Streamliner! : "The Fabulous Joe", and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" starring Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn and Sidney Poitier

Last night, yet another Streamliner from Hal Roach, the King of Zaniness. Can you deal with a talking dog? Okay, then I've got the movie for you. In "The Fabulous Joe"(1947), mild mannered businessman "Milo Terkel" (Walter Abel) finds himself in court, being divorced by his socialite wife "Emily" (Margot Grahame). He's on the stand telling his side of the story, going on a tangent, when the judge reminds him to stick to the time frame in question. After that, he freezes up. "I just can't talk about it," he explains, referring to the incident that resulted in divorce papers. "What do you mean?" asks the judge. Milo throws up his hands: "I just can't, your honor. I'm sorry." At this point, his lawyer (Donald Meek), exasperated, pulls Milo off the stand, asking the judge for a recess. In chambers, Meek pleads with Milo to explain what's going on. "You're going to lose your wife and any settlement you might be awarded, if you don't at least say something up there."

"But I can't", he repeats. "They'll think I'm crazy".

"Just tell it to me, at least", says Meek. "Let me decide what they'll think."

Now we switch to flashback mode, as Milo recounts to Meek the day on which he inherited "Joseph P. McMasters" (Corky), Joe for short, a dog that Milo swears can talk. Meek, a family friend as well as Milo's attorney, was himself involved in the transaction. "Remember the day you came into the office with that mutt?" Meek had come in to tell him of a will he'd just arbitrated, for the family of a rich old man. The family members got nothing because the old man hated them. Joe the dog got it all, and with no one to take care of him, Meek gave him to Milo. "And ever since I took that dog in, my life has fallen apart!" Joe inherited 10,000 dollars, but that's neither here nor there because Milo has money. I guess in Hal Roach's world it doesn't matter because we're soon gonna forget all these details anyway.

In the flashback, Donald Meek leaves Milo's office, after explaining the will, and Joe's inheritance. He leaves the dog with Milo, and Milo takes Joe home. The real story starts now, when Joe sees how Milo lives. A man's home is supposed to be his castle, yet it's anything but for Milo. This night is his anniversary, and he wants to schpoil his wife with a diamond necklace. It's mega-expensive, but he buys it, and when he gets home, with Joe in tow, Emily isn't there. She's forgotten about the anniversary, too busy with her "philanthropic" activities (a bird club). Emily the wife is a phony-baloney highbrow with a fake English accent, and to make matters worse, her king-sized brother "George" (Howard Petrie), has lived with her and Milo as a fifth wheel for ten years running. George, a former Yale footballer, is an overbearing buffoon who sides with his sister against Milo anytime the going gets rough.

When Milo gets home, with the necklace and Joe the dog, the only party happening is the raucous blowout his daughter "Debbie" is throwing. Debbie (the tragic but beautuful Barbara Bates) is a credit card charge-a-holic who only sees Daddy as an endless source of money. When he complains about her spending it's "oh, Daddy!"

Now, Joe the dog sees all of this. He takes it all in and it irks him. As Milo leaves the house that night, with his wife gone and his daughter having taken over the joint, he and Joe go to a bar, where Milo gets hammered on a concoction called a Mysterious Orchid. He drinks two of them, to forget his troubles, and while doing so, a curvaceous young woman passes by. "Say, you look like you could use some company," she observes. "Whatcha got in that box?" It's the necklace of course; Milo lets her try it on, only to be rebuffed by a Moblike goon named "Louie" (Sheldon Leonard), who's sitting in a nearby booth. The bombshell's name is "Gorgeous Gilmore" (Marie Wilson), and Louie is her hoodlum boyfriend.

Well, this is where the Hal Roach insanity starts, because while Milo is out of his mind on the Mysterious Orchids, Joe the dog gets an idea to make Milo's wife jealous. He's seen the way Milo is treated at home, and he's ready to put his paw down. Outside the bar he starts talking to Milo, in Milo's drunken state, and when Gorgeous Gilmore returns, at a nearby a park after a fight with Louie, Joe trips her up near a stream so she'll fall in and get soaked. Can anyone say wet t-shirt night? Wet dress is more accurate, but the effect on Gorgeous is the same. Joe the dog does this on purpose, so that Milo will have to offer Gorgeous the use of his dryer. Naturally, a shower is included in the deal. They go back to Milo's house, and while Gorgeous is in the bathroom, Joe steals her dress and drops it out the windum. She can't find it, and hasn't anything else to wear (for now she's in a towel). The only thing Milo can do is offer her to sleep in his wife's bed. After all, Emily is gone with her bird watching club. He just has to make sure Gorgeous is gone in the morning.

But Gorgeous is never gone after that. She's in the house for the rest of the movie, and Milo has to hide her, in various states of undress, while Joe the talking dog dishes out marital advice and tries to "expose" more of Gorgeous Gilmore.

Sounds like fun, eh? It's pretty risque for 1947. There is the usual Hal Roach ten minute mega-wind-up scene, which he uses for his Grand Finales. In this case, Emily finally remembers the anniversary and comes home, but Gorgeous is still at the house, wearing less clothes than ever. Milo can't get rid of her, and Louie her boyfriend has discovered his address. He's on his way over to kill Milo, so Joe the dog does the only thing a loyal talking dog can do; he sets the living room on fire. With the house burning down, Gorgeous is trapped in the bedroom. Milo has no choice but to rescue her, as everyone including his wife converges at the front door. Thus, he is discovered with the half-naked Gorgeous, and that's how he ends up in divorce court. The flashback is over, and now he's back on the stand as the movie ends. If only he could get Joe to talk again, he'd prove his case and win. But now, Joe has clammed up. He won't say a word in front of the judge. Milo is declared mentally incompetent for saying he's got a talking dog, but as it turns out, once again, Joe has had his best interests at heart. You'll see why. Man, does this movie ever get Two Big Thumbs! I mean, c'mon: a talking dog flick! Good grief, Charlie Brown, and the picture is razor sharp.  ////

The previous night we watched a classic on dvd: "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"(1967), the film that broke the barrier on interracial marriage, at a time when racial tension was at a high point, yet it was also the year of the Summer of Love, when young people were trying to create a more harmonious world with the idea that we could all live as one. The movie tackles both aspects. I'd never seen it, and while I've been slowly trying to catch up on my 1960s classics (it was the last great decade of the studio system), my reason for checking it out from the Libe was altogether different. I recently watched Jordan Peele's "Get  Out" (I also saw his "Nope" at the theater in July), and while I don't want to get into a Jordan Peele discussion right now (too fraught a subject), I got "Guess Who's" from the library because the opening scene of "Get Out" reminded me of "Guess Who's" premise. Even casual film fans know that "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" is about an interracial couple on their way to meet the girl's white parents, after which they stay for dinner and a huge discussion ensues. Well, even though I hadn't seen "Dinner" when I saw "Get Out", that movie had a similar scenario unfold in the opening sequence, where Peele's leading man wonders if meeting the parents is a bad idea.

After seeing "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner", it looked to me like Peele "borrowed" it's opening scene, lock stock and barrel, for "Get Out." Of course, some critics and fans have dubbed Peele a filmmaking genius, and he won an Oscar for his script to "Get Out. To me it was okay, like a decent M. Night Shamalan film mixed with some Roger Corman. However, I thought it also had a heaping dose of racism (Peele's own), and if you are like me and wonder what all the hype is about with Jordan Peele (for the record, I liked "Nope" better, though "Get Out" was a tighter film), I needn't tell you that "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" is a far superior film, and they aren't even in the same discussion. 

You want woke? Go back to 1967, when there was actually an intelligent discourse taking place on racial issues in America, and it wasn't all about two-sided extremist politics. Boy, does "Dinner" get it right. You know who the most prejudiced person in this movie is? It's everyone and, conversely, no one. Consider the black maid "Tillie" (Isabel Sanford): She's bigoted against Sidney Poitier, whom she accuses of promoting Black Power. But her issue isn''t race as much as station and individual pride. Ditto for everyone in the film; everybody has an "ism" as John Lennon would say. Even Sidney Poitier won't stand up to his Dad until then end, when he pulls a James Dean and says "listen, man."

Then there's the young black hotrodder, just a teenager after all, who berates Spencer Tracy (who's character is liberal but won't accept the marriage) after he and Hepburn accidentally run into his custom car. He yells at them and calls them "senile" old folks (but not Whities). He says they belong in a Convalescent Home. So, yeah, in this movie everyone is prejudiced. And every angle is explored. But we're Woke now, I forgot. And nobody ever heard of these issues before 2016 or thereabouts. And it's all about black versus white, and gender identity, and division. Woke is a joke that causes more division than it ends. How about identifying not with race, politics or gender, but with being a nice person, like the Hippies did? Peace, man.

Anyway, sorry for the tirade, but I was a child of the '60s and I lived through the real thing. America was on it's way to solving racial issues then and Woke is a giant step backwards. If you want to see great acting, watch this movie. Hang on a sec, let me get the list....Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, and Sidney Poitier, all in one flick? Yep, and guess what? Tracy died 17 days after filming completed. He was in poor health during the shoot; he looks 85 but is only 67. But you'd never know he was on death's door by his performance, which was cobbled together from the days he was able to do his scenes. Katherine Hepburn was the love of his life; the tears in her eyes in the movie are really for Spencer. And if you want class, talent and style, just look up "Sidney Poitier" in the dictionary.

On top of that you get the brilliant supporting cast of Roy Glenn, Beah Richards, Isabel Sanford and Katherine Houghton. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" gets our highest rating, Two Gigantic Thumbs Up. Watch it on Netflix or get it from the Libe. Sorry about the diatribe, but I don't like modern extremist politics or the cultural derivations of same. And I promise to stick to movies (I'll try), and I didn't mean to single out Jordan Peele, but I didn't like the undercurrent of "Get Out", even though I agreed with the portrayal of phony liberals in the movie. End of story.

And that's all I know for tonight. My blogging music was Steve F. Hillage (why listen to anyone else?), I'm reading Elvis (the first book was better than this one), and my late night listening is "Siegfried" by Richard Wagner, conducted by von Karajan of course. I hope your week is going well. Hang in there in the heat. Tomorrow is the 33rd anniversary of the start of What Happened in Northridge, and I send you Tons of Love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Streamliner-mania! : "Here Comes Trouble" (a Doubleday movie), and "All-American Co-Ed" starring Johnny Downs and Frances Langford (plus Beatles)

We're currently hooked on Streamliners, and we found another Doubleday movie called "Here Comes Trouble"(1948), in which Dodo is out of the Army, back in civilian life and working as a copy boy for a newspaper. He's engaged to the publisher's daughter but the publisher can't stand him and thinks he's a nitwit, in spite of - or maybe because of - his encyclopedic memory. He wants Dodo out of the picture but doesn't want to hurt his daughter. What can he do? Well, the timing is perfect because the paper's crime reporter is quitting, he says the job's too rough anymore and he's got two black eyes from the local mobsters to prove it. The police chief is running an anti-racketeering campaign, the Mob isn't happy, and the publisher gets a brainstorm idea (with the help of his bimbo secretary) that he'll use Dodo to replace the crime scribe. Dodo is so obnoxious that the mobsters will likely kill him, thereby removing him as a potential son-in-law. Problem solved!

