Last night, in "The Black Glove"(1954), a quirky jazz-noir from Hammer's Terence Fisher, Alex Nicol is "James Bradley", a hotshot American trumpeter who is packing the clubs in London. His manager wants him to attend an important after-gig party, but Brad, as he is known, just wants to eat and sleep. That is, until he hears a sultry female voice arising from out of a cellar. He stops his taxi, gets out to investigate, and the next thing you know, he's playing along with blonde singer "Maxine Halbard" (Ann Haslip). They hit it off, then go back to her apartment, which - aware that he's starving - she advertises as "the best spaghetti restaurant in London". They eat, but afterwards, when he tries to kiss her, she says, "I like you, but I've got a Canadian boyfriend I plan to marry." Brad leaves, with no hard feelings. He still wants to get some sleep. That manager of his is always pushing him forward.
But when he wakes up the next morning, the cops are in his hotel room. They grill him about his whereabouts. "Where were you last night? Did you meet a Maxine Halbard?" "Yeah, the blues singer. Why?" "Because she's dead. Murdered."
We the audience saw someone enter Maxine's flat after Brad left, wearing a Mac and gloves, and carrying a vinyl LP. Whoever it was, they couldn't have been a friend, not with Maxine dead. We also know that Brad didn't do it. Unfortunately for him, he left his trumpet at her place, so for a while he's the #1 suspect. Needing to clear himself, he goes to an address written on a matchbook he just found, which was "carelessly" (on purpose) dropped by the cops when they left his hotel room. What Brad doesn't know is that the police are using him as a lead, watching to see where he'll go, who he'll talk to, and what will be revealed when he does. The address is for a "Barbara Quigley" (Eleanor Summerfield), the dead woman's sister. Like Maxine, Barbara is also a singer. Her pianist is a talented jazzman with a "magic" left hand. He's also Maxine's Canadian boyfriend, and you knew where this was leading, because he's played by the great Paul Carpenter. To take it one step further, his character's name is "Johnny Sutherland" (huge lol!). This time, Carpenter doesn't have his sweater or his pompadour. He's supposed to be an alcoholic semi-burnout, except for that magical pianism.
Now, when Brad was at Maxine's pad before she was killed, he found a gun in her drawer (while looking for some dinner candles), with the inscribed initials J.S., which he figures stand for Johnny Sutherland, who turns out to have been a sharpshooting circus performer before he became a jazz pianist. His manager was a man named "Maurie Green" (Geoffrey Keen), who also managed a triplet sister singing act, who - according to Barbara Quigley - "rivaled the Andrews sisters. Yes, we were that good." The plot gets so convoluted by this point that it's better to watch it for character charisma and jazz trumpet by the bucket load. I have to cut in to ask: does anybody remember Al Hirt? Man, he was great. We had his big hit album in our house, around 1965, and I am wondering who bought it? It must've been my Dad, of all people. It wouldn't have been Mom, she didn't buy records. The only other person it could've been would be my sister Vickie, and I can't imagine her liking trumpet music. But Dad liked Scott Joplin, so there's a slim chance he liked Al Hirt, who hailed from New Orleans. The trumpet in the movie is played by a guy named Kenny Baker, and man, can he blow. I played trumpet for one year, and was even in the Prairie Street School orchestra for a few weeks, in what seems like another life. I took trumpet lessons also, but gave it up because I wanted to play guitar. But I liked Al Hirt when he came along. His hit single "Java" was a catchy song.
The rest of the movie will revolve around the record that was found on the turntable at Maxine's place when she died. It's an acetate test pressing, manufactured at Maurie Green's studio. Brad discovers that only two copies were made. The plot takes a Ten Little Indians turn when we find out that a number of people resented the pretty Maxine, not least of which were her two sisters in the triplet act. Then there is Johnny Sutherland, the Canadian piano player/former fast draw circus performer, who is discovered to have fraudulently imitated a famous jazz pianist on the acetate pressing. A convoluted script is always better watched than translated, so I shant go further into detail. It's a good one, though: all about the jazz, the characters, and the tragicomic atmosphere, playing off Alex Nicol's good-humored hubris. He's the walking embodiment of the Humble Brag, if it were a character trait. And Eleanor Summerfield is excellent as always. Two Big Thumbs for "The Black Glove". The picture is razor sharp. ////
The previous night, we had Robert J. Lippert's "Arson, Inc."(1949), the story of an insurance scam specializing in fur fires. "Fredrick Fender" (Douglas Fowley) runs the show. As the movie opens, his top henchman "Pete Purdy" (Edward Brophy, who invented the cinematic mook) has just killed a fire department investigator with a whack on his head, and has stolen his attache case with his files. Mr. Fender, unlike Trump, has his operation compartmentalized so that none of the participants knows the big picture. Some of them target the fur warehouses, some set the fires, others fence the merch, or keep the books. Into the picture comes "Joe Martin" (Robert Lowery), another fire investigator. He's working undercover to gain the trust of Freddy Fender so he can find enough evidence to bust him.
