his boss is, they naturally arrest the boss. When Mike is arrested, his wife assaults the cop, and she is arrested and, naturally, placed in the same cell the blonde is in. That's all the synopsis you'll get as I don't want to be blacklisted for writing spoilers. I only stayed to the end because nobody has ever seen or rated this movie before. My public service gesture for the New Year.
California Straight Ahead! (1937)
trains against trucks...again
Competition between railroads and trucking companies seems to have been a popular topic. Usually, the truckers were the bad guys who resorted to dirty tricks to put the railroads out of business. Paradise Express, made the same year as this movie, featured Harry Davenport as the owner of a beleaguered short line railroad. In the early 1950s, Ealing Studios made the Titfield Thunderbolt along the same lines. In California Straight Ahead, for variety's sake, the truckers are the good guys and the railroad the villain. The plot is typical: an airplane parts manufacturer has a shipment that has to get from the plant in the Midwest to San Francisco before an anticipated dock workers' strike shuts down the port. The manufacturer won't get paid if the goods aren't shipped. The factory apparently has plenty of inventory because they let the railroad and John Wayne's trucks both have a complete load to transport, but only the carrier that gets to the port first before the strike will be paid. And away they go. The trucks, in addition to the usual mechanical problems, also have problems inflicted by railroad goons. The details are hazy in my mind since I saw this movie once over 40 years ago. You can probably create your own scenario in your head and not be far off. The ending was a jaw dropper. I don't remember its exact real name but, as everybody stood on shore watching the freighter full of airplane parts sail west, we saw its name on the stern: Shigetsu Maru Yokohama.
The Jackie Gleason Show (1952)
60 years before the Jackie Gleason Show was the 1890s.
And now it's been 60 years, more or less, since the peak of the Jackie Gleason Show. I don't know how many geezers in 1954 pined for the good old days of Harrigan & Hart, and it seems odd that the present day senior citizens cackle at their memories of Jackie Gleason. In 1954, there was no videotape of the 1890s which the old folks could refer to for a cold splash of reality and maybe put an end to their babbling. But now there is a filmed record of the early 1950s TV shows of Gleason, Jimmy Durante, the Ritz Brothers, Eddie Cantor, Milton Berle et al, and you can watch most of them on Youtube. Painfully dumb is the only way to describe most of it. I just finished watching a 1951 clip featuring Reggie van Gleason, III. The Three Stooges are high art in comparison.
If I could reach into a barrel of all of Gleason's skits and pull some out at random to create a complete show, I would find:
At the top of the show, he recites verbatim the Mutt & Jeff cartoon from the previous Sunday funnies.
Ralph: One of these days Alice, Pow! right in the kisser.
Charlie Bratton: Hey Clem, what's that slop you're eating? Clem: Some day I'm going to kill that man.
Fenwick Babbit unbuttons and rebuttons a sweater with about 30 buttons and says "You're a nice man".
Reggie: Mmm boy are you fat.
Stanley Sogg: Tonight's movie is brought to you by Mother Fletcher.
Weirdo: I'm with you. Jackie: Oh no you're not!
I can't find any Rudy the Repairman quotes and you needn't look for any on my account. This show may have been a landmark of early television but it has very little entertainment value today.
Red Nightmare (1962)
Your tax dollars at work: the Cleavers meet the pod people
This Department of Defense sponsored inanity was done better 20 years earlier by Disney in his cartoon about the little boy living in Naziland. By 1962, it was completely redundant to preach to the American people how nasty it must be to live under a Communist dictatorship. There were recent examples of the suppressions of the uprisings in Poland and Hungary, first person testimonies by refugees and articles by the 100s in the popular magazines. Castro's mass executions of his opponents were even more recent. It would have been terrible if all those well off, white Christians in the movie had to surrender their way of life. No s**t, Dick Tracy.
I understand there have been cuts to the original release, and the 28 minute version I saw was not complete. Nowhere in that version is there any clue about what Communism is, besides nasty, and how it could possibly take over the US. Not necessary. Superimpose this lesson over the barrage of propaganda films that preceded it that gave valuable clues on how to recognize a Communist, and you have contributed to a mood of hysteria. How to recognize a Communist: does he read Pravda on the subway? Does he speak against our government? Does he not wear a flag lapel pin (no, no, that was later)? is he an atheist (Jew is close enough)? Does he stir up discontent by advocating better treatment for blacks? Does he think signing loyalty oaths is silly? Maybe there's nothing you and I can do to stop an ICBM, but we sure can stop the subversive worms from destroying us from within. Red Nightmare is just the coach's halftime locker room speech to keep the team fired up against people who call each other comrade and talk about commissars and the proletariat.
The Looking Glass War (1970)
an obtuse movie version of a satirical novel
POSSIBLE SPOILERS In the novel, British military intelligence in 1961 was looking for something to justify its existence. Some ambiguous aerial photos suggested the East Germans had constructed a missile site. Instead of sharing this information with... who? (sorry I don't know the other intelligence service. MI6?) the military people, who had not run an operation in years, decided to do what they knew best: send one of their now aged WWII spies with WWII equipment ( a 40 lb. tube radio with different crystals to change transmitting frequencies) into East Germany to verify the existence of the missile installation and radio back his findings. The East Germans were mystified by the strange radio messages until an old sergeant vaguely remembered how English spies had sent out messages 20 years earlier. The poor spy's floundering around created an international incident and the military intelligence people were ordered to pull the plug on the operation. LeCarre's caustic comments on the military intelligence service were swept aside and the movie was made treating all the bumbling as a serious spy story. Ah well. In 1961 the cold war was very serious business.