Dodo is grateful for the promotion. He takes to his new job with determination, and, lo and behold, who should he meet on his first trip to the police station but good old "Sgt. Ames" (Joe Sawyer), who's just left the Army himself and is now a cop. Ames is happy to see Dodo (it seems like they really are pals now) and he brags about single-handedly rounding up a dozen mobsters for the police chief's campaign. They're all being booked in the station as Ames relates his tale, but shortly afterward they're all set free. How in the world does this happen?

Well it seems that the publisher of the paper is hiding an affair with a burlesque stripper named "Bubbles LaRue" (Joan Woodbury). She has a diary detailing all their lurid meetings and wants ten grand for it, with the promise that she'll keep her mouth shut. Of course, because she's connected to the Mob, they want all their boys out of jail, too, so the police chief has to let them go, despite his anti-crime pledge, because the newspaper publisher is wealthy and has a lot of clout. But, he assigns Dodo to the case as the lead reporter, figuring he'll either get the diary from Bubbles or screw things up so bad that the truth will get lost in the shuffle. This entry is slower to develop than the Doubleday Army films, especially the truly insane "About Face", but it does have a grand finale to match that film in craziness: ten minutes of mayhem on stage at the burlesque theater, which happens after Bubbles is murdered and the diary is stolen by an mysterious man in a clown suit. To the audience in the theater, the craziness seems to be part of the stage act. They think it's a laugh riot (we do too), and the situation melts down from there. It's gotta be noted that Joe Sawyer is a comic genius. He and William Tracy could've made a career out of these films and I recommend you watch them all. "Here Comes Trouble" gets Two Big Thumbs Up and the picture is very good.  ////  

The previous night's film was also a Streamliner, called "All-American Co-Ed"(1941), about a rivalry between two colleges that begins when "Matilda Collinge" (Esther Dale), the headmistress at the all-girl Mar Brynn University, decides that her school needs more publicity. She gets the idea to offer scholarships to 12 different rural gals from across the country, in the hope of broadening Mar Brynn's appeal. Currently it only accepts snobby debutantes, "petunia pickers" in the words of Matilda's male assistant. In addition, he suggests they should mock Quinceton University, whose frat boys have just staged a Drag Show, all dressed as women. The idea is to cull Quinceton's female students and bring them to Mar Brynn, as well as any new girls who are undecided. "Quinceton gets all the publicity around here and it isn't fair. Let's take 'em down a notch. We'll run an ad, calling them dumbells, with a picture from that show they did. I can see the tag line now: 'Quinceton, the University for the Least Likely to Succeed.' " Matilda has her assistant run this ad, and it's brutal. Soon, girls across the country are applying to Mar Brynn, but the frat boys at Quinceton don't appreciate the mockery and vow revenge. They hatch a plan to sneak one of their guys into Mar Brynn, posing as a girl. If he gets accepted, they'll expose him as a man and their payback will be complete. The have the perfect frat boy in mind for the job, "Bob 'Bobbie' Sheppard" (Johnny Downs), because he's got the gender-bending thing down pat. He sends his picture (or should I say 'her' picture) to Matilda the headmistress and is chosen as one of the scholarship winners. The next day he's riding a train to Mar Brynn with the other selectees. Hijinks begin on the train when the girls notice his Adam's Apple, which he then hides with a scarf, pretending he has a sore throat (which also accounts for his husky voice). But the situation really escalates when he gets to Mar Brynn and loses his laundry bag, which contains men's clothing. There's a laundry room debacle involving a black washerwoman and 'Bobbie' running around in a dress, trying to retrieve his pants, that has to be seen to be appreciated. It's the kind of off-the-wall stuff that sets these Streamliners apart from other short comedies of the era. 

Bobbie's drag act starts to come undone when he/she finds out that he could've roomed with the beautiful "Virginia Collinge" (Francis Langford), had he not arrived with a 'sore throat'. He doesn't really have one, it's just an excuse not to have to talk and reveal his male voice, but Matilda wants him (her) quarantined, and he has to pine for Virginia from afar. Now he's torn between exacting the planned revenge for his Quinceton fraternity and revealing himself as a man to Virginia. You can guess which alternative wins out, and he's caught at a dance by Matilda. Rushing to escape, he magages to change back into 'Bobbie' the coed, but Matilda sends out two henchmen to catch him/her, because no men have ever been allowed on campus (except for henchmen and publicity agents), and if word gets out that the Quinceton men are behind the prank, it'll spoil all the good PR for Mar Brynn. "All-American Co-Ed" is a blast that clocks in at 48 minutes and is part musical, featuring two numbers by Frances Langford, who was also a popular singer in the '40s. In addition, there's a fantastic girl group called The Tanner Sisters, who are no doubt a knockoff of The Andrews Sisters, but are very good in their own right. But the real star of all of these Streamliner comedies is producer Hal Roach. All this nuttiness is his vision, much like Lorne Michaels and Saturday Night Live. Two Big Thumbs Up for "All-American Co-Ed." It gets my highest recommendation, as do all these movies, and that's high praise because I'm generally not a comedy guy. It takes a lot to make me laugh, not because I don't like to, but because so much of what passes for comedy is either "meh" or, nowdays, just plain stoopid. So when I tell you the Streamliners are winners, you can take it to the bank. The picture on "Co-Ed" is very good.  //// 

That's all for tonight. I'm almost done with "Get Back", just have the rooftop concert to go. Overall, what impressed me the most was that even when they're goofing off, The Beatles are still the best band in the world. They're so doggone musical (Duh! Really, Ad? Who knew?) And, as I've always maintained, John was a very good guitarist. Not in the technical sense, compared to modern players, but just in knowing the neck and a lot of chords, and just being able to use the guitar to create and play songs, whether his part called for rhythm or leads or the in-between stuff. He really was an excellent all-around musician (he even plays that Hawaiian slide guitar in one song, with no apparent prior experience), and I wish this was emphasized more about John, rather than all the political stuff he gets tagged with. And, George of course was a great player, top ten for me, with an awesome guitar collection, some of which can be seen in the movie. I still think "Get Back" was a bit long, at 8 hours, but man what a treasure trove for Beatles fans. Interesting too, that Michael Lindsey-Hogg is Orson Welles' son.

My blogging music is more Steve Hillage, "Fish Rising" this time. I hope your week is off to a good start and I send you Tons of Love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Two More Streamliners: "About Face" (a hilarious Dodo Doubleday flick), and "Niagara Falls" starring Slim Summerville and Zasu Pitts

Okay, we are loving the Hal Roach Streamliner Comedies. Last night we saw the best Dodo Doubleday movie yet, "About Face"(1942), in which Roach makes a comedy duo out of the series' stars William Tracy and Joe Sawyer, whose characters - Dodo and Sgt. Ames, respectively - were enemies in the first two pictures. This time they pal up for a wild and crazy night on the town, and man is it nuts! Here's how it comes about: as the movie opens, Sgt. Ames is attempting to march a new class of recruits around the base, but Doubleday is in his office, barking out orders from a manual he's memorizing, which contains contrary information. He's practicing on his dog, who is following along, but Sgt. Ames' troops overhear Dodo's voice and immediately switch directions, turning right instead of left, halting when they're supposed to forward march and so on. This creates chaos, and they end up knocking a General on his rear end, hardy-har-har. Ames gets read the riot act by the General for mishandling his troops, and he's ready to take it out on Dodo, as usual, until Dodo tells him, with pride, "guess what Sgt. Ames? I just won another mail-in trivia contest. Can you believe it? They sent me a check for a hundred dollars." As Dodo displays the check, Ames' anger vanishes. Suddenly he's all smiles and couldn't be nicer.  

See, the base has a weekend leave coming up, and Sgt. Ames is always broke. He owes money to half the other officers and no one will loan him a dime, so when he sees Dodo's check, Dodo is suddenly his best friend. Ames snows him into a day on the town, saying "we'll pool our dough!" But of course he has no money, the cost is all gonna be on Dodo. He agrees to the plan, happy that Ames wants to be his friend, but first, he says, he has a date. He's promised to attend a meeting with a women's club, headed up by a uniform-wearing do-gooder named "Mrs. Culpepper" (Margaret Dumont), who lectures well-bred young ladies on matters of morals and charity. Dodo was invited to the meeting by Mrs. Culpepper when she visited the base to drum up a donation from the Colonel. When Dodo tells Sgt. Ames that young women will be attending the meeting, Ames invites himself along, but first he suggests to Dodo a stop at a bar called The Grotto. While getting hammered, Ames meets a brassy dame named "Daisy" (Veda Ann Borg) and tells her to "order anything you want, I'm loaded". Of course, he doesn't have a cent but Dodo does, and after Dodo disappears to make a phone call to Mrs. Culpepper, explaining why he'll be late, Ames and Daisy get thrown out of the bar when they can't pay their tab. When Dodo returns, he finds the two gone. A skinny girl named "Sally" (Jean Porter), who's voice sounds like Minnie Mouse, is sitting in Daisy's place; she gloms onto Dodo over a lemonade and becomes fixated on him. Sally keeps turning up after that, wherever the boys go, including the women's club meeting. She's like a cartoon character, and to say that hijinx ensue is an understatement. This is the best Doubleday film yet, it's hilarious, with the kind of crack comic timing and role playing that would turn up on SNL years later. The ending features a free-for-all automobile destruction derby, in which cars are pulled apart by hand. The whole thing is crazy, and Jean Porter steals the show. "About Face" is absolutely not to be missed and gets Two Huge Thumbs Up. The picture is razor sharp.  ////

The previous night's movie was another Streamliner called "Niagara Falls", featuring the dynamic duo from "Miss Polly", Zasu Pitts and Slim Summerville, who in the first scene is about to end it all, at "Suicide Point" beside The Falls, when he's rescued from despair by a peanut vendor, who calms him down and listens to his tale of woe, while the two of them munch bags and bags of goobers. For twenty years, Slim had been meaning to marry his sweetheart Zasu, and when they finally got around to it, and drove to Niagara Falls (which was Honeymoon Central in those days), they had the misfortune to get involved in the relationship of "Tom Wilson" and "Margie Blake" (Tom Brown and Marjorie Woodworth), a malcontent young couple who they passed on Devonshire Street.