I have to cut in to say that you'd better keep an eye on Trump, and I'm not kidding. It always pays to watch the opposition, and if you saw Trump's rally in South Dakota (with their attractive and well-spoken Governor Kristi Noem), it looks like someone has been coaching Trump, to play the quick-witted "good guy" version of himself, the Trump who can save America from the corrupt and incompetent Democrats. He picks on Biden, but then apologizes. Someone coached him to do that, and to say that he "respects the office of the Presidency." He reserves most of his ire for the media and his persecutors, but you really need to watch the whole rally on Youtube, because this is not the Trump that MSNBC wants you to see, this is the Trump that has been re-designed to come across as a smart, well-informed-on-the-issues guy, who's also "being persecuted", and they've done a good job with the re-model. I said this before, after his New Hampshire rally, and I'm saying it again: If I knew nothing about Trump except what I heard at these two rallies, I'd probably vote for him, given the current State of America. We're in bad shape, folks. and while we appreciate Joe Biden (I was a dementia caregiver, so I know what he's dealing with), his administration is a disaster economically, not least because of the Russia/Ukraine war, which - let's be honest - would not have happened under Trump because Ukraine is Biden's and his son's pet project.
We'd all love to have a real, honest and strong president, but what we've been given right now is a choice between Biden and Trump, and on the Democratic side, Wokeness is killing us with middle American voters. Do you disagree? Have at it, and get back to me after the election in 14 months. Or just watch the Trump South Dakota rally, and listen to what he says without prejudice. Can you do that? I did, and you are talking to the guy who once described himself as the #1 anti-Trumper in the world. Back in 2019 (or thereabouts) I told Grimsley that, if the Empire State Building was the measuring stick, that I would be at the top of the antenna (like King Kong) and the #2 anti-Trumper would be on the sidewalk. So I'm not just whistling Dixie 'atcha. I'm trying to get people away from being programmed by the "news", and thinking that "the news" has their best interests in mind, and the whole idea of choosing sides.
Start thinking for yourself. Turn off the news, unless it's to monitor what's going on, and even then, watch it sparingly. because these mothers don't give a hoot about you, not the democrats nor the repubs. And certainly not third parties, which are a joke.
But since we're under the corporate thumb, and the two choices we've been given both suck, you have to ask yourself, who do you want, in your "free" American election. Do you want the Total Disaster that has been the Biden administration (with the ever present threat of a Harris presidency; can you even imagine that?), or do you want a new and improved Trump, who can spout policy numbers with the best of them, something he seemed incapable of before this. Again, watch the SD and NH videos. He stands a good chance of being re-elected, I hate to say. I'll shut up now, but we've already been scammed multiple times, by Mueller, by the two impeachments, and the news media did a very good job of making Trump look like the world's biggest nincompoop, an inept crook. Well, crooked he may be, but inept he is not. You have to watch and see what his new image-makers have done. How many 77 year old men are that quick on the uptake, with that much verbal energy? Especially ones who eat nothing but cheeseburgers and drink gallons of Pepsi?
Don't sell yourself short as a thinking person. Turn off the news, except to monitor what is happening, and think for yourself. Don't let the news push your buttons. Better yet, strip off your buttons. I did, and I was once the biggest side-chooser (a total commie) of them all. For the record, I think politicians are, by nature, untrustworthy. I think anyone who has signed on to profit greatly from Corporate America's agenda is, by nature, untrustworthy. I'm not talking about the working stiff, who has little choice. Anyhow, I guess what I'm saying is that you'd better not write Trump off, just because MSNBC and CNN tell you he's toast, with his four indictments. Keep in mind that after porn stars, after Mueller, after two impeachments, after January 6th, and even RICO charges, he's tied with Biden in the polls, and likely leading in the potential electoral college. We all know how 2016 turned out. Let's not let it happen again, even if four more years of Biden will suck bad. End of tirade. ////
But back to the movie, undercover fire investigator Joe Martin gets Pete Purdy (Fender's henchman) to trust him by giving Purdy tips on horses in an illegal back room betting joint. Fender is too cagey to bring Joe in to the fire scam right away, but he's got the hots for "Jane Jennings" (Anne Gwynne), Joe's schoolteacher girlfriend. Fender's secretary, a bimbo, is old hat by now. Hoodlums always want the Clean Girl, the un-corrupted one. Joe plays it crooked all the way down the line, and agrees to do the driving on an upcoming warehouse blaze. "Just follow Pete, and do what he says." But Pete's a crazy firebug, and now Jane's trapped in the burning warehouse. Two Bigs for "Arson, Inc." which runs 60 minutes. You can't beat a cast with Douglas Fowley, Edgar Brophy, Anne Gwynne and a grown-up Marcia Mae Jones as Fender's secretary. Remember Marcia Mae? From "The Old Swimmin' Hole" and "Haunted House?" She was another actor we binge-watched about a year ago. The picture is razor sharp. ////
And that's all for tonight. Sorry about the politics, but I just feel that Trump shouldn't be underestimated. My blogging music was "Zeit" by Tangerine Dream. My late night is "Rienzi" by Wagner. How about them Rams? I told ya they'd surprise people. I hope your week is off to a good start, and I send you Tons of Love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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