Slim's story is told in flashback: while pulled over on Devonshire, for smooching while driving, Slim and Zasu see a man whack a woman in the butt with a stick. He thought she was a man, robbing his car, but she only wanted to borrow a pump to fix her flat tire. The man helps her and apologises, but she has a sore rear end that is good for "inner tube" seating jokes for the next ten minutes. It turns out that both of these young people are headed to Niagara Falls (by way of Devonshire in Northridge) but they have very different philosophies as to why they're going there. Margie Blake wants to find a mate, to get married and have children, but Tom Wilson just wants to get lucky and fool around. He doesn't believe in marriage, and as he spouts off, Margie is insulted and thinks he's a loser. Tom blows her off, saying "have a nice life with your 24 children, sister" and they go their separate ways in separate cars. But then they collide in the road and hate each other even more than before. Each ends up at the same hotel in Niagara Falls. Slim Summerville and Zasu Pitts have already arrived, and another dispute arises over who will get the remaining bridal suite, because the joint is sold out. Slim offers it to Tom and Margie, in the hope they will reconcile their differences. He's seen them fighting in the lobby and assumes they're married, and because it took 20 years for him and Zasu to tie the knot, he wants to ensure harmony for the young folks so they'll live happily ever after. But when confusion results from the booking change, and Tom and Margie end up in separate rooms (which is what they want anyway), Slim gets upset and comes after them with a gun. He's gonna force them to get to get along, even if he has to hold them hostage to do it. "Get back in that room, the two of you!" They think he's gone stark raving nuts, but they kiss in front of him just to get him off their case. Meanwhile, Zasu is doing her ditzy love-struck thing in their own room, waiting for Slim to come back, but he ain't coming back till Tom and Margie agree to get married.

I'd be interested to know what they were smoking when they made this. At one point, Slim chases Tom Wilson out onto a high balcony at the hotel, still pointing his gun and threatening to shoot him if he doesn't get back inside with Margie. But Tom so detests her (in Screwball fashion, meaning friction equals romance) that he's willing to walk the tightrope of the balcony ledge, with only inches to spare him from a five story fall, rather than climb back in the room and face more bickering. The moral of the story, as Slim tells the peanut vendor, is "never get involved in anyone's business, especially when the business is marriage." That's why he ended up at Suicide Point, though the peanut man keeps him from jumping. "Niagara Falls" is truly nutty, and in that vein, Slim Summerville is slightly reminiscent of Randy Quaid, before he became certifiable. Zasu Pitts doesn't have much to do this time, but Marjorie Woodworth and Tom Brown are great as the squabbling couple who get more than they bargained for when Slim bangs on their door. "Niagara Falls" gets Two Big Thumbs Up. I'm tellin' ya, these Hal Roach flicks are a riot, and very original in style and content. Watch "About Face" and "Niagara Falls" as a double feature. You'll be done in less than two hours and you won't know what hit your funny bone. The picture is sharp here as well.  //// 

That's all for tonight. I have an update on "Get Back", though you've almost certainly seen it and don't need my input, but I reported that John Lennon looked bored during Part One of the documentary, and for anyone who hasn't seen it, I should amend that so as not to give a false impression. While he does indeed look disinterested for the first two hours (filmed over a week's time), he perks up considerably after the George Harrison debacle in which George quits the band after feeling that Paul harassed or was condescending to him during rehearsals. All this stuff is well-known in Beatle lore, but after George quit, they had a meeting to get him back in the band, and after the meeting John and Paul have their own tete-a-tete (which was surreptitiously recorded by the filmmakers), and after John tells Paul that he, too, sometimes feels intimidated by Paul's leadership methods ("Play it this way, lads! No, no, like this!"), the air between them clears and the tension falls away. In Part Two John seems to be having a blast and clowns around a lot. That's one thing about Peter Jackson's 8 hour cut; there's so much clowning that he probably could have cut it down a bit. Still, it's a great watch. But to paraphrase Harvey Korman, "why am I telling you?" You've already seen it.

My blogging music is Steve Hillage "Green". Really you could listen to Steve and National Health and never listen to anything else, at least for a month. Late night is still "Rienzi" by Wagner. I hope you're enjoying your weekend and I send you Tons of Love as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Two Hal Roach "Streamliner" Comedies featuring "Dodo Doubleday", and The Beatles "Get Back"

The past two nights, we watched two more Hal Roach "Streamliner" comedies, both set in an Army camp and featuring a character named "Sgt. 'Dodo' Doubleday", played by actor William Tracy. Roach also produced "Miss Polly" (seen and reviewed the other night); we learned about the Doubleday films, and the "Streamliner" name for the sub-60 minute format, by reading Roach's bio on Wiki. This led us to seek more of these films, because we love short running times, and when the scripts are good, our motto is The Shorter, The Better, i.e. all the way down to 45 minutes. "Miss Polly" clocked in at 44 and change and the Doubleday films are only slightly longer. In "Tanks a Million"(1941), seen last night, Dodo Doubleday is introduced as a civilian. It's the first film in the series, and as it opens he appears on a radio show where the host interviews "unusual" guests. Dodo is unusual for his voluminous photographic memory. He reads a lot, remembers every word and can repeat it all verbatim, which comes in handy when he's drafted by the Army. He feels it's his duty to serve, and doesn't try to get out of it as his acquaintance "Charlie Cobb" (Noah Beery Jr.) is doing. On induction day, he gets off the bus at camp and, having memorized the training manual, is already barking orders at his fellow newbies, much to the chagrin of "Sgt. Ames" (Joe Sawyer), the drill sergeant who will become his nemesis. Sgt. Ames is highly annoyed that this smart guy in civvies is trying to act like he's Uncle Sam's favorite nephew. Dodo explains that he's only trying to help. "I just wanted to get them in line for you, sir." But it does no good. Ames is a 20 year veteran for whom it took ten years of "hard work" to earn his Sergeant's stripes. Dodo gets his the first week when he's sent to non-com school because of his brain.

He gets in good with the visiting "Colonel 'Spitfire' Barkley" (James Gleason) when Barkley, who's averse to public speaking, is called upon to address the troops. Dodo subs for him, wearing his uniform, thinking he's doing the Colonel a favor. But "Capt. Rossmead" (Douglas Fowley, Kim's Dad) finds out about it and reports him to Barkley, who is initially outraged and demotes Dodo to private, which puts him under the thumb of Sgt. Ames, who's licking his chops to grind Dodo into the ground. Dodo is great at regulations or in drill, but he's a disaster on the gun range, where Ames expects his troops to excel. Hijinx of course ensue, until the base commander reports to Colonel Barkley that he very much enjoyed his speech, "and would you be willing to repeat it, for inspirational purposes, at the Staff Officers Club?" On the one hand, Barkley is thrilled that the commander liked his speech; on the other, he didn't give it - Dodo Doubleday did. He chewed Dodo out and tore off his stripes, because he'd assumed the speech was a disaster (and unapproved). But now, if he's to give it himself to the Officer's Club, he's going to need Dodo back, to serve as a human teleprompter, otherwise he'll never remember the words. William Tracy is perfect in the title role, with the right combination of nerdiness and self-assurance. Joe Sawyer, who trained at Pasadena Playhouse according to Wiki, is a highly talented comic actor who plays Sgt. Ames as a buffoon, but not a stupid one, and the script lets Ames win sometimes, when Dodo gets too cocky or smug in his "book knowledge".

"Tanks a Million" is a lot of fun and gets Two Big Thumbs up (the picture is soft but watchable), but even better is "Hay Foot"(1942), the second picture in the Doubleday series, which we saw first, two nights ago.

This time, Dodo is back with Col. Barkley as his secretary, and the Colonel needs another speech to motivate the newly arriving troops. He has Dodo write it, since the speech in the first movie worked so well, and Dodo writes him a gem, but it burns up when Col. Barkley sets it over an ashtray with a smoldering cigarette. "That's no problem, sir" says Dodo. "As you know, I remember every word I type." This serves as a refresher for his character trait, and to inform those who didn't see the first movie.  

As in "Tanks a Million", the Colonel has him stand close during the speech, once again acting as his human teleprompter. Sgt. Ames is back, along with Dodo's pal Charlie Cobb (see above), who got inducted after all but has been made a drill sergeant like Ames. Charlie takes Ames's side in all disputes with Dodo, who has his stripes back and is thus of equal rank, because he too resents Dodo's "easy duty" as Col. Barkley's attache. Cobb and Ames don't think he's a real soldier, and as they watch him giving the Colonel crib notes during his speech, they make a point to expose him as a phony. His weak spot, as we know, is that he can't shoot. But then love comes calling in the form of the Colonel's daughter "Betty" (Elyse Knox), who likes Dodo for his brain, but also because - Army shenanigans aside - he's a good guy. In a side thread, after Dodo flunks his pistol range exam, Capt. Rossmead sends him to the woods to shoot, "so you don't kill anybody". Out there, he unknowingly locates himself just beneath the bluff of Col. Barkley's backyard. While practicing his (ahem) "marksmanship", he accidentally kills a pesky hawk and an annoying rabbit on the Colonel's property. This happens only because he can't shoot straight, but the Colonel takes this as evidence that Dodo is in fact a crack shot, and he issues an order to the Sergeants Ames and Cobb, that they're to face Dodo in a shooting contest.

When Betty Barkley finds this out, she sends sends a dinner invitation to Dodo to encourage him, knowing he's really not a good shooter. Ames and Cobb read the invite, too, each thinking it's intended for him, and  all three show up at the Barkley residence. Mayhem ensues, involving Dodo Doubleday's dog, and the Sergeants end up throwing the Colonel out the second story windum. Man, this is great stuff. You have to be a total pro to write a script this tight, and you have to have actors who can pull it off, but Hal Roach has both, which is why "Hay Foot" also gets Two Big Thumbs Up, and an even higher recommendation than it's predecessor "Tanks a Million". But do yourself a favor and watch them both. The picture on "Hay Foot" is razor sharp.  ////

I'm also watching "Get Back" (The Beatles doc), in hour long increments, and - throwing all publicity and reviews aside and just watching it with no preconceptions - I must say, as a lifelong Beatle fan, it's a weird experience watching the guys interact. I'm only through the first two hours, but so far, it looks like Lennon doesn't want to be there. He barely says a word when he isn't singing one of his songs. He only interacts when he absolutely has to, while Paul runs the entire show with George as his foil. Sometimes they're friendly, sometimes at odds. Paul and George do all the talking, and John never says a word to George and barely acknowledges his presence. Ringo acts like a hired hand. This is not to say that he wasn't a full fledged Beatle and blood brother to the other three, but we must remember that everything we knew about the Fab Four was from public relations. Ringo, while certainly close to the guys from a professional standpoint, and even on a personal level, was not one of the original three friends that formed the band. The boys are only in their mid to late 20s here, and the dynamics of young friendships still hold, despite their fame. We must remember that the first dynamic is that Paul befriended George before he ever met John, and this plays out huge in the movie. Their's was the first friendship, it happened when they were adolescents, and so, as close as Paul and John became, George is still like Paul's little brother, and you feel for him as he tries to introduce his new songs: "All Things Must Pass", and especially "I Me Mine" which he is very enthusiastic about. As George plays and sings them, Paul tries to pay attention while John Lennon basically looks bored to tears, and it's well known that the two of them felt George's compositions weren't up to par with theirs. George tries so hard, and its difficult to watch the indifference he is shown. Besides that, he's a damn good songwriter, as he proved when the album "All Things Must Pass" went to #1. 

As for Paul, it's clear that he is a force of nature both musically and in his energy. He's by far the best musician in The Beatles (he plays every instrument), and none of their albums after "Revolver" would've happened without Paul as the driving force. In the early days, it was John's band because he formed it, and was the genius behind so many of the early songs, which to me are the most Beatle-y. But then he had a hard time with fame, and the struggles of his childhood were always with him. Then he got heavily into LSD which wasn't good, and when Brian Epstein died it almost finished him off (they call him "Mr. Epstein" in the movie). Paul, who didn't have John's issues, took over the ship, and John always knew Paul was mega-talented anyway, so he acquiesced and Paul became the Alpha Dog. You see all of this on their faces as they rehearse in that sound stage. Keep in mind that they are only ten years removed from being schoolboys in Liverpool, and beset by having literally changed the world. That kind of fame will do a job on you, of course. We can see that Paul wants to keep things going, but John couldn't care less and poor George just wants to be heard. They are all content to carry through with their contract to produce a show, and they all remain professional, but you can also see that John is already outta there, so to speak. He wanted to be with Yoko and that was that. What a huge bummer. The main thing I get from "Get Back" is that, while everyone contributed, Paul basically was The Beatles from 1967-1970. It's a real eye-opener.

And that's all I know for tonight. I'm listening to Egg, their first album and "Civil Surface". Egg freaking rules! My late night listening is "Rienzi" by Wagner, I'm reading Elvis, and I send you Tons of Love as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Zasu Pitts in "MIss Polly", and "Nancy Drew, Reporter" starring Bonita Granville

Last night, Zasu Pitts was back in "Miss Polly"(1941), playing the starring role of Pandora Polly, a single woman (not quite a spinster) living next door to the town busybody, somewhere in middle America. The shrew in question is "Minerva Snodgrass" (Kathleen Howard), who is also single and runs the town's Civic League like a fascistic Puritan. She's out to make sure no one has any fun, especially the young people, whom she intends to keep chaste, and so restaurants and movie theaters close at 6pm, and there are no lights in the city parks, to discourage teens from going there at night. She's shut down every modern clothing store. Even the speed limit has taken a hit - as the movie opens, a man is pulled over by an obnoxious cop for doing 14 in a 12mph zone.

But if Minerva minds (and enforces) everyone's business, Pandora Polly is the opposite. She keeps to herself, though she doesn''t live alone. The narrator describes her female housemate as her "companion" which nowadays would mean something different, but in this case they both seem straight (hetero), and there's also a live-in handyman/gardner, who's a bit of a screwup. He's always inventing contraptions that malfunction, like a combination lawnmower/gopher-smoker-outer, that ends up running wild through Minerva's flower garden and filling her house with smoke. Minerva's daughter "Barbara" (Elyse Knox) is in love with a nerdy boy named "Eddie" (Dick Clayton), whose relationship to Miss Polly is never stated. Is he a boarder? Possibly. But he's always at the house and he's in love with Barbara Snodgrass and wants to marry her. The problem is that Minerva keeps Barbara locked away in her bedroom and refuses to let her see Eddie. So, the handyman invents a zipline complete with a full-body sling to snag Barbara from her bedroom and whisk her through the windum into Miss Polly's house. You can imagine how well this goes over with her mother Minerva.

Well, at about this time, Pandora Polly and her companion and the gardener are concerned that Eddie and Barbara will never be able to get married because Barbara can't bring herself to stand up to her mother. Then Miss Polly remembers an elixir her grandpa concocted and kept in the basement. He was a timid man, but one day he drank the elixir and it changed his life. As Miss Polly puts it, "he suddenly he had a lot of pep in his step". The way she describes it, the elixir sounds like a combination of Vitamin E, Viagra and Ecstasy. She and her companion go down the basement to see if they can find the bottle amidst a hundred others that are gathering dust and cobwebs. They and the gardener try out all kinds of different drinks, but none seems to work, until Miss Polly sips something and is transformed. She goes from being a nervous Nellie to a happy-go-lucky Love Bug. Suddenly she's skipping down the street. She stops at the clothing store to buy their most fanciful dress and hat, then heads for the latest Civic Group meeting, where Minerva is trying to shut down all the madness caused by her daughter's love affair with Eddie. The town is rebelling against her tyranny, and from there the last 12 minutes of this 44 minute movie unfolds as a fable on hypocrisy, as Miss Polly takes the stage to encourage the citizens to fall in love. A note on the movie's running time; it's one minute shy of our 45 minute limit on what constitutes a full-length film versus a Short, but we'll excuse it this time because the script is developed and the characters are well-defined in the time allotted. During her speech, Miss Polly exposes the secrets of all the "straight-laced" townsfolk at the meeting, mentioning incidents from their pasts that she was witness to. She isn't recounting these tales out of spite; it's just that she's high on the Love Elixir and can't help herself. The deeds are innocently described (they're mostly of the "making out behind the bleachers" variety) but because Minerva has sought to portray her crusade as Holier Than Thou, it rips the mask off her moral authority.

As the film's star, Zasu Pitts gets to display a wider range of personality traits than she did in "The Crooked Circle," in which she was basically scared witless the entire time. Here, she's nervous again, but also goofy, self-assured, and rebellious by turns, and in contrast to the bull-in-a-china-shop persona of Minerva Snodgrass, it makes for a lively comic pairing. Almost stealing the show is Slim Summerville as "Slim" the gardener, who has to run for his life when Minerva is slipped some of the love potion at the end of the movie, and sets her sights on Slim as her first conquest. Yikes! "Miss Polly" is a minor comic gem in it's caricature of small town nosiness and the inherent characters therein. I give it Two Big Thumbs Up and a very high recommendation. The picture is perfect and appears to have been restored, so don't miss it!  ////

The previous night we watched "Nancy Drew, Reporter"(1939), starring the vivacious Bonita Granville and featuring a variety of characters that gives it broad appeal. In other words, it's not just for teenaged girls; this is a top notch crime flick with comedic underpinnings, and as it opens, Nancy Drew is just starting college and majoring in journalism. On a class assignment, she and a group of fellow students visit the newsroom of the local paper, and the editor - a jaded sort - gives them all trivial and hypothetical stories to report on (the construction of a goldfish pond, etc.), in the hope they'll go away. He tells the students, "stay away from the news business, it's no business for young ladies." Nancy is the only one who isn't discouraged. She has the gumption to go after a real story, and when she overhears a radio report about a just discovered murder, she steals the crime scene address off a reporter's desk and goes there herself! Chutzpah definitely is not a problem for Nancy, who finds evidence, in the form of a metal can containing photography chemicals that may bear the fingerprints of the killer. But they turn out to belong to a female photographer who has nothing to do with the crime. Still the woman is jailed for the murder. Nancy vows to prove her innocence by catching the real killer herself.

She's a natural at this game and has the instincts of a crime reporter in her blood, and now that she's hot on the murderer's trail, she enlists her next door neighbor "Ted Nickerson" (Frankie Thomas)), a lanky, enthusiastic kid and a photographer himself, to help her solve the case. He accompanies her when she gets an interview with the jailed woman, and that leads them to a semi-pro boxer named "Soxie Anthens" (Jack Perry), a real thug, who may either be the killer or know who is. All kinds of hijinx follow, including Nancy setting up Ted as an up-and coming amateur fighter, in order to get him in the ring with Soxie. On top of that, Ted has a bratty 13 year old sister named "Mary" (Mary Lee) who's a complete hooligan, and along with her even younger friend "Killer" (Dickie Jones), they intrude upon and interrupt everything Nancy and Ted are trying to accomplish. There's a great scene at a Chinese restaurant, where the brats worm their way into dinner with Nancy and Ted, who can't pay their bill as a result and end up having to sing for their supper. Little Mary Lee steals the show and turns out to be quite a song and dance star. But the movie belongs to Bonita Granville, who's so great in the role that we're gonna watch the entire series if Youtube has it. John Litel plays her Dad, a renowned defense attorney who ends up taking the case of the accused woman, but it never goes to trial, because......I can't tell you.

I never saw the popular Pamela Sue Martin "Nancy Drew" TV series that began in 1977 as a collaboration w/ "The Hardy Boys" (featuring combo-star Jameson Parker Stevenson). I was a Charlies Angels guy at the time, and while the series might've been pretty good, I think this movie has to be considered the benchmark for the overall Nancy Drew franchise. It verges on screwball comedy in places, but never loses the crime thread. The energy keep building and the younger kids - the brats - steal every scene they're in. Two Huge Thumbs Up for "Nancy Drew, Reporter". It's highly recommended and in fact it would make a great double bill with "Miss Polly", though the movies are entirely different. In any event, the picture is once again razor sharp and I guarantee you'll like Nancy Drew.  //// 

That's all for this evening. My blogging music has been both Matching Mole albums, and my late night listening was Wagner's Complete Piano Music. I didn't know he composed for the piano, and his pieces are very simple and sedate compared to the majesty of his operas, but I enjoyed them. Having finished Peter Guralnick's "Last Train to Memphis", I am now beginning part two of his Elvis biography, "Careless Love" The Unmaking of Elvis Presley," which obviously promises to have an unhappy ending. Finally, they recorded Sunday's church service, so if you want to, you can see me singing with the choir. Our song is "Ride On, King Jesus." and it begins at the five minute mark. I was not in front of a microphone, and so the recording picks up the voices of the sopranos more than it does the tenors, but if you listen closely you can hear me. The link is:  https://youtu.be/tUE9xFIOejg

You might have to copy and paste it, because I don't think it will be clickable on the blog, but check it out if you feel like it. It's best viewed and listened to on a laptop with headphones, and I am visible near the right/center of the screen  :)

I hope your week is off to a good start and I send you Tons of Love as always. 

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

A Cult Classic: "Sh! The Octopus", and "Woman in the Dark" (a rerun) + Good Singin' in Church!

Last night's film was one of the craziest things we've ever seen. What do you get when you combine an Old Dark House mystery with a comedy cop caper featuring two nitwit detectives, throw in a Roger Corman monster for good measure (15 years before anyone heard of Roger Corman), and set the whole thing in a gloomy old lighthouse, three miles out in the ocean? Answer: You get "Sh! The Octopus"(1937). The title is as crazy as the movie. As it opens, a marine artist named "Paul Morgan" (John Eldredge) is taking residence at the lighthouse by permission of the government, which had shut it down due to the many unexplained deaths in the area. A "crime octopus" is said to be the culprit (and the local papers post that headline: "Crime Octopus At Large"), but whether they mean this literally or figuratively is anyone's guess, until the tentacles show up and start attacking people.

Meanwhile, back on land, the two Abbott & Costello-like detectives are driving in the pouring rain when they get a call saying that Det. Kelly's wife is having a baby and he'd better get to the hospital, pronto. Kelly (Hugh Herbert) seems surprised to learn he's gonna be a father, but he and his partner are set to high tail it when their police car gets a flat. While "Det. Dempsey" (Allan Jenkins) is changing the tire, a hysterical girl runs out of the darkness, saying she's being chased and that her father, the inventor of a world-domination Death Ray, has been murdered at a lighthouse out to sea. She says she has a boat that will take the two cops there, if they'll go with her. Det. Dempsey thinks it's the case that will finally get them noticed in the department, so they go with her, and all hell breaks loose. When they arrive at the lighthouse, it looks like the woman's father is indeed dead and hanging from the rafters in a shot that looks eerily like the hanging body in the Haunted Mansion belfry. Makes you wonder if Uncle Walt saw this movie. The cops want to recover the body, but there's no way to reach it, as the gubment has had the staircase removed so that no one could hang someone up there. Kind of a Catch-22 if you ask me..

Then, when the lady sees Paul Morgan the marine artist, she runs into his arms: "Oh, Paul! It's a miracle you're here!" Except that he doesn't know her, or so he tells the cops. Her name is "Vesta Vernoff" (Marcia Ralston) and she appears to be nuttier than a fruitcake. Just as the cops discover a trap door that leads to a hidden staircase ("I thought you said there were no stairs in this joint?"), the door to the lightnouse bangs open with the arrival of "Captain Hook" (George Roesner), who has a hook for a hand. He claims to be the former lighthouse keeper, and he's immediately contemptuous not only of Paul Morgan but the detectives, too. He doesn't honor their authority (would you?) and he struts around laughing maniacally and threatening to slice folks with his hook. Then he leaves again and returns with an old lady, who he claims to have just rescued from a storm. Finally, a middle-aged woman arrives out of the storm also. She's the only seemingly normal member of the group, at least for the moment. Later on, it will turn out that several of them are federal agents. 

Once Captain Hook starts challenging the authority of the cops, he gets pulled through a windum by the tentacles belonging to the Octopus, who appears to have his own submarine. And no, this does not come off as cheesy, but more like a bizarre farce. So, the question becomes, who's in charge here? And is there really a brilliant Mad Scientist Octopus, who somehow got ahold of the Death Ray technology that Vesta Vernoff's dead father invented? The coppers think that's the case, and decide that the only way to find out for sure is to confiscate everyone's wallet for ID and any incriminating notes that may be inside. The wallet scene is crazy enough just by itself. Then here come those tentacles again! Reading this, the whole thing might sound incredibly stupid, but I can promise you it isn't. It works because a) it comes off as weird and funny as opposed to dumb, and b) the entire cast buys in, and has the talent to pull off the farce in a wide variety of roles. "Sh! The Octopus" gets Two Huge Thumbs Up, and is a guaranteed Absolute Must See. You've never seen a movie like it, and I think you'll love it as much as I did. The picture is razor sharp, and there's a twist near the end, with a special effect that - for 1937 - is nothing short of amazing. See it!  ////

As for the previous night, it occasionally happens that when you watch over 350 movies a year, you're gonna get a rerun without intending to. Every once in a while, you start in on a film and think, "boy, this looks like a good one", and the opening scene is terrific, but the imagery is nagging at you. Then, you see something specific, maybe 5-6 minutes into the movie, and you start wondering, "hmmm.....have I seen this before?" Then other stuff happens that makes you almost sure you haven't seen it. But then, right after that, you see a very specific image, involving a particular actor or actress, that imprinted itself on your brain, and you go "yep, I knew it all along. I have seen this one." But now you've got fifteen minutes invested, so you figure, "might as well watch it again." In this case the movie was "Woman in the Dark" with Faye Wray, Ralph Bellamy and Melvyn Douglas, and I'm guessing we watched it right after Covid started. I know it had to be in the Youtube Era, and it was not within the past year. It has to do with Bellamy being paroled after serving time on a manslaughter charge. He goes back to his hometown to try and live a quiet life, but wouldn't you know it, the very first night he's home, Faye Wray - wearing an evening gown and heels - comes knocking on his door in the middle of a storm. She doesn't know Bellamy but asks him for refuge because she's trying to get away from her boyfriend Douglas, who's a real cad. But as the screenwriter would have it, Douglas is aware of Bellamy, whose manslaughter case was in all the papers, and he takes an immediate dislike to him, because it looks to Douglas like he's trying to hide Faye Wray, and/or protect her. What happens is that Douglas starts a fight that ends with one of his pals getting knocked unconcho by Bellamy. Douglas then sees an opportunity to send Bellamy back to prison, so he attempts to suffocate the pal while he's in the hospital recovering from his concussion, which will make it look like he died from the fight, and his death will be blamed on Ralph Bellamy. But by now, Bellamy has Faye Wray on his side as a witness. And Bellamy only decked the guy because he shot Bellamy's dog. If you wanna read a fuller review, I'm sure I wrote one, and you can probably find it somewhere in the titles for the 2020 blogs. But it definitely gets Two Big Thumbs Up and a high recommendation, and the picture is razor sharp. Even if you saw it the first time around, do as I did and watch it again. It's a good 'un.

Well, here's a blast from the past for ya: when was the last time I said "we had good singin' in church today." It had to be March 8 2020, which was the Sunday before Covid. Today I am saying it again, because I attended the choir reunion and sang five songs with them, including "Ride On, King Jesus", and "How Great Thou Art" (which allows me to channel my Inner Elvis). I was a little nervous about the shape of my voice, because I hadn't sung in 2 1/2 years, but other than a slight loss of power on the highest notes, it was in pretty good condition. I didn't have any trouble with breathing, and we got to sing without masks. It was a lot of fun, and very nice to see everyone. Being there without Pearl was a unique feeling and hard to put into words, but it felt like she was there anyway. For the moment, it was just a one-time thing, though I told my friends I will see them again before the year is out, and who knows what might happen after that. I do love singing, that much I know for sure. And, I'm glad I went. It's an awesome church with a wonderful congregation and pastor.

And that's all I know for the moment. My blogging music is "Bundles" by Soft Machine, which I hadn't heard before but is pretty good. Late night listening is Mahler's 8th, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. I hope you had a nice weekend and I send you Tons of Love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)    

An All-Star Cast in "Hostile Country" (including Tom Tyler), and "Today I Hang" starring Mona Barrie

Last night, another good one from Lippert Pictures, though more notable for its cast than its plot, which I found confusing. The film was called "Hostile Country"(1950), and check out this lineup: Russell Hayden (who starred at the renegade Indian "Black Wolf" in Lippert's "Apache Chief", seen last week), Fuzzy Knight, Raymond Hatton (from The Rough Riders), Julie Adams (billed here as Betty Adams, of "Creature From the Black Lagoon" fame), and in a supporting role, Tom Tyler, playing a bad guy this time around. He looks quite different than we remember him from his films in the 1930s, even from his performance as Captain Marvel in the 1941 serial of the same name. By the time this picture was made, Tyler was 47 and suffering from scleroderma and rheumatoid arthritis, which would combine to kill him four years later, and you can see the ravaging effect it had on him; he looks thin and frail, and frankly, crippled, which is incredibly sad for fans like me. If you didn't know him, you'd think he was just another aging Western henchman, perhaps 60, and he's still able to ride a horse (and even fall off), but his lines of dialogue are extremely limited, even when you think he should be speaking, and because we know what he was like in his glory days (one of the greatest Western stars ever), it's both sad and inspiring to see him this way, because of the courage it must have taken to keep going. I looked up scleroderma after the movie, and while it's treatable now, it was not in the mid-40s when Tyler came down with it, and it's gotta be horrible to deal with, the word means "hardening of the skin", and you can see the effects on Tyler in this movie. To have that as well as rheumatoid arthritis must have been excruciating, but he kept acting right up until a year before his death in 1954, at age 50. 

The stars of the film are Hayden and a guy named Jimmy "Shamrock" Ellison, both of whom were sidekicks to Hopalong Cassidy, according to IMDB. Both are very good, and as the movie opens, Raymond Hatton and his niece Julie Adams are blockading his ranch road so "Henry Oliver" (George Chesbro) can't get through with his cattle. A range war is in the offing, and into the middle of it ride Hayden and Shamrock, who are on their way to meet Hayden's Dad who has promised him half ownership of his own cattle ranch, but when they get there, his Dad has been shot dead in a card game.

Meanwhile, a bunch of hoodlums known as the Brady Gang is working the middle of this feud, trying to inflame both sides against each other to initiate a cattle rustling scheme. Incidentally, the name of Tom Tyler's character is "Tom Brady", haha. It's typical range war stuff, but there's too much riding back-and-forth and not enough 'splaining whats going on. The characters get lost in the non-specificity of the script. With a better director and Tim McCoy and Buck Jones helping Raymond Hatton, it would it have made a great Rough Riders film, but for me the main draw is the cast and especially Tom Tyler. For that reason, "Hostile Country" gets Two Big Thumbs Up and a must-see recommendation. You might even be able to follow the plot better than I did, and its possible that I was so shocked by seeing Tyler in this condition that I lost track of the story, but give it a shot. The picture is very good.  ////

The previous night's movie was "Today I Hang"(1942), an involving crime story from those kings of Poverty Row, Producers Releasing Corporation or PRC for short. As it opens, the wealthy partners in an importing business are punching it out in the dining room of partner Henry Courtney's mansion as his butler "Hobbs" (Peter Scarden) looks on. They're fighting over who will profit from their latest find, a rare diamond necklace from Burma, when another man shows up: "Jim O'Brien" (Walter Woolf King), the former boyfriend of Courtney's wife "Martha" (Mona Barrie). Henry (Harry Woods) knows she still loves O'Brien. She tells him as much: "I only married you to spite him after we broke up". But O'Brien doesn't care about that - he's made his way back from Burma on his own, and wants his share of the profits from the necklace, which he helped track down. "You forgot about me over there" he tells the two partners. "Were you hoping I died?" Well, of course they were, because a two way split is better than three ways any day of the week.

Unfortunately for Henry Courtney, he's not gonna collect zilch on the necklace, because he turns up murdalized the next day, his body found by Martha. The Courtneys' maid just happens to be there, and she testifies that Jim O'Brien, the former boyfriend, was there earlier in the day, asking for a meeting with Henry Courtney. When the cops investigate, he claims he only wanted his money for the importation of the diamond necklace, but then they discover a gun in his suitcase at home, and it's the murder weapon. A jury doesn't believe him when he says he didn't do it, and he's sentenced to hang. The warden is a good man who feels badly about O'Brien's sentence (the theme of the Saintly Prison Warden was a common one in those days), and he allows Martha to visit him on death row with a lawyer, who turns out to be a crook. He offers to help O'Brien escape if O'Brien will help him steal the diamond necklace and fence it. O'Brien protests this scheme and says: "why should I have to escape when I'm innocent?" The answer is of course because he's scheduled (pron. Shedge-yooled) for execution in four days. All of this leads O'Brien to wonder if he can trust his old girlfriend Martha Courtney. "Don't you believe I'm innocent?" he asks her.

While O'Brien is waiting for the crooked lawyer to arrange his escape plan, a safecracker named "Slick Pheeney" (Sam Bernard) is paroled. The kindly warden wishes him well: "Now Slick, I don't want to see you back here." But really, his parole is just a front. In reality, he's been let out on purpose to help Martha Courtney prove O'Brien innocent. The script is all about Double Cross Chess, and Martha has to pretend she's in league with the crooked lawyer so she can get him to show his cards, which she believes will lead to the actual killer of her husband. It's very well done, and especially good is Mona Barrie, an English actress who looks a little bit like Kay Francis. We've seen Barrie before, last year in a Western called "Dawn on the Great Divide" where she played a casino owner. She was good in that one also. "Today I Hang" keeps you guessing as to who is trustworthy, and it will take a Quadruple Cross at the end to sort things out. I give it Two Big Thumbs Up. The picture is razor sharp.  ////

That's all for tonight. This afternoon I got my first haircut since February 2020. The lady who cut my hair for ten years while I was with Pearl went out of business due to the pandemic, so I went to a Great Clips in my neighborhood. I didn't have it cut as short as it used to be, but the gal cut off a substantial amount. Because it hadn't been cut for such a long time, my hair was very damaged with a lot of split ends, and I like it better now. If I had what I call "girl hair", i.e. strong, shiny and thick like girls (and many rock stars) do, then I'd grow it ultra long. But nowdays, my hair quality isn't what it used to be. It's drier, and so when it gets long it becomes frizzy and, besides being hard to take care of, it doesn't look good. So, for now, I'll keep it medium length. My haircut looks like I could be in Talking Heads, or maybe a grunge-rock band circa 1992. My blogging music was Rainbow "Bent Out Of Shape", featuring the phenomenal voice of Joe Lynn Turner. Late night listening is "The Flying Dutchman" by Wagner, von Karajan conducting. I hope your weekend is off to a good start, and I send you Tons of Love as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Zasu Pitts in "The Crooked Circle" and "The Mystery Man" starring Robert Armstrong

Last night we watched a very entertaining "old dark house" mystery, featuring the early comedienne with the unusual name, Zasu Pitts. We've never seen her before, she began in Silent film and starred in Von Stroheim's legendary "Greed", and her bio on IMDB is extensive, but apparently, despite not being a top name star, she was something of a legend in Hollywood, and specialised in playing "Nervous Nellies," worrywarts one step away from getting the vapors. In "The Crooked Circle"(1932), she plays "Nora Rafferty", the housekeeper at the creepy old Harmon manor. As the movie opens, a Skull and Bones-type secret society is meeting in a darkened chamber amidst Satanic imagery. Wearing black hoods, they swear an oath to their order, The Crooked Circle, and then one member, unseen to us but identified as the only female, is given a scroll that names her as the assassin for the group's next victim, one "Colonel Walters" (Burton Churchill), a wealthy man who heads a group of amateur detectives called The Sphinx Club. The Circle marks him for death because a prior investigation by The Sphinx Club has landed one of their members in prison. In addition to being Satanists,The Crooked Circle are counterfeiters, of every thing from money to works of art.   

At the Sphinx clubhouse, Col. Walters is handed a symbolic, Tarot-like card that lets him know in advance he'll be killed by The Circle. He laughs it off, and the Sphinxes retreat to the Harmon Manor, an old mansion with a haunted reputation. They're there for a vacation, and also - just for fun - to see if they can solve the decades-old disappearance of patriarch Grandfather Harmon, a hermit who practiced seances. Before the group arrives, housekeeper Nora Rafferty, all alone at the time, is visited by a skinny old creep with missing teeth and a European accent, who warns her that there's gonna be a murder at the place, which he says is haunted by the ghost of the Grandpa Harmon, who was also a violinist. Knowing that Nora is the nervous type, this guy lays it on thick. He's one of those ghoulish types you'd see in an old Boris Karloff movie, and after he finally leaves, several cars drive up which scares Nora out of her wits. The cars belong to the members of The Sphinx Club, who as noted are arriving to spend the weekend. In addition to his fellow Sphinxes, the Colonel has brought along his friend, a turbaned Indian named "Yoganda" (C. Henry Gordon) who knows the history of the Harmon clan.

No sooner do they get there than Col. Walters is indeed killed. Then a creepy old hunchback with wild hair visits Nora the housekeeper and tells her he's the ghost of Grandpa Harmon, and that anytime she hears violin music she better start worrying, because when the music plays, someone dies, or at Nora later puts it, "something always happens to somebody."

Zasu Pitts is one of those performers who makes an instant impression. Her scenes are almost separate from the plot, as her role is to react to all the harum-scarum that's going down, while Yoganda the Mysterious Indian is doing his Turhan Bey impression, trying to appear inscrutable while deliberately increasing the intrigue. The younger Sphinx Club members try to solve the murder of Col. Walters, but end up sitting in chairs that have trap doors for seats. This flick has secret passageways in every nook and cranny. There are graves that open up into tunnels, back yard basements, openings in walls; you've gotta watch your step in this joint. In the last twenty minutes, the script starts to gel. It's one of those mysteries where the main point is to have fun in the house, and then you get an explanation at the end. It's very entertaining as long as you don't go looking for holes in the plot. If you saw this on the stage, you'd go back for a repeat performance, and you might do the same with the film, which is directed with flair by the tremendously named H. Bruce Humberstone. I loved "The Crooked Circle", which gets Two Big Thumbs Up and a high recommendation for being eccentric. We'll look for more from Zasu Pitts. The picture is very good.  ////

The night before, we had Robert Armstrong of "King Kong" fame in a rom/com crime flick called "The Mystery Man"(1935). Armstrong plays "Larry Doyle", a beat reporter for a second tier paper in Saint Louis. The editor thinks little of his scribes and is excoriating them as the movie opens, before remembering why he called them together in the first place: to honor Doyle's years of service. Even if Doyle is a lousy reporter, the editor has a few "gold watch" trinkets to give him, memorabilia for his years on the job, including a ginu-wine 45. caliber police revolver, fitting for the many crime stories he's covered. Doyle leaves the meeting vowing to make the editor proud of him. At a local diner, he meets pretty "Anne Ogilvy"(Maxine Doyle) and pays for her donut and coffee, pretending to be a millionaire. Doyle is a bit of a scammer, and because the plot took a long time to develop, I was wondering if this was gonna be a screwball comedy. In trying to impress Miss Ogilvy, he takes her to a swanky hotel, orders room service, and then can't pay the bill because, as the manager finds out, he's not Mr. So-and-So the millionaire after all.

The manager says "you owe us money for the meal and your room. I'll give you 24 hours to pay, but then I'm calling the police." Just then a newspaper headline appears: "Mysterious 'Eel Killer' Sought". Some guy calling himself The Eel is pulling off high end robberies in hotels and nightclubs. Doyle tells Anne, "I'm gonna solve that case, that's my ticket to a raise at the paper!" First, though, he has to pay off his hotel bill. All he has that's worth anything is the honorary Police 45. the editor gave him, so he pawns it for 25 bucks and pays off the hotel manager ("hotel" - Mr. Martini). Now he's all paid up, and as a side issue, when Doyle checked in, to avoid scrutiny he told the the hotel manager that Anne was his wife, so everyone now thinks they're married. The crime plot gains traction when the pawn shop owner makes a phone call right after Doyle pawns the 45. Though we only hear his side of the conversation, its clear he's calling The Eel, with whom he's in cahoots. He says, "I've just gotten hold of the perfect gun for you", meaning that - because it's a police revolver - any shooting committed by The Eel will look like a cop did it. But the problem for Doyle is that, when the cops investigate the next Eel murder, they are gonna trace the gun to the pawn shop, and to him, and he will be accused of being The Eel. 

As noted, the story doesn't move in typical fashion from A to B to C. At first, it sets the picture up as a rom/com, with the hotel dine and dash thread, which clashes with what comes later. The mix-n-match style would've worked better with a guy like Chester Morris, who would've blown past any scriptural deficiencies with his comedic energy. Robert Armstrong is good, but a little too genial to sustain the crime tension when the going gets deadly. But once it the plot comes together, everything is redeemed, thus Two Big Thumbs Up, and the picture is very good.

That's all for this evening. I'm listening right now to "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" by The Alan Parsons Project. Commercial in some respects, but overall a classic that still sounds great. Also, "Missing Pieces" by National Health. Late night listening was Symphony #1 by Scriabin, rather subdued compared to his piano music, but nice. I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but on Sunday I'm going to be singing in church for the first time since March 8, 2020, almost two and a half years ago. I'm a little nervous because I haven't sung since then, but it will be nice to see everyone. It's a reunion of former choir members, which is why I got the call. I may rejoin in the future, but it's still too early to say. Losing Pearl has been very hard for me and I was in the choir because of her. Anyway, I'll let you know how it goes. I hope your week is going well, and I send you Tons of Love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Tim McCoy and Ward Bond in "A Man's Game" (non-Western), and "The Dude Bandit" starring Hoot Gibson

Last night, we found another Tim McCoy non-Western: "A Man's Game"(1934), which begins with Tim tooling down the highway in his sedan, somewhere near Griffith Park. He pulls up behind a roadster, being driven by Ward Bond, who won't let Tim pass. The next thing you know, they're yelling insults car-to-car, and a racing challenge is issued. They go speeding down the road, a motorcycle cop gives chase, and when the boys hit a curve and converge, the cop wipes out. Ward Bond keeps going while Tim pulls over to assist the fallen officer and drive him to the hospital.

As you can imagine, the judge at their arraignment isn't happy. He lets Tim off, though, with only a 100 dollar speeding ticket, the mitigating factor being that he stopped to help the policeman. You'd think Ward Bond would have the book thrown at him; he was clocked at 92mph and didn't stop, but the cop was not badly hurt (injured leg), and Bond's dad is the fire captain at the Hollywood station, and knows the chief of police. Bond gets lucky in avoiding jail, but gets an expensive ticket also, and it turns out the Dads of both these guys know each other. Tim's Dad, the owner of a shoe factory, decides to make it hard on his son: "Since you don't want to work for me, you're on your own from now on. If you want to become a delinquent, that's your business." Hard to imagine Tim McCoy as a delinquent, but in the movie, he has seven prior speeding tickets. Ward Bond is already a fireman, and as Tim starts contemplating the future of his life, he decides to stop goofing off and asks Bond if he can get him in at the fire station. He wants to go straight but dreads a career in the shoe business.

After Tim is accepted in the fire department, his Dad reluctantly gives his blessing, but tells Bond's Dad to "be hard on him, no special treatment." A training sequence is shown, in which Tim has to learn how to jump out of burning buildings and onto a mat. Once trained, he becomes part of a hook and ladder team. Because of his reputation as a speed demon, Tim is made the driver, the logic being that he'll get the company to fire scenes quickly. Ward Bond steers the rear of the rig, with that big steering wheel those guys use, and soon they get their first call, to an apartment building in flames. The two of them rescue young "Judy Manners" (Evalyn Knapp), and in the papers the next day there are two different accounts of her rescue. In one, McCoy is named the hero, in the other, it's Bond. Both guys cut their articles out and read them while going to bed, and over sweet dreams of Miss Manners, they each fall in love, each thinking himself to be the hero who came to her rescue. The next day, Tim pays her a visit, claiming to be a fire inspector, but when he can't produce credentials, she knows why he's really there, with a wink and a nod. Then Ward Bond shows up with the same scam. She ends up in a semi-relationship with both guys and they all go on a picnic together, but over time, it becomes platonic with Bond, while she falls for Tim McCoy.

But then the movie turns into a crime film, with only twenty minutes left. Boy, this is one clever screenwriter. All of a sudden, because Judy is now Tim's girlfriend, he gets her a job at his Dad's shoe factory, where she's put in charge of payroll. Well, once you put "payroll" into a script, you know there's gonna be a robbery, and in this case, a middle-management exec at the company is planning to steal 15 grand in cash (the payroll money), and blame it on Judy the new girl.

He sets her up to take an envelope, which unbeknownst to her is stuffed with the 15 Gees, to a hotel room where his cronies lie in waiting. They take the dough and kidnap her, but as she's being held in a locked bedroom, she gets a brilliant idea. Recalling how she was rescued from her apartment building, she sets fire to the curtains, which sets off the ceiling sprinklers and the alarm. This brings the Fire Department, and Tim McCoy and Ward Bond! Ingenious! This gets her out of the kidnap, but while she's in the hospital, recovering from smoke inhalation, the shoe executive tries to abduct her again! In the process, he knocks over a hotplate, which sets the bedclothes on fire. Here comes Tim and Bond again to the rescue! This is a very clever script, with a ton of stuff packed into 56 minutes, and a whole lot of old Hollywood location shots to boot. One thing we especially like about Tim McCoy was that he worked outside the Western genre on occasion, and was just as good in his city roles. Two Big Thumbs Up for "A Man's Game". The picture is very good.  ////

The previous night we returned to Hoot Gibson. I love this guy: he's the Anti-Cowboy, an average Joe, a Schmoe even, who just happens to have the charisma of a star. But Johnny Mack Brown he is definitely not. Still, like JMB, he always gets the girl, and instead of out-drawing the bad guys, he outsmarts 'em. He's got the same beanpole sidekick that we saw the other night (Skeeter Bill Richards), and in "The Dude Bandit"(1933), he plays "Ace Cooper", a cowpoke who investigates the suspicious death of his friend Dad Mason. Now, I have no info on Dad, nor do we see his death. He apparently got blown up by a stove explosion, but this is never shown nor even mentioned until the middle of the movie, because there's some really goofy editing going on. The opening scene seems out of place as we join Skeeter in the middle of a confrontation with some big shots. The scene is all chopped up with missing frames and dialogue, but we get the gist of what is taking place: Skeeter is helping Ace to prevent a foreclosure on Dad Mason's ranch, which - with his death - is supposed to be passed down to his daughter "Betty" (Gloria Shea). Okay fine. But then, without warning or prior context, Hoot turns into The Dude Bandit. And, there's no mention of Dad Mason or his death.

But then, about twelve minutes in, the entire first scene is repeated, without the herky-jerky editing. If this was a botched job for an early TV broadcast, whoever cut it did a complete butcher job. I say all of this to get the Dad Mason murder out of the way, because we know nothing about it at the beginning, and hence we don't know the genesis of Hoot's motivations, until later when he explains things.

He slips into the persona of the black suited Bandit in order to rustle back the cattle belonging to Betty Mason that a land baron named "Burton" (Hooper Atchley) has put a hold on. He says Betty can't have her cattle back until she pays off her late father's mortgage, which of course she can't afford due to exorbitant interest rates. The bottom line is that Burton is trying trying to steal Betty's ranch and The Dude Bandit is stealing it back for her. Skeeter Bill does a lot of the enforcement work because Hoot's persona does not include much gunmanship or fighting. I found it interesting that many commentators on Youtube and IMDB noticed the same things I did about him, and as one fan put it, "Hoot is an unconventional cowboy". In real life, though, he was a rodeo star before working in movies, so he is the real deal. Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Dude Bandit", which would be even better with an intact print. Still, it's recommended and the picture is very good.  ////

That's all for tonight. My blogging music this evening is Phil Seymour's debut solo album from 1980, which I owned on vinyl. At the time, I didn't like it as much as the two Twilley albums he was a part of, and it has a poppier sound, but listening all these years later, there are a lot of good songs and I just like his approach, as nobody makes records like this. It has an early rock and roll feel with a slick 80s production, and good hooks. I also listened to the first Automatic Man album from 1976, but didn't make it all the way through, because it was a lot more commercial sounding than I remembered, and not as progressive. It sounded like Journey mixed with Santana. Mostly I didn't like the vocals. But Two Big Thumbs Up for The Dwight Twilley Band and Phil Seymour. Good stuff shouldn't be forgotten. I hope your week is off to a good start and I send you Tons of Love as always.

Donald Keith in "Twisted Rails" (classic train footage), and "The Fighting Parson" starring Hoot Gibson and Charles King (plus Dwight Twilley)

Last night's motion picture was "Twisted Rails"(1934), a train movie/crime thriller with a wafer-thin plot but more action than you can shake a stick at. In the opening scene, a gang of gold thieves is hiding in the bushes (Stay! Out! Da Bushes!), waiting to blow up a) the railroad tracks, or b) the bridge, depending on which route the train is gonna take. They have a guy back at the depot who's tipping them off by Morse code. They end up blowing the bridge to smithereens, and stealing a gold bullion shipment from the train, which has fallen into the gulch below. There's been a spate of these train wrecks and gold robberies, and the manager of the depot is gonna be fired if he can't catch whoever's responsible. So, he hires a passenger from the latest wreck to work as a private detective.

The guy's name is "Louie Weinstock" (Donald Keith), and while he's a tough cookie, he's in way over his head trying to stop the gang, so the company president puts his son on the case, in the guise of a railroad policeman. He discovers the identity of the gang leader, but they kidnap his girlfriend and hold her hostage, threatening her life if he tries to interfere with their next train wreck, which promises to net them their biggest haul of bullion to date.

More time is spent with punchouts than in any Western we've seen recently, and there are car chases down 1934 mountain roads (that have brand new curbs), and fistfights on top of moving boxcars, but the best scene of all - more than worth watching the movie for - is an extended foot chase through what used to be called a roundhouse, a parking garage for locomotive engines, and this is amazing because it was the building in place, in Downtown Los Angeles, before Union Station was built. It's amazing to see all these old train engines in what looks like such an ancient site, but - again - it was still in existence just 26 years before I was born. As an aside, I have an early memory of seeing the Super Chief arrive at Union Station when I was about four or five, to take one of my sister's friends to Chicago.

Anyhow, this is one short movie that could've used an extension, just to fill out the plot. Everything moves at breakneck speed, including the numerous brawls that seem to involve the entire cast. The girlfriend is abducted kicking and screaming over and over again. The story is difficult to follow but if you want action you've got it: 47 minutes worth, the length of the entire film. Just watch with no expectations and you'll have a blast (kaboom! when they blow up the bridge) looking at old Los Angeles and finding out where choo-choo go. Two Big Thumbs up for "Twisted Rails." The picture is soft but watchable.  //// 

The previous night we watched our first film with the legendary Hoot Gibson, one of the biggest cowboy stars of the Silent era. His success continued into Talkies, so how come we've never seen Hoot before? In part, I guess it's because I associated him with Silents, but more than that (because we like Silent film and have enjoyed William S. Hart's movies), I think it was because I saw still photographs of Hoot and just didn't think of him as the Western Star type. He's not particularly glamorous, doesn't present a gunslinger image, and he's not tall like Tom Tyler nor short like Bob Steele. He's just kind of average looking in every way, but he must've had something going for him to become so doggone famous. My guess? I think it was his personality, which is on display in this movie, "The Fighting Parson"(1933). He has a perpetual look on his face like he's in on a joke we aren't aware of. There's a comic element to his good-natured persona that is present even when he isn't trying to be funny. I don't think he pulled a gun once in the entire film, though he was posing as a parson. Allow me to backtrack: as the movie opens, he and "Arizona" (Skeeter Bill Robbins), his beanpole sidekick, are cleaning up at a dice game with their fellow ranch hands, only to be kicked out of the game and threatened when the other men discover that Arizona's dice are loaded. The choice is leave or die ("you know what happens to dice cheats in these parts"!), so they ride off, and head for a town called Red Dog.

Well, of course if you know the history of the 8mm films I made with my friends, you can guess I was hoping there'd be a Red Dog Tavern in the movie. There IS a saloon, so we'll just substitute it for the Tavern, but the townsfolk in Red Dog, who we meet before Hoot and Arizona get there, have had enough of gambling, drinking and crime. They've put up posters, announcing the coming of a revival preacher named "Reverend Doolittle" (Robert Frazer), who, by the very power of God (and his charisma), will clean up the town good and proper, and rid it of schemers like "Bart McCade" (Stanley Blystone), who's about to be hung.

While Hoot and 'Zona are riding to Red Dog, two things happen. One is that the town boss has met with Charles King (young and thin here) to ensure that Parson Doolittle never arrives. King ambushes him, scares him away and steals his clothes, leaving Rev. Doolittle in his skivvies in da bushes (Stay! Out! Da Bushes!) He doesn't kill him because it's not that kind of movie and it's a Charles King Moment; when he's onscreen, he's the boss. For some reason, King doesn't keep the stolen clothes, and that leads to the second thing that happens. Hoot and Arizona find them laying in the dirt on their way to Red Dog, and Hoot keeps the top hat and tails while Arizona takes the pants, and when they get to town, the church ladies think they are Reverend Doolittle and his deacon. It's the old Mis-schtooken Identity ploy (said with a twirl of your handlebar moustache).

Having nothing better to do, Hoot plays along with everyone thinking he's a parson. But then he's got to actually perform the job - there's a baby to baptise and he doesn't have the slightest idea what to do. In church, young "Susan Larkin" (Marceline Day) takes a liking to him. She's the sweet daughter of town honcho "Ben Larkin" (Phil Dunham), but Hoot must tread carefully because Bart McCade, the guy who is gonna be hung, knows who he really is: an itinerant, dice-cheating cowpoke. McCade blackmails him to escape the noose, and from there, Hoot must walk a fine line, between going straight as the Parson, and teaming up with McCade and Charles King to pull off an upcoming a payroll robbery. Meanwhile, the real Reverend Doolittle is making his way through the desert in his underwear. It's only a matter of time till he reaches town and the im-Parson-ation gig is up (oh man that's a riot!). What I liked most about Hoot Gibson is the nonchalant way he approaches the role of Cowboy Hero. He has a "who, me?" thing happening that worked well with the semi-comic material in the film. How well he'd go down as a gunslinger, I'm not sure. But I give "The Fighting Parson" Two Big Thumbs Up, and we'll look for more from the Hootster. The picture is razor sharp.  ////   

And that's all I know for tonight. Earlier today I was listening to a long lost classic from 1977, "Twilley Don't Mind" by The Dwight Twilley Band. If you know me on FB, you may have seen my post of the title song this afternoon. The Dwight Twilley Band was really just two guys, Twilley and Phil Seymour, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who had an ear for great pop hooks and classic guitar tones, and when this record came out, all the critics loved it and it looked like Dwight Twilley was gonna be a star. What happened instead was that Tom Petty, whose debut album came out around the same time on the same label, got the big push, and Twilley was left in the dust wondering what the hell happened. If I'm not mistaken, Phil Seymour, Twilley's drummer and co-writer, had a couple of minor hits as a solo artist in the early 80s. Then he got sick and died at only 41 in 1993, poor guy. Dwight Twilley has apparently soldiered on independently for all this time. He's 71 now. Boy, with his looks and those songs, and that guitar sound, he should've been big, just like Petty. I always thought it was cool to reference yourself in the Third Person like he did with his album title. Anyway, the bottom line is that it still holds up, 45 years later. Give it a spin for Twilley.

My blogging music was "Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)" by Captain Beefheart (I went as far as I could with Amon Duul), and I must say, it's very good, though much slicker than the Captain's usual output. It's got all the requisite weirdness, but with an AOR production sound. Still good stuff, though. I also tried Henry Cow again, but so far I still can't do it. Late night listening is "Der Meistersinger" by Wagner, von Karajan conducting. I hope you are enjoying your weekend and I send you Tons of Love as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)  

Russell Hayden and Alan Curtis in "Apache Chief", and "Private Buckaroo" starring The Andrews Sisters

Last night, in "Apache Chief"(1949), "Chief Big Crow" (Trevor Bardette) has a treaty with the US Army to keep the peace, but his nephew "Black Wolf" (Russell Hayden) is a renegade who hates the white man. When Black Wolf stages an attack on local settlers, his father is killed, so he lies about it to Big Crow and says the settlers attacked first. Black Wolf's henchmen back up his story, but when "Lt. Brown" (Tom Neal) is sent to investigate, he and "Sgt. Nevada" (Fuzzy Knight) find a victim who is still alive, and she tells them before dying that a group of Indians attacked without provocation. Chief Big Crow believes her testimony, because he and "Colonel Martin" (Roy Gordon) of the Cavalry have built up trust though their peace treaty. Big Crow teals his medicine man "Mohaska" (Francis McDonald) : "Colonel Martin knows I never lie." He forces Black Wolf to confess to the attack, but then pleads for his life, and Col. Martin allows Black Wolf to be sentenced by the Apaches. Feeling sorry for him because his father was killed, Big Crow sentences Black Wolf to lashings, then five days of prayer without food on Sacred Mountain.

But while he's up there, his cousin "Young Eagle" (Alan Curtis), Big Crow's son, brings him a knife to hunt for food. "I support you, cousin", Young Eagle tells him, but Black Wolf uses the knife to rob and kill more settlers. He steals a gold watch from a white lady and gives it to "Watona" (Carol Thurston), an Apache girl he fancies, telling her not to show it to anyone, but she is proud of it and wears it around her neck. When Lt. Brown and Sgt. Nevada come upon the latest murdered family, then later find Watona wearing the watch, they force her to tell where she got it. This time, Chief Big Crow promises Col. Martin he will personally turn Black Wolf in, but Black Wolf has other Apaches on his side, and he challenges the leadership of Chief Big Crow. Young Eagle feels guilty for having assisted him and tells his father Big Crow that he will ride to Black Wolf's hideout and trick him into surrendering. But Black Wolf doesn't trust any of the Apaches who agreed with the peace treaty. He kills Chief Big Crow, then lies in wait for Young Eagle.

This one is like a chess game between the wiley Black Wolf and Young Eagle, the proud son who almost falls under his revenge spell. We've seen Russell Hayden as a gunman in a lot of Westerns; earlier in his career he was a smiling Skeeny Keedo. By 1949, he'd turned chunky, but he's tall and very athletic, so he comes across as powerful and menacing as the heartless warrior Black Wolf. Alan Curtis is also good as Young Eagle, though he usually played suave guys in Noirs (and was also Peter Uberroth's uncle).  

"Apache Chief" is exceptionally well shot and directed. It was released by Lippert Pictures, an independent outfit one rung above Poverty Row that turned out some good stuff. We've seen several Lippert films, including "Spaceways", "Loan Shark", "Roaring City" and "Western Pacific Agent" (and others). In this movie, Tom Neal and Fuzzy Knight, both big at earlier times in their careers, are used mostly to fill space and deliver plot points. The real battle is Apache vs. Apache, peacemaker versus renegade, and it's a tight one. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Apache Chief", filmed at Corriganville and Walker Ranch. It's highly recommended and the picture is razor sharp.  ////

The previous night, we watched "Private Buckaroo"(1942), a musical comedy doubling as a propaganda film for the war effort. It's presented as a revue or a pastiche of vignettes involving a variety of characters as wide in range as Shemp Howard and Elizabeth Holt, one of our favorite Western Sweethearts. How it came to my attention is a little bit of a story because of The Andrews Sisters, who are top billed. This year I've been writing a book (two books in fact, the one in question is a novel), and for a certain chapter I needed some music from the late 1930s, so The Andrews Sisters came to mind. In my research, I discovered that their lead singer Patty lived in Northridge from 1978 to 2013, when she passed away at the age of 94. I thought, "wow!", because The Andrews Sisters are iconic in American music, with hits like "Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree", "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and many others. My Mom used to talk about them, and I don't know if they were ever on her radio show (she had Rosemary Clooney on a couple times), but they had hits all throughout the late 30's to the end of the war, and basically their music is synonymous with WW2. The Andrews Sisters are the forerunner of the modern girl group, and so when I found out how close Patty Andrews lived for all those years, I had to drive by her home, which is just a mile and a half from me. Then tonight, I wanted to see one of their movies, so I found "Private Buckaroo."

They do several numbers in it and are just fantastic, not just as singers but as all-around performers. If Patty Andrews came out today, she'd be bigger than Gaga, and the thing is, she already was. Lady G would be the first to agree, and is probably a huge fan herself. The plot, such as it is, mixes real-life personalities with fictional characters and involves a big band singer, "Lon Prentice" (played by crooner Dick Foran), who wants to join the Army but keeps getting turned down for having flat feet. When his bandleader Harry James (playing himself) gets accepted, Prentice tries again and gets in, but asks for special treatment cause he thinks he's a big shot. His drill sergeant is Shemp Howard, who cuts him down to size. There are running jokes, such as when Harry James - at the time considered the world's greatest trumpeter - turns out to be inept with a bugle. And Shemp's girfriend is a tall beanpole of a woman who has a hilarious dinner scene with him. There's a little girl nicknamed The Chief, who hangs around the base, with business schemes up her sleeve. She's the much younger sister of the lovely Elizabeth Holt, who Lon Prentice has his eye on. There are dance sequences featuring an incredible troupe called The Jivin' Jacks and Jills. I had to look them up when the movie was over because they are outstanding, and make the viewing worthwhile all by themselves. It's loosely drawn and has the feel of "let's put on a show", but man, those Andrews Sisters are every bit as great as their reputation, and especially Patty, who was a natural born star. We'll be looking for more from the Sisters, and there's also a song or two by a gal named Helen Forrest, who (according to Wiki) was the #1 big band singer in 1941-42. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Private Buckaroo", but with a very high recommendation for all the above mentioned reasons. The picture is razor sharp.  ////

As for my books, I may have mentioned them much earlier in the year but I haven't made regular updates, because to me it's a "put-up-or-shut-up" thing. I know it sounds pretentious to say that you're writing a novel, especially when you aren't a professional writer. Yada-yada, everyone's got a novel coming out, that's why I haven't said much about it. Not that I'm without writing ex-schperience, because I did write the unpublished "What Happened in Northridge", which I thought I did a good job on and which I am still hoping to get published. But these two books, while also involving personal subjects, are coming from a totally different place, both literally and figuratively, and I wanted to get 'em done (and make sure they're halfway decent) before giving out advance publicity. The one thing I was not going to do this time was write either one of them "in public" like I did with "What Happened" on Myspace. I'm almost done with a first draft of both; second and final drafts with take until, I estimate, April of next year. Then I will look at options like self-publishing on Amazon, but it's too early for that cause I know nothing about publishing. What I do know is that I love to write and want to keep doing it, especially after this current experience. When I'm done, I'll have three books to my name and I plan to keep going. I just wanna get 'em done, get 'em out there and get 'em read. And that's all I have to say about that. I'll give another update when the second drafts are almost finished.

That's all I know for tonight. My blogging music is more Amon Duul (I'm hooked! Help me please!), late night I'm still working on "Lohengrin" by Wagner, and I send you Tons of Love, as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)